Inspection (Part 4 of 6)

Posted on 29 Jul 2022 @ 4:23pm by Commander Morgan Tarin & Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Petty Officer 1st Class Ember Locksley & Petty Officer 2nd Class Leon Inaros & Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeysa Zeror & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley"

3,446 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 06, 1500 hrs

Previously, on Inspection (Part 3)...

"Good. Carry on then, lieutenant; ensign," instructed Tarin who started to turn toward the torpedo room's exit. She regarded Blake once more and quickly offered the former Marine a chance to add to the Security department's inspection evaluation before they departed. "Unless there's anything else, XO?"

Blake shook her head quickly, not wanting to keep Rice and Turell from being able to make a start on the task ahead. "No, I think you've covered everything," she nodded to Tarin to indicate she was ready to move on to the next department.

With the first officer's approval, Morgan quickly strided to the exit while making sure their yeoman was in tow. The door hissed open back out into the corridor then swished shut behind the small cadre. "Take us back up to sickbay," she said to Blake.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Deck 3, Sickbay

Blake pursed her lips at the effort of getting the small hatch open, letting out a long breath of relief as she climbed out of the Jefferies tube. As soon as she'd straightened up, she rolled her neck with a long, grateful sigh. She would never take the turbolift for granted again. She reached down, offering her hand to assist the next in line.

The acting captain's head and upper body popped out of the cramped service tunnel behind the first officer. Morgan gratefully accepted the help and took her offered hand. With a little bit of pull, she fully crawled out of the Jefferies tube and got back on her feet. In turn, she bent back down and extended the same courtesy to the yeoman behind her.

"Thank you Captain." Jeysa said and took Tarin's hand, pulling herself out of the Jefferies tube. When she decided to become a yeoman she didn't anticipate there would be this much crawling through the tubes.

A short walk through the Deck 3 corridors led the red-collared cadre to the door marked '03-3004 SICKBAY'. The entrance hissed open when the first officer approached.

"So, this is our Sickbay," Blake motioned to yet another compact display of design as she led them into the middle of the small, sterile space. She'd often wondered how it was thought that such a tiny example of a trauma centre could serve the amount of people they had on the ship. Ship design was nowhere near her expertise, but the Sickbay in particular had seemed just not fit for purpose even for a ship their size.

In her limited time aboard Galileo, this was Morgan's first opportunity to see the Nova-class' medical facility with her own eyes. When she stepped into the brightly-lit room behind the first officer, her eyes squinted with incredulity. The room was minuscule. Seeing the blueprints on her PADD hadn't prepared herself for the reality of the dive-bar-sized cutout which was supposedly responsible for the physical health of the entire crew. Her first thought led to starship design negligence from the ASDB; how could any fully-crewed starship expect to handle a triage situation under these conditions? "...I see," Tarin mumbled, her hazel eyes darting across the medical personnel present and the multitude of LCARS displays lining the walls.

Nurse Inaros looked up from where he was at the far end of the room, by the surgical bed. He had just done some standard diagnostics on the sensor clusters. He stepped forward, stopping at a respectful distance. "Captain. Commander," he acknowledged them, more because the others hadn't quite noticed them yet.

A single curt nod was the extent of Tarin's reciprocation towards the unfamiliar man with enlisted rank on his teal collar. "Petty officer. Are you Locksley, the new medical officer?" She'd done her best to memorize the personnel manifest in short time. It wasn't an easy task and this was her first time matching faces to files aboard an unfamiliar starship.

"No, Captain. I am Nurse Inaros," he introduced himself, watching her with a straight back. "Doctor Locksley is in the laboratory. I can get her if you wish," he added, his eyes going to Blake for a brief moment before back at the Captain.

Her. Morgan made a mental note to not confuse the two again, then replied to the nurse's query. "Yes. I need all medical staff on duty to present for inspection." She gestured to the rest of her triad. "And with hustle. We're on the clock."

"Yes, Captain," Inaros gave her a nod before he walked. He rang the chime on the CMO's door, before going to the lab, glad that Locksley wasn't working on anything that meant he had to wait. "Captain's here, inspection," he said quickly, being relaying the message to everyone else on duty in a quiet whisper before he returned to the main sickbay area, waiting next to one of the biobeds.

