Autopsy or Vivisection - Part I

Posted on Thu 20th Apr, 2017 @ 9:48am by Lieutenant Commander Lanis Dhuro MD & Colonel Horatio Drake & Commander Zachary Hunt
Edited on on Fri 21st Apr, 2017 @ 4:41am

1,947 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night
Location: Deck 83: Main Infirmary
Timeline: MD 02, 1930

"I apologize for interrupting your evening, Doctor," Addams said. "Particularly after the day you've had. But this could not wait."

Lanis glanced at the draped body on the dissection table and then at the others in the room. The cloth-covered body resembled an oval lump. Was it a child? An elder? It didn't look right.

"So how do we come to have a cadaver here?" he asked. In general, an autopsy could wait, at least until normal work hours. If this one couldn't, and if it merited the presence of Vanguard's two most senior officers, then something serious had happened.

"It was a present," Addams said. "And something of a mystery. This is a matter of station security; possibly Federation security. You are constrained from mentioning this incident or anything connected with it, to any person not currently present. Do you understand and agree to this constraint?"

"A present?" Lanis snapped. Much as he liked Chlamydia, and even though he knew without question that she respected the dead, sometimes her turns of phrase irritated him beyond words. He flicked a glance at Drake and Hunt. They both looked decidedly haunted. Whatever this body represented, it disturbed both of them profoundly. Chlamydia...he never could be certain. Sometimes he wondered if she hid her sense of shock behind humor and seeming lightness, such as describing a cadaver as a 'present.' He wouldn't presume to believe he understood her emotions, not really, but he thought that, this time, even Chlamydia felt the distress that Drake's and Hunt's expressions conveyed...yet, being Chlamydia, she also seemed excited at the prospect of whatever story this cadaver had to tell. That excitement, he thought, was normal for her. The internal distress or at least shock was not.

That quelled his irritation. Anything disturbing enough to bother Chlamydia Addams required his careful consideration.

Lanis gave Chlamydia a respectful nod. "Yes, I understand and agree to the constraints."

Chlamydia smiled, a smile which seemed to promise someone was going to be vivisected. "Good," she said. She turned toward the table. "Mister Longworth? Remove the drape, if you please."

Lieutenant Longworth, the lead operating room nurse on the station, complied, drawing back the drape covering the figure, and the table. As he did so, a wave of sickly, unhealthy odor arose from the body. The table wasn't the standard OR table; it was an older model that someone had modified. Tubes ran from the thickened pedestal base into the figure on the table. The figure had been Human, once. Now it was marked by the pallor of the grave, and a gauntness rarely seen in the living. The remnants of an old-style Starfleet uniform, the accents colored in rust, could be seen under what appeared to be protective plating, but which had an odd, organic sheen.

"Doctor Dhuro, permit me to introduce you to Lieutenant Commander Scott Allen Breaux," Addams said. "Commander Breaux left his ship on liberty fifteen years ago, and was not seen again until this evening. I only regret that we could not have met under more congenial circumstances."

Drake tightened his fist, wanting to run to a computer terminal and discover the history of this officer - that would have to wait.

Lanis blinked as he struggled to make sense of what he saw. What he had thought to be a cadaver on a dissection table was instead a patient, given the presence of indwelling tubing attached to what had to be a surgery table. The tubing wouldn't have been present in a cadaver. Even if found in a body at a crime scene, it would normally have been imaged in situ and then removed before the body arrived at the morgue. The tubes and insertion sites looked appallingly neglected, the dressings crusted over from dried interstitial leakage. Yet liquids still moved through the tubes. It was a wonder this patient hadn't died long ago from infection, decubitus ulceration, or clogged tubes. He couldn't fathom why the man was still in uniform; he ought to be either naked or in some type of hospital gown.

As for the man himself--Lanis suppressed a shudder. He looked worse than torture victims Lanis had seen from the Cardassian Occupation. Breaux was barely skin and bones, his sagging skin papery and sallow, bruised-looking in some places. His facial features and eye sockets were sunken into deep hollows. The expression on his face was a grimace of pain and terror, as if, even now, he would scream if he could. His body was curled into a fetal position in the worst case of atrophic muscle contracture that Lanis had ever seen.

What looked like Borg implants had been melded with Breaux's body--another anomaly, because the Borg were never this sloppy. If an assimilation had failed, Lanis suspected, any collective-respecting Borg would have killed the defective drone outright and proceeded with another. No Borg would have left a failed drone in this condition; it was too wasteful, inefficient, and illogical. Lanis' gorge heaved, and he fought down the urge to vomit. No, neglect and torment of this magnitude required an unassimilated sapient being on the extreme end of crazy.

Lanis couldn't bear to look at him anymore. His gaze skittered to the OR table for momentary relief, but that only gave him more of a nightmare. He remembered this model of table, remembered reading the manual for it and being excited to use one 15 or so years before, in this very infirmary, when it had been the newest, cutting-edge thing.

