The Galileo Bone Saw Massacre

Posted on 16 Aug 2014 @ 8:19pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D.
Edited on on 17 Aug 2014 @ 7:11am

2,912 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD7, 1430 hrs

[ ON ]

Olsam watched one of the nurses convey Abbey out of the surgical ward into primary sickbay where she'd begin recovery. He had any number of questions about the nature of her wounds - having only been out of quarantine for a day now he still had knowledge gaps about the status of the mission - but those could be answered later; he didn't want to be impolite.

He started to lean back onto the surgical biobed and almost fell, having forgotten it had been lowered a bit to accommodate Dr. Voutilainen. Instead, he gracelessly managed to seat himself on its edge.

"So... You're the new doctor. And you've got a thing there, huh?" Olsam said, motioning to the wheelchair and breaking out his characteristic lack of tact early in their relationship.

"Dr. Tuula Voutilainen." She pressed the button to raise the biobed underneath Mott. "And yes, I have a thing," she replied in a nonchalant and somewhat dismissive tone. She didn't care much for this conversation, but she knew it would come up sooner or later.

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Voutilainen. I'm Dr. Olsam Mott, Assistant Chief Medical Officer. You can call me Olsam outside of Sickbay if you want. Dr. Olsam or Dr. Mott is okay in here," he said, shifting a bit as the biobed raised. He remained silent for a few more moments and then said, matter-of-factly, "I've been in quarantine. They messed up my lab work after we left, so I've been in a closet for six days. Sorry I didn't get to meet you when you came on board."

"Quarantine, sounds nasty," replied Tuula. "Hope it wasn't too bad," she added, trying to force a smile.

"It was horrible! Locking up a Bolian alone is cruel and unusual punishment, I think. I probably have grounds to sue Starfleet Medical. My uncle Tronx is an attorney on Bolarus; I'm sure he'd gladly represent me. And they didn't even have a good reason for it, either. Psh, somebody messed up my lab work. Sure they did! Sure! I bet someone is trying to put me out of action, like that EMH," Olsam said, eyes drifting to Tuula's wheelchair with every other word. Even at the best of times he could be described as shifty-eyed, but today he seemed to have a particularly bad case of it. How did someone end up in a wheelchair in the 24th-century?

As Mott explained his illness, Tuula could detect his eyes wandering down to her legs. She let out a subtle sigh. "You know, it's okay if you're curious. Would you like to hear the story behind my 'thing'?" she asked, making air quotes with her fingers around the word 'thing.'

Olsam's legs stopped swinging and he leaned forward slightly in rapt attention. "I love a good story. I hope there are princesses and dragons and giant squids."

"I don't think it is quite as exciting as that, but here goes," started Tuula. "Once upon a time, there was a princess who wanted to be a doctor. But medical school was in the kingdom of San Francisco, far away from her home in the forested land in the north. So she would live in the kingdom while she studied, and travel back and forth to visit her family. One day, about five years ago, this princess was going home to visit her family, when the flying machine she was on lost power and slammed into the side of a mountain." Gesticulating wildly with her arms as though she were telling a children's story to a class of kindergarteners, Tuula was quickly running out of fairy-tale euphemisms. "My spine was broken in the crash; the L1 and L2 vertebrae shattered, among a few other injuries. When I finally woke up a week or two later, they said I was lucky to be alive."

Olsam listened carefully, wide-eyed and enraptured until the abrupt conclusion.

"Oh."

Long moments of silence filled the space between them while Olsam's face was scrunched in thought. It seemed like such an effort might stretch on endlessly until he finally snapped back into reality and smiled at her.

"I think you are very lucky to be alive. One of my nieces died in a shuttle crash on Volarus III... I'm not very fond of atmospheric flight." His smile dimmed momentarily but soon returned to its bright fullness. "You say L1 and L2? Difficult place for a break... Have you considered neuroregenerative therapies? Or do you want to keep that thing because it's weaponized? Motorized? Oh, if I had a motorized thing I would probably use it all the time, too. I mean, walking is so 23rd-century." Olsam hopped down off the biobed and did a walk around of the wheelchair. "Hm. Nope. Not motorized. Not weaponized. Just a standard...thing."

"They tried everything," explained Tuula. "Neuroregenerative therapy, stem cell treatments, even nerve replication. I think I still have an implant or two in my skull from their exoskeleton idea. Doctors, what do they know?" she asked in a joking tone.

"Quite a lot, usually. Some of us more than others," Olsam said haughtily before breaking into a grin. "I can't claim to be a neurosurgical expert. In fact, I'm not particularly good at surgery at all. I mean, I'm competent." He huffed a bit, as if to dismiss any notion that he wasn't a qualified Starfleet physician, and then waved toward Abbey. "But you're obviously a bit better than me."

