The Doc Aint Havin A Good Day (Part 1 of 4)

Posted on 17 May 2012 @ 1:49pm by Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D. & Lieutenant JG Brayden White Ph.D.
Edited on on 17 May 2012 @ 6:01pm

2,695 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Holodeck1
Timeline: MD06 - 0715hours

Previously...

She couldn't tell for certain, without having a medical tricorder but she was fairly certain she'd only damaged her ligaments. Crawling over to one of the bars, Pola pulled herself up to her feet, leaning her weight on her right foot and on the bar. Once in a standing position, the Doctor tried to put weight on her right foot but found herself crying out. Quickly realising she wasn't going anywhere she tried to think of what to do.

Going over her current staff in her mind, trying to match people to shifts to see if someone could help escort her to sickbay, getting the damage repaired, Pola's mind kept getting drawn back to one staff member who had the freedom of not really being on a shift, as he needed to be available to people 24/7. Hoping he wasn't currently sleeping or in a meeting.

=^=Doctor Ni Dhuinn to Brayden White; Um..if you are free, would you be able to call to holodeck1 please?=^=

Placing her back against the mirrored wall, Pola allowed herself slide back into a seating position. If worse came to worse, she could always call Jonathan. Laughing to herself, Pola sat and waited for a response.

And now the conclusion...

[ON]


Brayden had been having a truly excellent morning. We'd woken around 0600 to the smell of fresh coffee that smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, and other decadent, heady flavors. Upon opening the door to this quarters, he'd found a tray like a present on Christmas morning. A bowl of mangoes, the steaming coffee in a capped mug, a coddled egg on a potato puree with chives, a glass of purple juice that tasted like summer mornings on the coast, kielbasa, wheat toast, fresh jam, a slice of hard, tart cheese with honey, sliced tomatoes, and a plate of pancakes that looked like they were filled with sauted potatoes, grilled onions and cheese, and topped with applesauce and thick, tart yogurt. By the time Brayden had tasted everything on the tray and put the rest into the thoughtfully prepped take away container, he was full, dressed, and wondering how exactly to go about thanking the chef for the gift. There'd been no note, but really. How much of a mystery was a meal like that? Across the room his com badge chirped and Pola's voice came through. And she didn't sound quite right. Picking it up, he answered, =^=I can be there in two minutes.=^= For an instant, he had an image of her talking down a depressed ensign he'd somehow missed, or something worse. He hadn't heard any alarms, but the holodeck was sound proof... There weren't that many reasons to call on him, now that he'd been transferred to counseling. Actually, she'd said 'if he was free' implying it wasn't a rush matter. Either way... =^=Need my kit?=^= he asked.

Placed her head back against the glass, Pola closed her eyes, 2 minutes to wallow in her own thoughts again? That could be a bad thing. Hearing Brayden's voice over her comm again, the Doctor couldn't help but smile.

=^=If you could bring your emergency medi kit that should have everything we will need=^=

Pola had envisioned Brayden just helping her to sickbay but the medi kit would have everything including some form of painkiller which would help with the pain she was experiencing. At this hour sickbay was still on the gamma shift so if she would avoid tying up her staff with something so simplistic it would be good.

Brayden attached the comm badge to the pocket of his white button up shirt, grabbed his kit from it's usual place and slung it over his shoulder, then threw the takeaway container, his medical tricorder, and his PADD into another bag and slung that over the other shoulder. He was outside the holodeck doors in the time he'd guessed and stepped inside to the ballet studio to find her on the floor. By herself. "Ah, Pola, what happened to you?" he asked, dropping down to his knees at her side and freeing himself from the bags, opening the kit and grabbing his tricorder. He slid down to her swelling ankle, gently brushing it with his fingers as he ran the scan.

Wincing as Brayden touched her swollen ankle, Pola braved a smile, "Well I figured I'd test how my medical officers are with their skills so I decided to have an injury while practise my ballet." Smiling teasingly at Brayden, the Doctor lifted her hand to wipe away the sweat still on her forehead from her work out and pulled the front of her sweat covered leotard away from her chest slightly, trying to let in some cooling air. Despite the wait for Brayden, she still felt very warm.

"I didn't know you danced," he said, glancing at the tricorder. She'd done a number on herself, he thought as he brought the tricorder to the side of her ankle to get a more specific scan of the fractured bone there.

