After the MassCal's Over

Posted on Tue Apr 6th, 2021 @ 2:06am by Centurion Nancy Gable & Gunnar Arnason & Lieutenant Kaol Ralaa

2,302 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Chapter IV: Unravelling the Mystery
Location: medbay
Timeline: 238702.10

The last of the patients seen to, Nancy collapsed into chair, head falling back with a long tired exhale.

Gunnar simply leaned, back propped against a bulkhead, expelling a more careful breath. He was sore and exhausted but there was something almost nostalgic about seeing Nancy flopped in a chair after hours of surgery. "Old times..." he remarked with a wry smile.

"Yeah..." She lifted her head looking at him - specifically at the way one arm was wrapped almost casually around his lower chest. Her eyes narrowed. "Take off your shirt."

He shook his head. "No, that one's Divash's line."

"I don't want to ogle your chest, Arnason." Nancy rolled her eyes. "You were obviously injured when you came in and my tolerance for the old times of you working when you should be a patient is over."

"It's just cracked ribs, Nancy. Trying to pull a shirt over my head ...wouldn't be a great idea right now... but I'm going handle it." He lifted his other hand, showing the osteo regen curled in his palm. "I just need a moment."

"Don't be an idiot! Or at least not more of one than you are already. Come over here," she ordered. She was certainly not getting up.

"Fine..." Gunnar conceded, pushing off from the wall. It probably was for the best - working on yourself was awkward - though he braced for the inevitable explosion when he lifted his tunic for her to examine the area.

"Qu'vatlh!" the doctor exclaimed, followed by a longer string of curse words in five languages, at the sight of the livid bruise covering half his side and a not quite smooth area covered by something like... "Duct tape, Arnason? Seriously?"

"I used what I had," he said defensively. "I could have retaped them here, but if I was going to take the time for that, I'd have just found a mirror and mended the cracks."

Gable frowned at him. Then ripped the tape off and pressed swollen lump.

"Hey! Ow!" Gunnar pulled back, scowling at her. "We have medscanners, you know."

"This isn't cracked. It's broken." She scowled back at him. "You're lucky you didn't puncture a lung..." she emphasized the point by pressing to align the break.

"Ow!" Gunnar widened eyes at her. "Again."

Kaol looked over at the commotion and shook his head. These people don't even care about their own health and safety with their ad hoc medical procedures and treatments. It was complete and utter chaos. Yet he's the one that gets judged and chastised for demanding better of himself and those around him. People have lost their lives in this chaotic environment... People that would have lived anywhere, literally anywhere else. At least Gable is taking charge of this particular situation...

He checked on the rest of his patients, feeling relatively assured that they won't spontaneously die while he stepped away to check with Gable. "Dr. Gable," he said deadpan, too emotionally exhausted to even figure out what emotions he's feeling. "The surviving patients are stable," he reported.

That did not sound at all the arrogant jerk Gunnar had met early. He thought about how Kaol had stormed out before - it had been unprofessional, but now he was sure it had been the surgeon's first experience of losing a patient and he felt a stab of sympathy. Ow ...or possibly just the stab of Nancy being none too gentle about setting his ribs.

"That's good," Gable replied tersely. Her sympathy level was significantly lower, but then she had never been as soft-hearted as Arnason. "Fortunately, we didn't lose any because of you storming off in a huff."

Kaol took a breath... and summoned what energy he had left to defend his honor, "Don't you dare insinuate that I would ever jeopardize the lives of my patients, Dr. Gable..." Now he was positively seething with raw emotion. "A patient died because of failures in this medbay. Blood couldn't be replicated because the replicator was broken. Critical life saving moments were lost. I'm not sure what kind of low standards you are accustomed to... but that is unacceptable! Unacceptable!."

He was practically hyperventilating as the words poured out of him, "How can I treat patients with the level of treatment that they deserve at such a disadvantage? I had to step away. If I didn't, my mental state would have compromised patient care." Kaol looked at Gunnar, "I cannot simply put duct tape on it..."

"Unacceptable!?." Nancy shot back. The only thing that kept her from rising to get right in Kaol's face was that she was working on Gunnar's ribs and unlike Kaol she was not going to abandon patient care just because she was angry. "Ships in the middle of combat break - that is the nature of battle. Good surgeons - actual good surgeons, not just ones who talk about their greatness - work despite all the set backs, all the hardships, all the systems failing. And though maybe they shouldn't," she applied the osteoregen a bit hard causing Gunnar to suck breath through his teeth, "sometimes that means resorting to duct tape if it's all you have."

"You know what they do NOT do?" She glared up at Kaol. "They do not LET their 'mental state' get in the way of continuing to try to save lives!"

Great... Gunnar thought. Stuck between an angry Romulan and an angry Klingon hybrid... I knew I should have ducked into the head to fix the ribs myself...

"Maybe there should be more consideration of mental states, Doctor!" Kaol spat back. "This is pure insanity. You're choosing to accept this as status quo instead of acknowledging it is a problem that needs to be solved. You and the rest of your ragtag bunch of feral medical professionals may be so accustomed to being held hostage by these circumstances that you all have Stockholm Syndrome. You're right, I haven't been on a ship in battle, but that's why I see this from a fresh perspective. There are critical failures in this medbay and your disdain for me is blinding you to the truth. Why don't we have back up equipment? Why can't we have a spare replicator? Why do we accept using duct tape when we have the capacity to do better?" The tirade left Kaol out of breath and still seething with frustration as he continued to glare at Gable.

