Two on One, Not Good For the One

Posted on Sun Dec 1st, 2019 @ 1:19am by Lieutenant Sonia Kapoor & Lieutenant Aria Kanzaki

1,580 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Pirating Typhon resources
Location: Promenade; Sickbay
Timeline: Current Afternoon

ON:

The daily routine of a security chief was not an easy one. But Aria liked it none-the-less. She enjoyed keeping everyone safe, not to mention making sure everyone abided by the law on the station. It was why, today, she was hot on the heels of two young Nausicans she had just witnessed stealing from one of Typhon's many stores and exchanges on its one hundred plus decked promenade section.

She managed to corner them, but they pushed past her. She was thrown into a guard rail protecting the edge of one of the upper walkways. Her thin stomach slamming against the guard rail nearly caused her to propel headfirst over the rail. Luckily, she managed to steady herself and prevent that from happening. A fall from this height meant only one thing, death.

"Little..." she winced in pain as she slid down and sat on the floor. An impact like that had to have left a mark, she was only thin so she didn't have much fat or muscle to soften the impact.

Gently she lifted up her tunic and undershirt to see if she had any injuries. A large bruise had begun to form, spreading out from the point of impact, just below Aria's belly button, in all directions. Plus it was painful, she only hoped that such an impact had only caused bruising and nothing internal. She decided the best thing to do was to have it sorted out by medical. She could track down the thieves later, plus she could also put them down for assault, as well. This, for some reason, gave her something to look forward to.

She slowly made her way to the base's medical complex and requested to see the base's new Chief Medical Officer. She had yet to meet the newest addition to the senior staff, so now was a good time to do so.

Dr. Kapoor was still mulling over her previous visitor, when the doors snicked open to admit a lieutenant, dressed in gold. The woman moved slowly through the entrance. Looks like an interesting afternoon for the logs, she thought, going quickly toward the younger woman.

"I'm going to guess you are in pain," the doctor said, "and I'd say it isn't something you're likely to give into, so I won't offer a lift, but," she glanced quickly to see the closest empty biobed, "let's take this station and I'll have a look at you. No stories until we get the pain taken care of, but tell me where it hurts the worst."

Aria simply nodded, closing one eye to try and hide the rather painful bruising, her hands covering her stomach. "Well..." Aria said. "Let's just say that I got thrown into a rather hard handrail, forward first," she said simply. She managed to climb up onto the biobed and sat hunched forward slightly.

Not telling her to sit up straight, Kapoor ran her med scanner where she could easily do so, and noted there was pooling blood beneath the abdominal wall, but didn't appear to be anything more than broken blood vessels.

"Alright, I don't see major damage that would preclude a pain killer, so I'm going to give you one in a hypospray, and you can give me a little more detail while it kicks in. I want a closer examination with you lying on your back, to be sure there's nothing under the bleeding. Do you have any drug allergies or contraindications?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Aria said simply. She shuffled backwards on the biobed, trying her best to ignore the pain before she laid back, her head resting on the small pillow provided.

Sonja dialed ten cc's of terakine and pressed the hypospray to the woman's neck. "That should kick in pretty fast. It's terakine, and that should be a large enough dose to do the trick. So, tell me how you wound up stomach first on a handrail, hard enough to cause this much damage." She could already see some of the facial tension dissolving as the painkiller did its work.

"I was chasing down two Nausican thieves on the Promenade," Aria explained, at least the pain was starting to dwindle now. "I managed to get them into a corner, I was about to make the arrest, but one of them pushed me into the rail. Nearly went head first over the damn thing, but I took most of the impact stomach first. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from doing an impression of a flying squirrel or I may have been transported here in a body bag," she explained simply, the frustration of not catching them evident in her voice.

"Kudos to you for the save, then," Sonia said, impressed at the muscular control that had required. "Maybe we need to suggest a better system of safety than railings! I'm just as happy not to have people delivered in body bags."

The doctor turned the medscanner to active and said, "Now let's take a deeper look. I suspect bruised muscles, but I'd like to be sure there aren't major tears, or damage to organs. The swelling indicates blood pooling, but that would be normal from broken vessels and would account for the bruising as well." She ran the scanner more slowly this time, probing deeper electronically.

Finally, she set the scanner aside and looked at the lieutenant. "Are you a good news first or bad news first sort of woman?"

"Bad news first," Aria said. "The good news often softens the blow," she explained.

"Fortunately, it isn't that bad," Dr. Kapoor assured her. "You don't appear to be the kind who likes a day off, or to laze around, but that's exactly what I'm ordering you to do for the next 24 hours. Not even desk duty. I recommend that you lie quietly and take a long nap. Failing that, read a book ... or do performance reports or catch up on technical journals."

Aria sighed. "Don't do anything?" She asked simply. She never liked standing still. "Not even...'that' if you catch my drift...?" She asked slightly embarrassed and blushing.

With a slight smile, Kapoor said, "Ah, well, if you can find a way for 'that' which doesn't cause you pain, then it probably isn't worsening the damage, but I'd still wait a day." Sonia thought this woman was pretty tough, and would be fine if such a question crossed her mind here. Of course, she was on a nice painkiller at the moment.

"Now, the good news is, there's no permanent damage. The nature of muscular bruising is that it's smashed muscle tissue. The bruising and swelling comes from the broken blood vessels I mentioned. There's no evidence of knotted tissue, but the pain could still be worse tomorrow than it is today. In fact, it is generally worse two days after an injury," the doctor warned, handing her a small paper packet.

"I'm sending you home with a half dozen capsules of 5 mg. terakine. Take them as needed for pain. They'll disintegrate in 4 days, so really, take them if you need them. If you're still in pain after that, come back and see me. I don't expect anything but pain to come from this encounter with the railing, but if you don't feel an improvement, come back. It could be a sign that the scanner missed something, or that there's a secondary issue that isn't showing up yet. Any other questions?" The doctor couldn't help smiling. The blush, now that had been unexpected.

"Anything you can do to get the rid of the bruising? Can't you use a dermal regenerator on them?" she asked. She wasn't a doctor or anything, but she was just wondering.

"I could, yes, but dermal means skin. It would lessen the coloring on your skin, but it wouldn't heal the areas underneath. It's actually better, in this kind of injury, to let the body heal naturally," Sonia said. "The changes in color in the bruised area indicate the healing process. If that is really distasteful to you, I can lighten it, but it's still going to be painful for a few days. Your body has been traumatized. We have nothing that will reverse that process."

Kapoor shrugged, "If you had a life threatening injury, requiring cellular intervention, I would use limited nanites to speed treatment where it was needed. That would not help in your present situation."

"Could you at least make it look less bruised?" Aria asked. She often sported midriff bearing clothes when working out, or at home so she wanted to look her best. Plus an injury such as this only brought back the memory of how she had failed to catch those Nausicans.

The doctor nodded, "I can." Picking up the dermal regenerator, she dialed it for subcutaneous healing and set it up on a focal stand. "Lie back for a few minutes and let it do its work. The less you move, the more successful it will be. You will still have some bruising, but it won't be a rainbow."

Aria laid back. She unzipped her grey and black tunic so that the doctor could work on the bruising. "No problem," Aria said, "Although I don't like sitting still for long...."

"We'll see how fast we can make it, then," Kapoor said, aiming the regenerator and switching it on.

OFF:

Lt. Aria Kanzaki,
Chief of Security

Dr. Sonia Kapoor,
Chief Medical Officer

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