Leaning her head back against the mirror, Pola nodded her head before closing her eyes, "You name it and I dance it, or have tried it at least." Wincing at a throb of pain, Pola pulled her hair out of the bun so as she could rest her head more easier against the mirror. "You won't tell tell the boss that his main Doc is a klutz aswell will you?"

"You are my boss," he told her. "And since I'm pretty sure that your skills as a doctor don't run the risk of being affected by your incredible talent at fracturing ankle bones," he offered her the tricorder to check the scan herself. "I think we'll keep this between us. How does that sound?" He drew a hypospray applicator from the medkit and loaded in 15 ccs of Metorapan, spraying her ankle over the lateral melleolus and the length of her achilles tendon. "Funny, I never pictured you for dancing." He paused, setting the hypospray aside and drawing an osteogenic stimulator from the kit. "I'm not sure what I pictured you doing actually. I'm fairly certain it had to do with big grassy plain and some ribbons." He winked at her, as he ran the osteogenic stimulator over the fractured ankle bone and then scanned it again to make sure the fracture was completely healed. It was. "Too many Irish holonovels. That fracture's patched up now. I think we might want to get you to sickbay for the torn tendon; think you're up for a trip? Otherwise, I can set up a steri-field down here..."

Taking the tricorder to look over the scans, Pola raised an eyebrow at Brayden, "Open fields and ribbons? Even for an Irish girl that an interesting combination. Do I even want to know why your fantasies of me involve those elements." Grinning and laughing, the Doctor started reading through the scans. Wincing as she realised that this was alot more then damaged ligaments, according to what she was seeing, she'd torn the achilles tendon and it looked like a fractured lateral malleolus. Changing the scans over to check the repair her colleague had preformed on her ankle bone, Pola was delighted with the repair, the only thing she needed to worry about now was the tendon. She trusted Brayden but she wanted to be 100% certain that there wasn't a way to avoid sickbay. "Why do you feel surgery is required on the tendon Brayden?"

"The achilles tendon is torn - here-" he took the tricorder from her and re-scanned her tendon specifically, giving her the results. "See there? Not terribly pretty, is it? The best shot we have at getting you back to one hundred percent quickly is a quick, minimally invasive surgery. I'll take a sub dermal scalpel, and make a small incision right along this line-" he pointed to the scanner's readout. "Then we can use an auto-suture to reseal the tendon back together. I can do it right here if you want. I keep a portable steri-field in my emergency kit. What I don't have is the auto-suture, so we'd be left with micro-sutures. Takes a little longer. Unless you've got a better idea," he looked up from her ankle to look at her and winked. "Boss."

Thinking over the options, Pola tried to weight it all up. Wanting to test Brayden a little further, she handed back the tricorder and looked over at the man. "Well I'm your patient and your my Doctor, what is your medical opinion on which treatment I should have and why? And if we go with the option of staying here, have you sufficent anisthetic in the kit to preform the surgery now?" Winking over at her colleague, Pola found she was so far impressed. This was her first time seeing Brayden in action and so far so good. "And as any good patient would state, why should I let you open me up?" Pola was only half serious, she knew the man's record, had read his recommendations and knew he was very proficient at his job. It wasn't everyday the Doctor got to be the patient, so why not have abit of fun, it would distract her from what was happening and the fact she was powerless to treat herself, something she wasn't used to.

"The why is the easy part," Brayden said simply. "If you want to be walking without a limp in less than a month, the surgery's the best way to ensure that. With a steri-field and a dermal regenerator," he pointed to both in his kit, "there's no risk of infection and you'll be completely closed up in no time. Healing tendons and muscles takes longer than just fixing skin," he grinned broadly, "and you know all this, you tricky woman. If it were me, I'd want the auto suture; it takes half the time. Then again, I'm fast and quality at micro-sutures. We didn't have any dermal regenerators in Antarctica - they'd freeze and stop working in less than a minute - so I got pretty damn good at working with my hands. And I've got plenty of anesthetic. No need to worry your head about that. But to tell you truly, you're going to be wearing a removable stasis boot for the next couple days. The department's going to know you've hurt yourself. Might as well use the nifty toys in sickbay, don't you think?"

