Medical Alternatives

Posted on Tue 8th Sep, 2020 @ 7:26am by Yuliette Marayan Dr. & Sorra Yarime (Yari)

1,538 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Brown Sector: Zodiac / Yuliette's Apartment
Timeline: MD:13 2328 hours

Previously.....

Yari nodded and then the woman with some difficulty helped him to his feet. She put his arm around her neck and they began to walk awkwardly down the corridor.

And now the conclusion....

The couple walked/staggered for some time, Yari must have been going into shock because he didn't remember much of anything and by the way she carried him he was nearly unconscious.

Robin was exhausted and it was still another five minutes or so to the apartment that she shared with her family. She needed help now, she had no idea how much longer he had before he bled out or how long until she was forced to drop him, but she wasn't about to leave him.

A woman was standing right behind Robin as she turned, causing Robin to jump back a little. "Sorry! I'm just here to help." The lady was short and had cropped dark hair, and was half Cardassian. She had a bag slung around her shoulders. "I didn't mean to surprise you, I just was watching from my balcony when you went past, helping your friend, and he looked bad enough that you almost had to drag him, so I followed you down. Is he sick? What happened?"

"I was attacked by some bad men and he saved me. One of the attackers had a knife and stabbed him in the side. He has lost a lot of blood and he is very hard to hold up, can you help me?" Robin explained what happened as best as she could as she eyed the Cardassian curiously. She had never seen a Cardassian, not in the Brown Sector.

The Cardassian ducked under the man's other arm and discovered the wound as it dribbled freshly. "Knife wounded?" This was not the right way to move someone with a bleeder. Yuliette paused and struggled to reach into her bag for a fresh gauze, peeling the package open with her teeth, though careful to keep it sterile enough, and then compressing it over the open gash. She looked behind them. "If you're going to either of the clinics, this is the wrong direction."

"I wasn't trying to go to a clinic, for him it would raise too many questions, he's well known in the Brown Sector and liked by many. I was trying to get to my apartment, but my mom nor I know anything about patching up a knife wound or helping him in any other way." Robin tried to explain, but the situation was complex and Yari had to stay away from the Medical Clinics because questions would have been asked that would have been difficult for him to answer.

Blood was already saturating the gauze, and the man was shaking, barely helping at all with his own weight, anyway. "My apartment is right here. We can take the ramp on this end." Yuliette had found the other way up to her hall by watching her elderly neighbor pass by the main stair and take a walking ramp.

"Okay, let's do that." Robin helped the Cardassian carry/drag Yari up the ramp towards her apartment. Every so often Yari would moan in pain, but he seemed to be really out of it.

The door ways were difficult to maneuver through, and Yuliette had no easy time with all of her latches and cursed the door when it insisted on sticking as always. The apartment was just as tiny and offensively malodorous as when she'd left it. They maneuvered the stab victim onto he floor cushions and Yuliette went right to work, setting out her supply kit. "Throw those books off the crate and bring it over here, prop his feet up on it, they need to be elevated." She directed the other woman while measuring out a hypo and throwing on her stethoscope. After administering the hypo to counter the immediate effects of shock, she put fingers behind the Bajoran man's ear and settled his head while counting and doing some math, and then rolled his shirt up under his armpits to get to the wound, wiping it down with antiseptic, cleaning the wound, and then putting a new cloth over it for pressure. "Hold this. Press hard," she said as she listened to his back. There were 30 seconds of prolonged silence as she listened intently.

Robin nodded and did as instructed without hesitation. Whomever this Cardassian woman was, she knew a good deal about first aid and how to treat someone with a stab wound. She must have been trained in the Medical field somewhere.

"Lung cavity is fine. I think your hero took this one to the liver. Maybe nicked a blood vessel. I'm going to have to get a better look." She went for her kit for pain meds, but she had only the preparation the Rho Saran Natives had agreed they could use. It was strong medicine, but it didn't come in a hypo.

She knelt down and lifted her patient up under the neck to support him. "Hey... can you hear me?"

Yari was pretty tough, at least in his mind he was. Perhaps that was one of his shortcomings, he was overconfident. He never saw what he had slipped on and that was what gave the thug his opening to strike at Yari with the knife. SIne the fight, the pain had been pretty intense, probably the worst physical pain he had ever felt. He surmised that the loss of blood and the trama put his body into shock so his mind tried to go to where it was more comfortable and away from the pain. He had been dreaming of two beautiful women with him on the beaches of Sameria. Sameria had the most beautiful white sand he had ever seen which force one to wear sunglasses. The waters were a beautiful clear, blue as far as you could see and the temperatures were perfect all year round. He came back to a state in between dreaming and the real world with a realization that he was back in pain again and that someone was trying to wake him. His mind must have been playing tricks on his because he thought the woman that was speaking to him might just be Cardassian. He moaned softly and winced in pain.

"Listen, tough guy," she said. "I need you to swallow this, it's for the pain," She brought a measure of elixir to his lips and waited to see the signs that he was going to be able to swallow it down instead of gagging or choking on it.

Yari began swallowing the nasty tasting fluid and grimaced at the taste after figuring out that this was not a dream of any sort. He drank the concoction until it was completely gone then said in a weak, raspy voice, "That is some real nasty stuff, you should try it sometime."

"I've had it once or twice." She gently laid his head back down on the floor cushion, went to scrub her hands to the elbows and came back. Yuliette needed to give the stuff a minute to take effect and started to sort out her packed sterile surgical tools. "Some people get after-image visions from it for days. Like mirages. It never worked like that for me. They extract it from a desert plant that looks like a stone. It's called Lau-guar rou. Which literally translated means rocks-in-the-head." She smirked. "Usually they save it for vision quests and the like. I just use it for surgery."

"Lau...guar...rou." He said slowly, slurring the words. "Rocks....head." he added. Yari seemed to fall back asleep and began his own vision quest or something like it.

"Just rub his feet, okay?" Yuliette said to the other woman, partly to keep her busy and out of eyesight of the wound she was going to have to open up and locate the source of the bleeder, but also therapeutically, to help the patient's circulation.

It wasn't a surgical theater. She was working on her knees in a non-sterile environment. But nothing about that was new to her, as she'd practiced on call the last few years. She didn't talk anymore, only focused, using her grips and snips and expending her consumable sterile gauze and padds from her kit. "Found it." She whispered and then got to work cauterizing and sewing.

After about a half an hour, Yuliette had the whole thing sutured up and wrapped and she started cleaning up her things. "You did good. He's going to be asleep awhile." She told her assistant.

Robin smiled, "No, you did good, because of you he will live." Robin looked at the chronometer on her wrist, "Oh my god, it's getting really late. I should get home and check on my mother. I'm sure she will be worried about me." Robin stood up to leave, "Will he be okay with you, I mean, he will need to speak to you after he wakes up, his life is complicated."

Yuliette nodded. "Of course. He'll be fine here." She watched the Bajoran woman go and then unfurled her new blanket and spread it over the patient, tucking it in around him.

...

 

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