Bird--or Maybe a Kookaburra

Posted on Wed 11th Jul, 2018 @ 8:21pm by Lieutenant Commander Lanis Dhuro MD

1,708 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: Dr. Addams' office, Main Infirmary

A little bird who cannot sing--
Nor can she fly;
I broke her wings.

--from The Remembered Queen, by J. Ellen Ross

---

Chlamydia Addams lowered the bow from her viola and said, "Either come in or go away. Standing outside and listening is inappropriate."

She heard a snort from outside her door, and then Dhuro Lanis stepped into her office. He still wore teal-green surgical scrubs, mask, and cap, though the mask hung around his neck. "Your hearing is too damned good," he declared and took one of the chairs facing Chlamydia's desk. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, looking unusually pale. "That emergency beam-in I took into surgery? It was a Marine colonel--named Wellington Brooklyn. She rammed her fighter craft into an enemy fighter--direct hit to the enemy's flank. She sustained extensive internal trauma--was bleeding all over the place on arrival."

He let out a breath. "I had to amputate her right arm below the elbow, Chlamydia. I--I haven't done that since the worst days on Bajor. I never imagined I would ever have to do that again--not in a fully-equipped Starfleet OR."

Chlamydia nodded, setting her bloody Red Viola back on its stand and laying the bow beside it. "Let us take a walk," she suggested. "To talk of other things; Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.'"

Lanics glanced at Chlamydia. "I have ... no idea what you're talking about, but I'll gladly walk with you. Don't feel you must stop your playing, though. I find it quite beautiful."

"Never tell that to my parents," Addams said, taking the Bajoran's elbow and leading him out of the office, out of sickbay. "They will never let me hear the end of how much I protested lessons when I was six years old."

"Ah. It's always a pain when the parents are right, isn't it?" Lanis said as they walked down the hall.

"And shocking to find that one's six-year-old self did not, in fact, have everything all figured out." Something itched at the back of Chlamydia's mind about six year olds, but she set it aside, leading Lanis into the space set aside for a chapel. The walls were simulated stained glass in abstract geometric shapes rather than anything deliberately representative of any particular faith. Light from behind the panels cast colored shadows and bright spots on the pews.

Interesting that she should take him to the chapel, Lanis mused. He had never thought that Chlamydia seemed particularly religious, and aside from occasional references to the Prophets, he kept his own faith to himself. This chapel.... Nothing about it impressed him as feeling particularly holy; it was too generic a chapel for that. Yet he did get a sense of quiet reverence, of mutually agreed-upon respect, and perhaps that was enough. Places, in his experience, did not become holy because of gods; they became holy because of people.

"Did you come here after they brought Samurai's crew in?" he asked in quiet tones.

"No," Chlamydia laughed quietly. "I had a light supper by the river with a friend, then went home, kissed my sisters, and went to bed. But there have been other times I've come here. It's a good place to think, if you need to." She took a seat on a pew. "Though we are surrounded by the numinous, and I have come to expect the miraculous, I have no one faith to which I devote myself. I am, I suppose, a Heterodox Animist."

Lanis settled himself next to her on the pew and considered how the universal translator had parsed Chlamydia's description of her beliefs. "So you believe everything has a soul but are unconventional about it. Am I understanding you correctly? Don't ask me to explain how, but I agree that fits you."

CHlamydia chuckled. "When have you known me to be orthodox about anything?" She waited a moment, then placed her long-fingered, slender hand on Lanis'. "Tell me about it."

"About Col. Wellington and her arm?" Lanis sighed. "She was beamed into the infirmary directly from where they found her floating in space after she was ejected from her fighter craft. As I understand it, she was in combat with a hostile and lost weapons capability. When the hostile tried to attack her again, she aimed her craft at the enemy's broadside and rammed him at warp speed, splitting the enemy craft in two and killing the pilot. I'll say this for her--she's not lacking in guts. But it left her with extensive trauma. She presented with multiple sites of internal hemorrhaging, suffered quite a few bone fractures, and sustained a head injury. The radius and ulna of her right arm were shattered, the superficial radial nerve literally sliced into several pieces by bone fragments and external lacerations; same with the posterior cutaneous and even the deep radial. I'd never seen anything that bad, and I've seen explosives damage. The fingers of her right hand and her carpals were crushed. My guess is, those injuries were some combination of blunt-force trauma, defensive wounds, and the effect of warp shear on her body, but I have little way of confirming that. It took me and three other surgeons to stop the hemorrhaging enough to be able to replace her fluid volume safely.