Holding out her hand, as she moved her other hand to brace herself against the mirror, Pola resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to go visit sickbay. "So Doctor, how are you gonna get me to sickbay. Sweep me up in your arms and carry me as the hero does his heroine in your Irish holonovals? I'm sure we could replicate a few ribbons if they are necessary." As Brayden helped haul her to her feet, Pola made the mistake of putting weight on her injured foot, causing her to cry out suddenly.

Brayden caught her, doing exactly that; almost gracefully, he swept her up into his arms and carried her over to a chair beside the door. "You should know better than to put pressure on that foot," he told her sternly, but there was laughter around his lips and in his eyes. "And yes, that was the plan. Just let me pack up, will you? How long were you in here, dancing?" he asked as he crossed away from her.

Not believing for one moment he could be serious, Pola used the perch on her chair to remove the pointe shoes, limping her way to sickbay would be far easier then trying to walk with the weight in the toe of the shoe. Flexing her toes, the Doctor took a moment to look at her ankle, wincing as she realised she was going to have quite a bruise. The area behind her heel was already swelling from where her tendon had torn "They always said that hindsight is always a great thing, My left foot is my dominant foot in dance, especially ballet, it's difficult to remember to keep the weight off. This morning...I'm I guess I'd been dancing just over an hour. Was finding it difficult to sleep following the beta shift so needed something to wear me down."

He listened as he packed up his kit. Once everything was back in order, he slung both bags crosswise over his shoulders and returned to her. "Three, two, one, liftoff," he murmured, drawing her into his arms again.

As Pola had watched Brayden, she held her shoes in her hand, the towel in the corner could be collected later. Placing her hand on the back of the chair, she had been preparing to push herself back to her feet when suddenly the ground fell away from under her. Becoming aware Of Brayden's arms around around her, the Doctor looked up at her colleague in shock. "Brayden what are you doing?!? Put me down!!"

"I will. On a biobed." He looked at her with a lifted brow, "Do you want to keep walking on that foot, damage the tendon even more, and end up needing more than just a minor surgery? It's already torn; if you keep using it, I'll have to go in there and harvest some of your plantaris tendon to wrap around it. That'll be a week of recovery instead of a mere couple days."

Looking between Brayden and her ankle, Pola cursed his amount of knowledge. Of course he was right but it didn't bring her any comfort."You'll break your back and then I won't be the only one in recovery. I don't need the hassle of trying to regenerate you a new spine."

He laughed, carrying her out of the holodeck and towards the turbo lift. "You weigh maybe a little more than my surfboard. I don't think I'm in danger of breaking my back." He looked at her curiously. "So you were trying to wind down after beta shift," he said quietly. "You weren't able to sleep, any of the last seven hours?"

Looking around her, trying to ensure as few people as possible witnessed this sight, Pola hummed slightly in acknowledgement of the question. "I'm still trying to get the duty rosters reworked now that we lost Doctor Hilyer. It's difficult trying to juggle everyone and I can see myself needing to put in extra hours. The glamourous life of being a CMO. How about you? I haven't been able to touch base with you since you took on the counseling load." Pola wasn't trying to purposely change the subject but there was no way in hell she was going to admit shed spent some of the hours in their XO's quarters. Even though it was innocent, that's how rumors got started.

"Doing fine," he assured her. "And I've got time to spare. Outside of a couple regular appointments I've scheduled, the office is usually empty. I'm more than happy to take some of the administrative work off your plate; I can organize duty rosters easily and send them over to you for final approval. You need rest, just the same as the rest of us mortals."

Shaking her head, Pola smiled gently, "If you could that's be great. Ive already played with the idea of scheduling you in maybe 2-3hours every few days during our busiest periods. As I mentioned before, your priority is counseling but at this rate I maybe forced to make use of you. Well...it also depends on how badly you butcher my ankle aswell." Smiling up at Brayden, showing she was teasing, the Doctor suddenly bit back a cry of pain as an Ensign knocked against her foot. Feeling slightly faint from the knock, she raised a hand to her head. "I knew I shoulda broke out the emergency transporter codes. Are we nearly there yet?"

[TBC]

Lieutenant JG Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo


Brayden White Ph.D. (pNPC Kestra Orexil)
Counselor
USS Galileo

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