Casualties and Triage
Posted on Thu Mar 3rd, 2016 @ 10:37am by Lieutenant JG Ricki St. Louis & Lieutenant Commander David Deschanel M.D. & Lieutenant Commander Marit Lantry M.D., Ph.D.
Edited on on Thu Mar 3rd, 2016 @ 10:38am
Mission:
By Dawn's Early Light
Location: Main Sickbay
[ON]
The general protocol for battle injuries was to stabilize everyone and repair as time allowed. Dr. St. Louis donned one of prepared backbacks. It was laden with neuropan, triox, and a half dozen other bio-stasis components. All medical personnel wore CBRN sniffers along with countermeasure injectors. Sojourners couldn't be relied upon to conduct Geneva Convention warfare.
Even as close to the core of the station as the main sickbay was, the layers of hull plating and bulkheads couldn't mask the booms of the battle that had begun outside the station. David knew from experience that it would only be a matter of time before the Sojourners would be able to find and exploit a weakness in the shields and start beaming boarders in - or worse, start landing ships in the docking bays or hull breaches they're likely to be aiming to create.
"Ensign!" he called over to one of the security officers Gunning had posted out in the central corridor. He was standing within view of the emergency receiving area, and so would be well positioned for what David wanted to use him for. "What's your name?"
"Urban, sir. John Urban."
"You're monitoring the security comm channel, aren't you John?" The ensign nodded. "Good. I want you to be our early warning system. Listen out on the comm lines, and shout out when casualties are likely to start coming through to us."
The ensign nodded. "Yessir."
"Deschanel to all medical personnel," David said, tapping his combadge. He could hear his voice echoing back to him from those nearby, but he wanted to reach everyone; both in the main sickbay and those in the other medical facilities throughout the station. "It's about to get busy for us real fast. I want everyone to follow their training and focus on the job at hand. Our first job is to stabilise casualties coming in to us. Don't spend too long on each individual patient; I know that it can be hard to disconnect ourselves, but we all know that is part of the job. Set your emotions to the side for the next few hours, and focus on what needs to be done. Treating the non-life-threatening injuries will come after. Deschanel out."
A medic reported, shaking his head as he listened to an earphone, "I'm receiving a flood of casualty notifications. Half our transporters are down, and the rest can't beam here through all the bulkheads."
Deschanel felt a rumble through the deck plates as he finished talking, and looked over to Urban. "The space doors just blew," the ensign said quietly in answer to his unspoken question. "Sojourners are boarding the station."
"OK people, get ready for incoming," David said, rubbing his hands together and moving over to the others waiting near the transporter receiving pads.
"Marine casualties incoming!" Urban called from the corridor. Sure enough, the transporter pad lit up, releasing a group of marines in various states into the receiving bay.
"OK people, move! Let's get these marines off the transporter pads."
Marit rushed forward to assist. Her triage skills were going to get quite a workout it seemed. The hardest part was not being able to be multiple places at once. With a station this large, there was no shortage of potential casualties and only so many properly trained people to go around.
Several of the marines, though clearly injured, were standing and strong enough to help some of their comrades off the transporter pads. David left a couple of nurses to quickly scan those able to move on their own and determine the extent of their injuries, as it was always possible that they had some level of internal bleeding that their apparent mobility could mask. Many of the marines to be beamed in were unconscious, and the medical personnel quickly began moving them onto stretchers to carry out.
"This man has severe disruptor damage to the right of his torso and his right arm," David said, running his scanner over the prone figure as he was carried past, though largely as an aid to his visual diagnosis. "Get him to surgery immediately." The flesh on the marine's hand was gone down to the bone, which had been blackened. I was going to need to be amputated, and the damage done to the rest of his body stabilised. Once the battle was over, he was going to need a prosthetic fitted.
"Concussion, second-degree plasma burns to epidermis," he said as he assessed the next unconscious patient to be moved past him. "Non-critical; send them to secondary triage." The next patient along produced zero life signs on his tricorder; brain activity was dead, as as the heart. "Morgue," he said, quieter so as not to unduly affect the marine's comrades, but still loud enough for his instruction to the nurse to be heard.
Dr. St. Louis had a more unorthodox approach to first aid. She waved her tricorder wand over incoming patients. Using synapses to interface with tricorder instead of eyes, she systematically pulled out specialized hypos that were attached to self-winding cords. One contained neuropan to put patients into metabolic coma-stasis. Another injected microsurgicals which then set about staunching internal bleeding. To each patient she affixed a diagnostics sensor.
"Three starfighter escape pods beaming in," Urban announced. Surely, soon enough one of the compact cockpit escape pods began materialising, followed by another, and then the last one. They all looked pretty banged up, but they had done their jobs of getting their pilots away from their craft and keeping them sealed against the vacuum of space.
David stepped up to the first, and keyed the emergency release on the hatch, revealing the pilot. He was conscious but dazed; the tricorder confirmed he had concussion in addition to a broken wrist, and internal bleeding from a piece of his cockpit control panel that had exploded and lodged shrapnel in his abdomen. "Get this man out and to surgery. Treat the internal bleeding then move him to the wards."
The next pilot was pretty much unharmed except for a light concussion and some brusing, so David told her to find her way by herself to the wards.
Opening the third pod, David could see straight away that the cockpit control panel had exploded in the man's face, which was burnt down to the bone on the more prominent regions of the skull. The tricorder confirmed his initial diagnosis. "Deceased. Computer, make a note in the station log as of this time. Beam the body to the morgue."
He stepped away from the transporter pads, and once the body had been beamed away, tapped the controls to beam the escape pods down to storage. The engineers might be able to use them for parts or repair them after the battle, but until then, David needed his transporter pads clear.
One of the medics called out apprehensively, "Dr. St. Louis!"
Ricki had unapologetically informed her that as long as friendly casualties were at brink of death, they received her attention over enemy casualties. As the situation stabilized, she began offering attention to foes. "This one can't be resuscitated."
The medic scanned with a tricorder. She wouldn't normally challenge a doctor, but Ricki's dismissal was so quick and easy. "Perhaps throw him in cryo and reconstruct later?"
Ricki went on the the next patient, "There won't be anything to reconstruct. It looks like someone has reinvented the Varon-T disruptor."
"But those are illegal!"
"Tell the Ferengi that... and the Orions... and the Brilayans... and the Illithidin. Looks very much like we have mercenaries fighting for us on this station... good ones."
"How can you tell that they're so good?"
"Seal this wound... I can tell by the fact that we don't have merc casualties rolling in."
[OFF]
Lt. Commander David Deschanel MD
Lt. Commander Marit Lantry M.D.
Lt. Jg. Ricki Steiner
Starbase 332
Pegasus Fleet
