“What is it now, Nathan?”
“Vladimir, I have a surprise for you.”
As Nathan made his way forward from the briefing room, he noticed several people helping the injured get to medical. He realized that it only made sense that anyone not helping with damage control would be helping with the injured, it just hadn’t occurred to him, like so many other things today.
“Help!”
Nathan spun around, the cry coming from somewhere behind him. He didn’t see anyone. “Hello!” he called out.
“Help me!” the voice cried out again. It was a woman’s voice, and it sounded like it was coming from around the corner farther down the corridor. Nathan broke into a jog in the direction the voice had come from, stopping at the corner to look down the corridor in search of the woman calling him.
About ten meters away was a young woman that Nathan recognized as one of scientists working on the jump drive. Bloodied and disheveled herself, she was fighting a losing battle to get a seriously injured crewman to medical for treatment. The injured man was considerably larger than her, and she would’ve had difficulty handling him even in an uninjured state.
Nathan quickly ran over to help her with the injured crewman. “Here, let me take him,” he offered.
“I can’t make it,” she pleaded. She looked like she was about to collapse herself, probably from the large gash on her forehead that was still actively bleeding. Nathan immediately stepped in between them, taking the injured man’s arm and draping it over his right shoulder. Once he had the man securely in his right arm, he grabbed the woman with his left arm to provide assistance to her as well.
“Here,” he told her. “Hold on to me.”
“I don’t think I can make it,” she pleaded. “I just need to rest.”
“Come on, it’s just a little farther, you’re almost there.”
She continued to plod forward, her head hanging down low from fatigue.
“Your leg, it’s bleeding,” she pointed out to him, noticing his blood soaked left pant leg.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Quite a lot actually,” he chuckled, wincing in pain with each step. He had thought his leg was broken when he first woke up back on the bridge. But the more he had gotten used to the discomfort, the more he was convinced that it was just a deep laceration at most. He had managed to ignore the pain up until now, with more important concerns to distract him. But now, with the additional burden of these two injured persons, each step was sending blinding pain shooting up his left leg into his hip. “But I’ll be alright.”
The trip to medical felt like it took forever, despite the fact that it only took a few minutes. As he approached, he called for help and two more crewman rushed to help.
Nathan followed them into medical, not realizing what he was walking into. There were at least twenty people with varying degrees of injury. Some had obvious broken bones and severe lacerations that would probably only require some bone knitting and suturing. But others had far more serious injuries, including traumatic amputations, wide open abdominal wounds, and crushed torsos. And nearly everyone had some sort of burns, which explained the strange smell that hit him as he entered. Oddly though, the less seriously injured seemed to be in the most pain, while the more critically wounded seemed to be too far out of it to feel anything.
He watched in horror as those that could helped care for those that couldn’t. Most of them had little more than basic emergency medical training, and it was doubtful that any of them had practical experience. But yet, there were all in here, doing the best that they could in unbelievably difficult circumstances. They were in a barely lit room full of the injured and dying, while drifting in a wrecked space ship that was waiting to be picked off by the next enemy that came along. How did we end up this way? he wondered. How did it get this bad?
He had almost made it across the main treatment bay, when he noticed an open door to an adjacent room. The room seemed oddly quiet, especially considering the limited space in the main treatment area. Nathan wondered what was in that room, and why it wasn’t being used to treat the wounded. The room was unlit, except for the scant light spilling into it from the main treatment area. Perhaps it was the darkness that peaked his curiosity and drew him closer to the door to peer inside. He wished that he hadn’t. Because in the darkened room were the bodies of the dead, piled unceremoniously just to get them out of the way. The gruesome sight caused a wave of guilt to wash over him. Did these people all die because of me? Because of the decisions I made?
It was almost too much for him to bear, and he quickly made for the small utility room nearby, barely making it to the wash basin before heaving up his breakfast. His head spun and his skin became cold and clammy. Were it not for the counter, he probably couldn’t have remained vertical. He stood there for several minutes, trying to pull himself together. But the guilt was still twisting his gut into knots, and making him want to vomit again, despite the fact that his stomach was empty.
“Are you alright?” a female voice came from behind him. He turned his head slightly to look at her.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“Yeah? Well you don’t look fine. How much blood did you lose?”
“Huh?” he asked, turning to face her. She was a petite Chinese woman, young, wearing a medical uniform that was stained with blood. Her long black hair was tied back in a pony tail that had also been pulled up into an additional knot, no doubt to keep it out of the open wounds of her patients. She wasn’t even wearing the usual exam gloves that medical personnel always wore, having given up on changing them every few minutes as she jumped from patient to patient in rapid succession. She looked like she had been at it for days, even though it had been just over two hours since the first jump put them into harm’s way. But despite it all, she was still observant enough to notice his discomfort.
“Your leg,” she explained. “It’s bleeding?”
“Oh, that,” he remembered, realizing it was still throbbing. “I can wait. Besides, you’ve got plenty of patients worse off than me.”
“Are you sure?” She suddenly noticed that he out ranked her, and added, “Sir.” Then it dawned on her. “Are you here to talk to the captain?”
Hope suddenly sprung forth in Nathan’s mind. He’s still alive? And he’s conscious? Suddenly, he thought that an end might come to this nightmare called command. If the captain survived, even if was infirmed for awhile, at least he might have someone to come to for advice in the interim.
Nathan looked at the woman, noticing her blood-smeared name tag for the first time. ‘M. Chen M.D.’ “He’s alive?” he asked. “How is he, Doctor? Is he conscious? Can I speak to him?”
“Maybe, he’s in and out,” she warned. “He’s severely injured.”
“Will he make it?”
“If we can get him back to Earth, maybe. He desperately needs surgery.”
“Well can’t you do it?”
She looked at him a moment, puzzlement on her face. “I’m just a resident, not a surgeon. He needs to be taken to a properly equipped facility with a good trauma surgeon, and soon.”
Nathan’s hopes suddenly began to fall again. “I don’t think that’s an option right now.”
“Surely you sent out a distress call? It shouldn’t take more than a few hours for help to arrive from Earth, right?”
“I’m afraid you’re the only chance he’s got right now, Doctor.”
“But I’m not a surgeon. I’ve only assisted in a few minor surgical procedures so far,” she protested. “Besides, we can’t perform surgery as long as the power is out.”
Nathan hadn’t thought of that. “And if the power was restored?” he asked, “could you operate then?”
Doctor Chen looked around, thinking of how she might pull that off. “Maybe, I guess. I could have someone call out the procedures to me from the medical database to help.”
“How long has he got?”
“I don’t know, could be hours, or it could be minutes,” she admitted. “But I still don’t see why we can’t just wait for a rescue ship to come? He’ll have a much better chance if…”
“…There is no rescue ship coming!” he interrupted, frustration getting the better of him. She could tell that he was upset by their current situation. And she saw by the insignia on his uniform that he was bridge staff, so he probably knew more about their situation than she did.