Putting away the updates on logs and medical supply updates Allyndra sighed a moment. She went out of the office into the small sickbay. "Captain, commander," she greeted the two senior officers.

Tarin clasped her hands behind her back while standing tall with formal presentation. "Doctor Warraquim," came her plain acknowledgement of the Akkadian. "I'm conducting a ship-wide inspection. We didn't have the luxury of time before we received our orders for departure. Show me your facilities and workstations."

Giving a nod to the request Allyndra turned and indicated with one hand pointing past the office. "That is our laboratory. You are most welcome to take a peek, but not much to see except a bit of instrumentation, some specimen fields and at the far end, the morgue. We can hold up to four normal size humanoid bodies. Next to you is biobed one, just beyound is biobed 2, both standard biobeds. The far one just behind you is the surgical biobed. Nurses station as you have already seen, then my office and that is the entirety of the ship's sickbay." Allyndra knew it was small, always had been, never was going to be bigger, there was only so much space and they had barely squeezed in a laboratory and a surgical bed as it was.

The explanation of sickbay's layout was simple enough for Tarin to absorb. The described sections of the room aligned with most ship-board Federation medical facilities. "Let's start in your lab, then. Walk with me." 'Show' didn't mean 'tell' as far as inspections were concerned. Hands-on visual assessments were Morgan's preference. She moved to the room's aft quarter where they entered the compact medical laboratory with its assortment of instruments and specialized equipment.

"Very well, one of the morgue units," Allyndra would work from the furthest in and out. "Unit one here," she tapped the unit. "Can also function as a stasis unit." She turned, "Here we have sequencer units, blood, tissue and specimen analyzers in order along the wall to your right as you are facing toward the door. This area," she patted an enclosed pace that looked like am old Earth telephone booth. "This is a containment area for specimens, tissues, etc. In a pinch it has been modified to function as an emergency transporter. We can if necessary beam things or even a person out of here. That has come in handy a couple of times. Next to that is a phoretic analyzer and an electron microscope. Samples can be introduced from the medical facility or through an opening in the field much like the brig security field or if very problematic, scanned or a sample transported out of the containment chamber. Then there is a desk and monitor for personnel to conduct and monitor the analyzers. Due to the limited number of medical personnel then I usually leave a lot of this to our EMH. Computer please activate Shirley."

The air next to Tarin and Warraquim briefly shimmered while the hologram's photons aligned themselves and materialized. A red-haired medical officer of modest height manifested, its green eyes and lithe frame revealing an unorthodox female form. "Please state the nature of the medical...emergency?" Shirley immediately took in her surroundings, including the cadre of command crew and the chief medical officer. She didn't observe any patients present in the surgical ward or on the biobeds. Not again, she rolled her eyes.

"Captain this is our EMH whom has selected the name Shirley. Doctor Shirley acting captain Tarin. She is doing an inspection of the facilities currently. As I was explaining I leave a lot of analysis of samples in your capable photonic hands as you are faster, and helps free up others." Allyndra hoped that Shirley would get the gist not to overly complain or go into a tirade about something.

Slowly circling around the medical hologram, Tarin looked over its non-traditional visual form. Its appearance was a notable departure from the standard male EMH models found on other starships and Federation facilities. "You've altered its program," she remarked. "Just superficially, or subroutines as well?"

"The EMH was upgraded a bit back. When the upgrade was done on the old EMH, this is what we ended up with. Since it kept using the phrase surely, the name sort of stuck and became Shirley. It was a most interesting interaction at the time."

Tarin continued to walk around the EMH. She reach up and touched its ginger hair, letting some of it run across her fingers. "The visual change is...distinctive." Possibly one of Starfleet Medical's decisions to help improve bedside manner and patient confidence which the older EMH models struggled with. "I don't object to its new name, either. Shirley...Doctor Shirley," she tried it out, letting the words flow across her tongue.