"This is what we have!" Nancy stated with harsh vehemence. "You think I don't know better? Don't want better? I'm used to Starfleet medbays, and they are always better equipped than on Galae ships, so yes, I know there should have been redundant replicators - go find the ship designers and yell at them! And don't blame me for him using duct tape," she added, turning her attention back to fixing that damage. "That was his idea."

"Enough!" It had been a long day and while Gunnar was typically the most mild-mannered human around, he was reaching a limit - if nothing else a limit on just how much his sore ribs would take. He hadn't expected Nancy to be gentle, but dammit he wasn't the idiot yelling at her. "I used duct tape before we beamed over here because it was all I had at the time. Yes, I could have done better self-treatment once I arrived, but," he looked pointedly at Gable, "there was a MassCal and this fell at the end of the triage list."

He turned his attention back to Kaol - the man was an emotional mess, which made him take it down a notch. "Look, I wish every single patient could be treated at a perfect top of line hospital, but the universe doesn't work that way. You do what you can with what you have. That and your own skills. Sometimes that isn't enough even when things are perfect, but that's the nature of combat - people die. It's terrible and it's hard and it's painful, but there are things you can't fix or control." Gunnar looked pointed at the Romulan. "You can only control yourself."

"And what if I can't?" Kaol blurted out. "I have been nothing short of perfect in this imperfect disaster and yet people are dying for no reason and none of you seem to care! Somehow it is my fault for caring. My fault for realizing the limits of my mental health! None of this should be accepted as the norm!"

"'Nothing short of perfect'!!" Nancy exploded. "Perfect doesn't have a mental health crisis under pressure, 'perfect' doesn't run out on a room full of wounded, perfect doesn't -"

"Ow." Gunnar grabbed her wrist. "Perfect doesn't hurt a patient because another doctor hacks them off," he said evenly. Then swung his head around to Kaol before he could turn that into more fuel for his blame shifting. "Do you think I don't care? That I didn't care when we lost Gedak? I did - I'll probably wake T'Ango with nightmares about it later - but in that moment I couldn't allow myself the luxury of anger, or grief. There were other people who needed help. You're young and inexperienced, and I won't criticize leaving when you knew you weren't fit do the job, but if you really care about the patients, you'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

"I came back, didn't I?" Kaol retorted, "I know myself well enough to know I needed a moment to not spiral into a emotional blackhole, jeopardizing my patients more. Something I think more doctors need to be able to do. I will do better next time, Mr. Arnason. I can only hope everyone else can objectively realize that everything needs to be better for next time."

An eyebrow cocked up at the 'more doctors' remark. "I didn't see any other doctors abandoning their posts," Nancy noted tersely.

"I'm sure he means Romulan doctors he's known," Gunnar interjected before that escalated. "But I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that everything needs to be better going forward - that's a constant for medical practice, but especially for us if we're going to go after Vulture again."

"Now that I know to expect that I will have no backup and no functioning equipment and that is the standard that I will have to work with, you won't have to worry about me, Doctor," Kaol said coldly. "I will never compromise patient care and if you feel that my abilities when mentally and emotionally compromised are better than anyone else here, I take that as a compliment. And I will continue to treat patients regardless of if it is objectively the best course of action."

Nancy rolled her eyes. "I never said 'better than anyone else here', just better than nobody. With the flood of casualties we had, I was deputizing walking wounded with even a little first aid training as field medics, so don't think you're all that," she shot back with a finger snap. "Like you said yourself, to someone who didn't deserve it: Do Better."

The eye rolls from Gable were not unnoticed by Kaol, "Then let me. I will not be constantly disrespected by you. You may be my commanding officer but we are both doctors. You let your emotions and personal feelings jeopardize your professional courtesy towards a peer. You also need to do better, Dr Gable."

"I will let you have a chance to prove you can do better. But I will not do is let someone who refers to the rest of us as 'feral medical professionals' lecture me on professional courtesy," Nancy responded tightly. "You'll get courtesy when you demonstrate. you deserve it."

It was Kaol's time to roll his eyes, "Very well, Doctor. I'm glad we ironed this out." He was still raging inside, there was simply no getting through to this woman. He looked at Arnason for some support, he at least seems to be able to see past the ridiculousness of Gable.

Gunnar gave a fractional head shake and a look of 'Do not drag me into this'. For about a nanosecond he'd almost thought the reference to professional courtesy to a peer had been in reference to the way she'd made him yelp a few times during treatment, but had immediately realized it had nothing to do with him. Not that he'd agree even it was - he and Gable went way back and being hard on him was her way of showing she cared. "Good. Now if someone can finish patching my ribs, I'd like to get something to eat before it's time to change dressings."

Kaol figured that Arnason would not side with him, despite holding out some hope. He was an old friend of Gable's, there was no reason for him to get involved in this. "I'll leave you to Dr Gable, Mr Arnason. I have a full patient load at the moment, now, if you'll excuse me... I'll go check on them," Kaol said returning to what he knows best, treating patients.

Tail between legs. As well it should be thought be Nancy thought, but just nodded firmly. Gunnar sighed and looked up at him. "What?"

"So much for getting the 'honor' of being his patient..."

Nancy snorted and thwacked the arm on his uninjured side with the back of her hand. "Professional courtesy, Arnason..."

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