"Anyway, her arm below the elbow was just a limp appendage of bleeding mush with no skeletal integrity and no significant motor nerve function. There was no way to repair it, so it had to go. But having to amputate it was quite a shock. I remember limbs I could have saved if I'd had decent medical equipment, and there I was today, with the best equipment available, and I still couldn't save that woman's arm."

Chlamydia nodded, silent for a long moment. Perhaps she was waiting to see if Lanis had more to say, or perhaps she was contemplating responses. "It is a shock to the ego," she said at last, "when we discover that we are only doctors."

Lanis stared at Chlamydia for a moment--and then he burst out laughing until he was doubled over with it and shaking. "Oh, Prophets, you have good delivery!" he whispered loudly and fought to wrestle himself under control, recalling where they were. At last, he got the laughter out of his system and smiled at her. "Yes, Chlamydia, it is a bitter blow to the ego--but not an insurmountable one. I can learn to live with my mortal limitations--this time. Unfortunately, Colonel Wellington will have to, as well, and I'm sorry about that."

Addams nodded. "I am going to tell you things, Lanis, that you know perfectly well. Sometimes, we need to be reminded of them. This was not your fault. You did not induce the good Colonel to ride out like a knight-errant whose shield had been struck a challenge. You did not strike the challenge. You did not have anything to do with the circumstances before the Colonel arrived in your operating theater.

"Once she had arrived, you saved her life. You performed surgery which would have been miraculous even a century ago. And soon, you will construct a bio-synthetic arm for her, which in time will perform as well as the old one, and which will eventually be indistinguishable from the old one. In the long term, Colonel Wellington has lost nothing, except perhaps the certainty that she can prevail in single combat against any foe." Addams sighed.

"We are not gods," she resumed. "We cannot change the shape of reality with a twitch of our noses and the sound of a zither. And while your ego may be bruised right now, remember that you saved that woman's life because of the skill in your hands and the experience in your mind."

Lanis dissolved into helpless laughter again. "Trust me, my ego is not bruised all that much." His expression became more serious. "It's just--it's been almost thirty years since I last had to amputate anything, and the memories of it are not all that great."

"Well," Addams said with the kind of smile which seemed to promise a great deal of pain for someone, and soon at that, "now it is my turn to have my ego bruised. Here I thought I was being so profound and helpful." She patted Lanis' hand again, and stood. "In the future, I shall leave that sort of thing to Doctor Graves. He is ever so much better suited for it than I."

"I don't think so, at all," Lanis said and lightly caught her fingers before she could fully pull away. He looked up at her. "Maybe you misunderstood exactly the sort of help I was looking for, but I didn't communicate it to you all that precisely, either. I just stumbled into your office and blurted out something. That doesn't mean I value how you responded any less.

"I was upset and rattled. You brought me in here and took me out of myself. You got me to laugh--and honestly, that was what I needed most, to jar myself out of the lost way I felt. If you hadn't been here, I'd have gone off duty and spent the evening drinking tea in my quarters. I would have been in a rather dark place. You were a friend, Chlamydia, and I needed you just now, needed what you did. It was you I went to, not Paul, for a reason. Paul's a fine counselor, but he's never been elbow-deep in blood and someone's innards, trying to clamp an artery, and you have. He's never known that particular kind of desperation to keep someone alive, and you have. You understand me in deep ways that Paul never can. Please don't ever discount the good that you do. Your friendship means a great deal to me, and I only hope I can be as good a friend to you."

Addams nodded. "Laughter may not be the best medicine, but sometimes, it is the only one we have."

 

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