The EMH frowned and stared at Warraquim with exasperation. "Yes, that's my name," she huffed, her arms now folding across her chest. She vigorously shook her head to get the unfamiliar woman's fingers out of her hair. "I will have you know, captain, that my program is the most efficient and genial iteration to date. And for the record, I'm a doctor, not a specimen."

Slightly taken aback at the new EMH's confrontational words and body language, Tarin looked behind her to Blake and Jeysa, then back to the chief medical officer. Genial? she silently mouthed.

"Ah did I neglect to mention our doctor seems to be a little on the cheeky side. Still we would be in bad shape without her."

Blake raised an eyebrow in a way that clearly said 'don't look at me', an unusual display of outward expression from the First Officer while on duty. If it were up to her they'd delete it out and start again with a standard version of an EMH. It had said it itself, it was a doctor not a specimen, and she agreed with it, that it should be a tool and not an ongoing experiment.

Returning her attention to the EMH, Tarin took a deep breath then smiled at it with only her mouth. "Thank you, Doctor Shirley. That'll be all for now. Computer, deactivate EMH." The red-haired hologram started to open her mouth to speak just as her photons de-materialized. Morgan shook her head then resumed her walk-through of sickbay. Her path took her back along each biobed, LCARS station, and storage compartment. She noticed the nurse she'd met while entering sickbay was standing nearby.

"Petty Officer Inaros, show me your medkits," the acting captain instructed.

The rank still felt awkward for Inaros, but he gave a small nod. "Yes, Captain," he said, and turned on his heel. He got the medkits out, placing them on one of the biobeds and opening them up for inspection. He then stepped back two paces, hands behind his back. It was difficult to take the Marine out of a person, even to this day.

Tarin observed the contents of each of large, oversized briefcase. They were larger than those of standard regulation, which gave her momentary pause for concern. A visual inspect of each revealed additional medical instruments and supplies had been added. She stepped forward and started to empty one of them out onto the biobed.

"Dermal regenerator, osteogenic stimulator, hyposprays...medical tricorder, laser scalpel, thrombic modulator, cortical stimulator..." She quietly listed off each instrument from memory as she removed each one and placed it to the side. There were then eight small vials tucked within the center of the foam padded container. "What are in these ampoules?"

Inaros opened his mouth, then closed it. Truthfully, he hadn't had the chance to go through the inventory yet, so he had no idea. He glanced at the Chief Medical Officer, hoping she'd step in. It would look better for the department than his own complete ignorance.

"We have metrophan, morphenolog, melenex, neurozine, dermaline, aritharazine, trinephdrine and tricordrazine. You see captain, due to the size and logistics of the ship, many times we must treat personnel on the spot or at least in their quarters or bunks. While we here in sickbay have number one priority on the holodecks in order to extend the facilities and medical hands, there have been times when the power has failed. Hence the reason for the very well equipped medical bags. A bit more bulky but if I remember the phrase correctly, 'Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.'" Allyndra was not going to apologize over the non-standard kits. "They have proven to be most useful several times."

It was a lot of equipment, Tarin silently judged. She didn't like the makeshift alteration and her displeasure became subtly evident by a frown which creased on her forehead. Morgan looked up from the medkits then back to Warraquim. "When was the last time you recalibrated all of these instruments?" she gestured to the copious amount of medical paraphernalia she'd laid out on the biobed.

"They go through recalibration on a monthly rotating schedule." Allyndra waved a delicate hand. "Times like this when we are not busy, allows one to ensure that we are ready. Vials are checked as well for expiration dates that sort of thing. While I admit we have not started quite yet, as we departed in rather high amount of haste, until we happen to be engaged then we will ensure that everything is up to specifications."

Morgan stepped back from the biobed and folded her arms across her chest. 30-day cycles wouldn't do and changes were in order. But in the immediate sphere of sickbay, her attention diverted to the one blue-collared crew member who she hadn't yet met. "Petty officer," she called out to a tall red-haired woman accompanied by a 'come hither' motion of her index and middle fingers.

Ember Locksley had a slight moment of being disconcerted. It was still strange to her, being referred to by a rank. After her time practicing medicine outside of her Starfleet, she just thought of herself as a doctor. She clasped her hands neatly behind her back as she moved to the Captain with a small smile, tilting her head in respect. "Captain?"