"Well, we all have our specialties," replied Tuula, blushing slightly at the compliment. "She was injured pretty badly; It's going to take a while, but I think she's going to make a nearly full recovery." Tuula looked over at the patient; though she was in stable condition, Abbey would have a long road to recovery ahead of her. But she was alive; that was what mattered. "With a few more surgeries and the right rehab program, she'll recover at least 90% of her motor functions."

Olsam reflected a moment on what it must be like to restore in others the abilities you yourself were denied. He thought he could handle losing control of his legs, but the arms were absolutely essential. If he lost those, how would he ever enjoy another meal again? Perish the thought!

"Speaking of which, it seems this mine could use a visit by some safety regulators," he said, glancing again in Abbey's direction. To his understanding she was only the latest casualty from the mine, and one of the luckier ones. "I hope we're not overwhelmed with patients before it's all said and done."

"I'm sure we can handle it. Between me, you, Allyndra and the EMH..." she trailed off.

Olsam frowned, a rarity. "I don't think we're quite that pressed for medical personnel. In fact, that thing could probably just be ripped right out of the computer core. I've often thought about disassembling the holoemitters in here myself. It seems like such a waste of power and conduit space when we don't even need that... Thing."

"You and me both," replied Tuula. She was no fan of medical holograms; she felt that medicine required a certain human touch that a glorified medical dictionary programmed into a holodeck character would always lack. "Though I must say, it did at least do a decent job of cleaning up the tribbles."

Olsam looked visibly relieved, as he'd gotten flak from several shipmates about his tenuous relationship with the EMH. Some people seemed to subscribe to the fool notion that the stupid thing was actually sentient. That they shared a low opinion of the photonic cluster endeared him to his colleague and raised his opinion of her immediately.

"Maybe it should be reprogrammed as a butler," Olsam suggested, perking up more and more as he thought about it. "I've always wanted a butler. He could bring us pastries during surgery and steam-press our uniforms between shifts and clean out tribbles from the medcarts."

"Oooh, that would be nice," added Tuula. "I wouldn't mind someone to bring me a few hors d'oeurves during surgery. Or perhaps a plate of sushi. A doctor gets hungry from time to time, you know."

Olsam seemed to brighten further - someone who agreed with him about the EMH and liked food in the same department? He assumed this was his karmic reward for having to endure six days of hell in the storage closet.

Finally, a friend in Sickbay! Which wasn't to say that Dr. Allyndra wasn't a friend, but she was also his boss and superior officer. The other physicians were friendly enough (though he was sure at least one of them was annoyed by his presence), and the nurses were all just so dour. He'd wondered on more than one occasion if that might be part of their training as it seemed to be a near fleet-wide condition for those in the nursing profession.

"I get hungry from every time to every time," Olsam admitted with a sheepish grin, stretching the surgical gown over his protruding belly. "I think one of the perks of being a doctor is a little leniency on the physical readiness assessment."

"I wouldn't know," admitted Tuula, glancing down at her legs. "I've been exempt from all the fitness and marksmanship requirements since the academy." Though, if they could figure out a fair test for her, she was sure she'd would be able to pass with flying colours. She was on the athletic side, all things considered, and over the past five years she had learned to use her chair so naturally that her mobility was rarely limited, except when confronted by inaccessible design. "It's probably for the best anyways," she added. "I was never much of a shot. In fact, I don't think I would have been able to even qualify with a phaser rifle. Not that I mind. Killing is for jarheads and tacs," she said, with venom in her voice. She didn't care much for marines, especially new recruits. They were just too excited about fighting, and they were horrible patients to boot. "I joined up to help people, not kill them."

"Sometimes to do the one, you have to do the other," Olsam said, cryptically referring to the Bolian belief in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. "You're in good company, though. I hope Dr. Allyndra and the nurses are good shots because I'm as likely to blow a hole through the bulkhead as I am to hit an enemy. Or maybe we can just wait for them to get close enough to laser scalpel their heads off. I might be able to manage that."

"If they're barging down the door, I'd rather have my antique medical kit, from 19th century earth on me. It's got all kinds of knives, blades, medical scissors, pliers, even a bone saw for hacking off limbs," said Tuula, her voice crescendoing in excitement as she listed off her gory instruments. "Not that, you know, I'd ever use it. Unless it was a real emergency."

The Bolian looked properly horrified for a moment, not sure where this conversation was going. He knew from the Academy that 19th-century Earth was firmly the Dark Ages of Terran Medicine. Tuula's listing of her instruments also reminded him of a field trip he took during his training at the Medical Academy to the Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. At the time, he'd thought they were being incredibly generous including many of the instruments in any building dedicated to surgical science.

