Hard Crash - Christie Golden [8]
"La Forge, you and Faulwell start trying to figure out how to use this key. Nice work, Duffy."
"Thank you, Captain." It made the terrible pain in his hand worth it.
"Permission to go to sickbay to check on 110," said Gomez.
"Granted," said Gold. "You two," he said to Faulwell and La Forge, "get on this tricorder immediately. Now," he continued, rising and walking down to the screen, "little ship, are you really disabled or do you still have a trick or two up your sleeve?"
Duffy held his injured hand and watched Gomez leave. He knew why she was going, and he understood. It wouldn't kill him to wait until she'd finished with 110 to get his injury treated.
Dr. Elizabeth Lense hated this part of the mission. She'd much rather be attending her other "patient." The dead one, lying on a biobed awaiting examination with the patience of, well, the dead. But 110 needed her attention now.
The Bynar was spasming on the bed, his eyes rolling back and forth underneath tightly shut lids. He wasn't breathing. Lense went into automatic pilot, making the right judgment calls and movements without even thinking about them. Get him breathing. Stabilize the erratic heartbeat. Monitor brain wave activity. Her hands flew over the small, prostrate figure, attaching monitors, sensors, hypospraying concentrates of this and that.
At that moment the ship rocked violently. It would appear as if the hitherto dormant ship had been awakened. Lense swore softly under her breath. Sickbay lost power momentarily and the emergency backup mechanisms kicked in.
She had a brief flashback to a similar scene aboard the Lexington in the middle of a battle. Voices were crying out her name, shrieking in agony, begging for help. There literally had been blood almost everywhere in sickbay. Patients with injuries from fractured skulls to decapitated limbs to sucking chest wounds filled sickbay, overflowed into the corridor. There hadn't even been the chance to set up the shuttle bays to handle the sheer volume of wounded. The stench of so much blood had been almost unbearable.
Eighteen of the dead and injured had been her own staff. She and the EMH, an efficient but cold and sarcastic image, had been the only ones able to treat the wounded.
She remembered Jenson, dying in her arms even as she buried her hands almost to the wrist in his wound, trying to hold closed a slippery, severed artery with her fingers because she couldn't reach her tools. And Galloway, who kept refusing treatment in order to bring in others more gravely than she, breathing her last quietly in a corner when she couldn't bring in any more.
Lense had been able to save about a quarter of them. One lousy quarter of the screaming, bloody people who had begged her for help, pleaded with her to ease their torment.
Damn it. Damn it all to hell.
"Stay with me, 110," she whispered, although she knew the Bynar could not hear her. She couldn't treat him when the ship was this chaotic. The best she could do was make sure he didn't fall off the bed, and that the pieces of medical equipment strapped to his little body stayed put.
For what seemed like an eternity, the ship shuddered under attack. Finally, it appeared that the worst was over. The power surged back on.
Lense turned her full attention to 110. The cortical stimulator was doing its job and the spasming slowed, then stopped. A quick glance at her tricorder told her that the immediate danger had passed, though only a complete examination would reveal what, if any, permanent damage the Bynar had incurred.
She took a breath. She could use an extra pair of hands. "Computer, activate the EMH," she ordered. At once, the slim, somewhat elegant figure of Emmett appeared.
"Good morning, Doctor--oh, dear," said Emmett. "What happened?"
Lense noticed that his dark eyes had quickly taken in everything she had done before he asked his question. Good. She had never had so apt a pupil.
As he spoke, the door to sickbay hissed open. Lense turned her head quickly and saw that it was Sonya Gomez.
"Can