"You must be Locksley, then? From Trial?" Tarin had misidentified the new crew member when she'd first arrived in sickbay, confusing her for Nurse Inaros. She hoped she wasn't making the same mistake again.

"Indeed, Captain" Ember assured, having heard the confusion earlier, with no small amount of amusement at Leon's expense, but had managed to keep it to herself. "I was on medical leave during the journey to the Starbase, it's good to be back in a Sickbay for the right reasons," she admitted openly. It had been frustrating beyond measure, being away from her work for so long.

"I can imagine," replied Tarin. No crew member she'd ever encountered actually enjoyed being a patient. In her experience, most tolerated it. Others rejected it, and a select few used it as an excuse to absolve themselves of their duties. She didn't envy the sickbay staff's jobs. "Well, welcome aboard Galileo. I promise you won't get bored here. It seems there's a lot of work for sickbay to do and not a lot of time." She turned her head behind her to regard the Trill yeoman then motioned for a PADD.

The corner of Ember's lips curved with her chuckle at the Captain's words, a chuckle that was so soft it wasn't even audible. Having a lot to do and not enough time to do it was so often the way in the world of medicine, depending on one's field of course.

Jeysa handed Tarin her PADD, she had a feeling by now that Tarin was going to say everyone had failed their inspection regardless of how good or bad they turned out.

Now with a PADD in hand which she tapped with her fingertips, Morgan returned her attention to the chief medical officer. The acting captain addressed the winged Akkadian woman after a brief period of administrative data entry.

"I think I'm finished here, commander. You and your team have failed inspection." She casually handed the PADD back to Jeysa then looked back to Warraquim, arms crossed below her breasts. "Your medical kits are outside of Starfleet regulation; your EMH program appears...questionable at best, and your instrumentation needs to be re-calibrated. I expect the latter to be completed by zero-hundred hours this evening. And I want your medkits re-standardized by that time as well. You have my authorization to retain two in your current configuration. The rest will be returned to normal."

Allyndra did not make any expression but kept her face completely neutral. "As you command captain. However, if we loose a patient due to not having a tool or medication I will be sure to indicate that it was on your order."

Tarin looked closely into the chief medical officer's sapphire compound eyes then spoke with conviction. "That won't happen, doctor, because I have confidence in you and your team. I don't question your initiative. But Starfleet has standards and regulations for a reason. One day - later in our careers when you're running Starfleet Medical back on Earth - you can re-write the book. Until then, we follow protocol." She gave a curt nod to the entire medical staff present. "As you were."

Ember let out a tight breath as she turned away to return to the research station, taking the safety of facing away to look to Leon on her way with raised eyebrows, her lips forming a circle, as if letting out a whistle.

Blake nodded to Allyndra with a small, half smile, calm in her expression and the way she moved to leave with the Captain. She was settling into the pattern emerging. And she knew the Doctor would see to her orders. She certainly hoped so anyway as she didn't intend to drop into Sickbay to help repack medkits after dropping into Security to help clean rifles.

Giving a last glance at the two senior officers Allyndra turned and commanded, "You have heard the captain, hop to it, we have work to do."

"Yes, ma'am," Inaros said, moving to get all the medkits out. He would start on that, then recalibrate the instruments. It was going to be a long day, but that was just how it was.

The door to sickbay parted then hissed shut behind the trio of command personnel. Another duty station was checked off the list. The cadre was back in the main corridor on deck 3 and Commander Tarin suggested their next stop. "I think Operations is next?" Both the ops office and computer core's upper level were located on the same deck.

Blake's knees were grateful for the break from the Jefferies tubes for the time being at least. She walked them down towards the Ops office, which, as the offices went, wasn't a bad addition to the ship's facilities. It still sported the trademark compact design, but it had everything the Ops personnel could need or want whilst congregated. If she'd been working in Security, she might be somewhat jealous of the Operations office.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Acting Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

PO2 Leon Inaros
Nurse
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

PO1 Ember Locksley
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

PO3 Jeysa Zeror
Yeoman
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

EMH Mark X-C "Shirley"
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

CMDR Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

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