"This is a DRE Rouens MMT-3000 SCLS mobile surgery table with self-contained life-support," Lanis said in an eerily calm voice. "It's been modified." He met the CMO's gaze and whispered, "Holy Prophets, Chlamydia. Am I seeing this right? This looks as if he was beamed from somewhere into here, table and all. Has this patient really been attached to this table for over a decade?"

"That is the impression one receives," Addams agreed. "Computer, diagnostic holography up." A three-dimensional hologram of the figure on the table appeared floating in the air above its body. "As you can see," Addams said, using her hand to flip to the circulation layer, "the table is functioning as a combination dialysis machine and respirator, taking blood from the inferior vena cava, cleaning waste products and oxygenating it, and returning it to the right common carotid artery. At the same time," she flipped to the digestive layer, "A semi-liquid substance apparently based on soy and lentils is injected into the jejunum, and waste product cleared from the descending colon."

Addams flipped to the neurological layer. "When we initially met Commander Breaux, there was a connection to a computer terminal, and substantial neurological activity in the neocortex. Lieutenant Longworth and I, along with Hospital Corpsman Chief Petty Officer Trortix, carefully disconnected those links, and as you can see, most neural activity is now in the brain stem."

Lanis studied the EEG output carefully. "So only the computer linkage was facilitating activity in his neocortex. Without that support, his own brain couldn't sustain higher function--because you can see how diminished it is in size," he said, pointing at the screen. "Presuming Commander Breaux was connected to that terminal for many years, it probably gradually assumed more and more of his neural function as his brain deteriorated. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought this was the brain of someone suffering from a neurodegenerative disease or a longstanding coma." He let out a breath and shot a glance at Drake and Hunt before returning his attention to Addams. "Since they're here, and I swore what I swore, am I to presume we won't be informing his family, so they can decide whether to take him off of life support?"

"Lieutenant Commander Scott Allen Breaux was declared missing and presumed dead a number of years ago. His family will not be involved in any decisions we make." Addams used the little finger of her right hand to pull a lock of hair which had escaped her braid back behind her ear. "The question before us, the question I brought you in to consult on, is this: can he be revived?"

Lanis gave Chlamydia a wry look. "Convenient for us." He didn't sound as if he particularly approved. "If it were me, I'd want my family to know something of what had become of me." He gazed back at Breaux's body and shook his head. "Though I wouldn't want them to know about suffering like this." He studied the neural output readings again.

"In my professional opinion...you'd get a more accurate prognosis if you consulted a neurologist on staff. But if secrecy is of paramount importance..." He arched an eyebrow in question toward Drake and Hunt. His voice trailed off, and Lanis peered at the EEG display again. "Let me see your recordings of what was happening in his prefrontal cortex before you disconnected him. Do you have full neural scan readings? I honestly wonder--even if we can revive him, should we? He'd be in physical--and psychological--therapy for months, probably years."

I'm babbling, Lanis thought. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Can't let this get to me. The six of us might wind up being Counselors for each other before this is over.

Addams used her tricorder to play back the magnetoencephalograph data without comment. After it had played through, she said, "Convenient or not, the facts remain what they are. We have an officer who has been used in unethical fashion, and we need to make a decision: Is life, any life, better than death? My answer..." she paused. "is well known, and should not influence you."

"I'm trying not to let my own feelings influence me," Lanis told her. "If this were my son, I'd mercy-kill him now, even if it meant we'd never know who did this." He grimaced. "At least, that would be my first impulse." Lanis sighed. "Whoever did this can't be allowed to do it again to someone else. My son would tell me that. I don't think there's much chance of reviving this man, Chlamydia. The cerebral atrophy is too profound. I think--I pray--that whatever remained of Commander Breaux's personality slipped away when he was disconnected from the computer. But I've also seen recoveries from apparent brain death that were nothing short of miraculous. It's a very long shot, but I believe we can at least make the attempt."

And I pray to the Prophets that it will be the right thing to do. he added silently.

Doctor Addams nodded and looked over at the previously silent command officers. "Colonel?" she prompted.

Hunt looked towards Drake, waiting his response. He hadn't said much as his thoughts were elsewhere and this whole affair would probably make him go a bit mad if he watched it all with close attention. Just seeing Commander Addams was always enough to make him shudder!

His face remained frozen, like a statue. His gaze was fixed on the comm. badge of the officer lying in front of them, rusted over and dirty... the symbol of Starfleet, defaced. This 'death' had been different from the death Drake had seen - death in battle was somehow more fair, more just then this... butchery. He took a deep breath. "He may have information... and if there's a chance we can retrieve it, then we have to try." He nodded at Addams.

A post by:

Colonel Ashton Drake
Commanding Officer
&
Commander Zachary Hunt
Executive Officer
&
Lieutenant Commander Chlamydia Addams
Chief Medical Officer
&
Lieutenant Lanis Dhuro MD
Chief of Surgery

 

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