"Uh... You're...trained...to use those instruments?"

"Well, not quite. Though I did play a civil war surgeon in holodeck programs a couple times. It's amazing how they used to practice medicine with such primitive tools. Amazing and... kind of gory. Can you believe they used to use live leeches as a medical treatment?" Seeing the somewhat horrified expression on the Bolian's face, Tuula made the conscious decision to tone down her excitement. "Of course, if you're interested, you're welcome to come to my quarters and have a look at my collection. I've got a civil war medical kit, a set of antique catheters, some old medicine bottles, and a few other oddities."

He had the iron stomach of not only a doctor but also a Bolian, yet the mention of antique catheters made him very queasy. "Well, uh. I'd love to come view your collection sometime. But let us hope we never have a need to use it, in practice or defense." Olsam silently reflected on the oversized security department and weaponized auxiliary craft on the ship; he had fairly strong opinions about the militarization of Starfleet. "Hopefully we won't be seeing Marines on board science vessels any time soon anyway."

"Agreed," replied Tuula, relieved that Mott, who would likely be supervising her for the remainder of her residency, was someone that she could relate to so well. Though, anything would have been better than her last gig - being supervised by an Andorian and a Tellarite, both of whom report to a Vulcan Chief Medical Officer. "They're boorish, crude, uncivilized barbarians, all of whom act all macho in a pathetic attempt to show off their manliness. And they're horrible patients." She paused for a moment, thinking about her encounter in the mess hall over breakfast. "Though, they are good for one thing. They're great at scaring away ex-boyfriends." She paused for emphasis before starting a joke in her traditional deadpan manner. "Say, Doctor, are all Bolians insufferable jackasses who deserve to be beamed out into space, or is that just my ex?"

Olsam paused to reflect and count the number of times he'd been called an insufferable jackass and threatened with some form of being ejected into the vacuum of space. He thought it stood somewhere around twenty or thirty times but figured that was probably average for most males.

"No, I don't think so," he said cheerily. "Most people like us quite a lot. We're very easy to get along with! Usually. You know, most of the time, in a general sense. Is he a criminal? There is a criminal element on Bolarus. They're nicer than most other galactic criminals but still, you know, criminals, so not always nice. Is he a space pirate!? I always wanted to meet a space pirate. From a distance."

"No, he's not a space pirate," replied Tuula, finding the thought of a pathetic creature like Zuwtt engaging in space piracy to be kind of funny. "He's a coward. He'd be a horrible pirate. He's actually a damage control technician... on this ship. I've tried to avoid him, but he saw me in the mess hall this morning and I had to..." Tuula trailed off. "Never mind."

"A cowardly damage control technician? I bet he's horrible at his job," Olsam said, unwittingly contributing to the Zuwtt-bashing. "Did you sedate him? I once had to sedate my girlfriend. I mean, she wasn't really my girlfriend. She just thought she was my girlfriend. She cornered me in a medical supply closet once and tried to kiss me, so I just hypoed her, left her there and requested a transfer."

"No, I didn't sedate him," replied Tuula, wondering if Olsam was exaggerating his little story about the medical supply cabinet, "but if he ever comes in to sickbay, giving him a shot of anetrizine and stuffing him into a supply cabinet isn't a bad idea. Either that, or I could just chase him out of here with a bone saw."

Olsam tried to envision the woman wheeling the chair with one hand, brandishing the bone saw high in the air in the other, and screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs while some diminuitive Bolian coward tried furiously to get the door's control panel to cooperate. There would be blood, a veritable bone saw massacre.

"Why did you date him? He sounds pretty horrible, especially for a Bolian," he said, genuinely curious. He never understood why people - humans, in particular - insisted on getting into and then staying in truly terrible relationships.

"He wasn't that horrible at first. In fact I thought he was quite charming. It was only later that I realized that what I thought was him being charming was in fact him being manipulative and needy." She was beginning to get visibly uncomfortable with the conversation, a discomfort that wasn't there when she was discussing gory ancient medical treatments earlier. "Suffice it to say, getting out of that relationship was the best decision I ever made."

"Yes, it sounds like it," Olsam said, already thinking about his several hundred single male cousins. He would have hated for a Bolian to have left a bad taste in her mouth for romance. Blott was the most romantic, he finally decided, and filed that information away for later use. He also made a note to himself to visit Zuwtt; he clearly needed a good dressing down for ruining the good name of Bolians everywhere. "It must be very awkward being on the same ship. We'll have to make sure we don't damage anything in here so we don't see him."

"Good. Because if he comes in here, I might damage him."

[ OFF ]

Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

&

Lieutenant (J.G.) Tuula Voutilainen, M.D.
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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