ataraxionlogs | 15. MEDICAL TRIAGE dundun medical triage song

CHARACTERS: Anyone/OPEN
LOCATION: Triage Tree, eventually appropriate shelter
WARNINGS: Up to R for injury/gore
SUMMARY: Wound care, pain management, crazy crewmember restraint, beside-manner/other excuses for CR, and all manner of survival/technological/architectural/medical MacGuyvering.
NOTES: I have the permission of a few people to namedrop, and will likely edit to add more. But please start your own threads-- do anything you think could be in the scope of this log! I may NPC some psychotic crewmember attacks.

Days 1-5

Rain comes down in hard, cold needles, every now and again. In between, the sunshine is oppressively fierce.

The first iteration of the triage tent is crude. Overlapping medical tarps have been thrown up on the branches of the nearest tree to create a roof that leaks irregularly at the corners. For walls, other sheets have been fastened over crude grids of tree branches, stopping the worst of the wind. It's not great work, but Kate, William, and the other well-meaning amateurs who start it are nearly always on-hand to repair what the weather peels away. Others are in and out, running supplies, and carrying their wounded.

Within, there's enough space to contain twelve gurneys comfortably; twenty uncomfortably. Neither the tiny wheels and electrical hover functions are suitable to the environment, where mud sinks and outlets are nowhere. The personnel are left to wedge the legs between tree roots or over rocks, dead branches. It smells perpetually of mud; a pleasant backdrop for the crewmembers screaming or passed out in their restraints, and the dispirited mix of lucid natives and varyingly fantastical interdimensional travelers that pass through for treatment. Look anywhere, and someone will try and help you get to the triage center. Natasi appears like an erratic ghost, with more damaged passengers or concussed crewmembers over her shoulder. Every lunatic brought in for restraint is one less to attack the shabby tent in a fit of paranoid pique. It's a little totalitarian, but safer than nothing.

But Leo and Tadashi pull apart a few unformatted prosthesis for their power converters and rig some stuttering lights powered by kinetic energy. There's a lever to feed it, rather than a human hamsterwheel.

Some of the old Medbay staff remember enough to help, and volunteers are welcome. Emergency surgery, bandaging, antibiotics, cleaning, cauterization and medical prescription. The plasma is doled out rather than budgeted, for now; they don't know how long the Tranquility will keep supplies refrigerated for, or what will be stolen without the nanites to secure them.

Days 6+

No doubt, other construction and shelter projects are going on elsewhere-- but the medical triage tent hasn't been forgotten. Ailanne, England, and the still-mysterious man formerly-from-level-x update the shelter to something far more hospitable. In a few days, there's a broad, low tent with a peaked roof. Water only gets in sideways, at about knee level, and the wooden frame holds up under the friendly mauling of the wind. The gurneys now rest on stable footing of compressed layers of rushes, beaten scrap metal, and slightly drier ground, accompanied by a few beds that were unbolted and hoisted up out of the ship.

The lighting is better, feeding off wind and into a battery; they're even working on a turbine-turned fan for ventilation. They've gotten enough handheld scanners out of the gut of the Tranquility that everyone who wants can get a technologically-assisted once-over, but the devices are powered off between uses, for conservation. They're keeping notes on paper-- mostly the dangerous medications, surgeries, contaminants, IVs and other single-use items... laundry. What the fuck are they going to do about laundry. Inevitably, the crewmembers who remain of questionably lucid disposition are observed with skepticism and intrigue, but all bulky equipment like MRIs are still nailed to the ship. Research there is going to be creative.

More and more Medbay personnel are getting memories back. Clarke is on deck now, too. Granny Weatherwax and Dr. McCoy-- or "Bones" as the case may be-- have long since been in the thick of it.

As the first week draws to a close, the worst of the medical crises are over-- leaving them with the slower deaths that challenge survival on this planet. No doubt, other minds are on that, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Initially, Granny just comes by because she feels like she needs to be doing something. Then the memories start to come back. And fortunately for everyone, even before she's completely certain who she is, she remembers how to treat injuries without everything they have on board.

So she decides that's who she is. Someone who puts the people here back together. So the injured are addressed with a gruff "Granny's got you." She's stingy with the painkillers, wanting to make them last until she can find something local that will work. But she can clean and bind wounds, set broken bones, do an awful lot without having to rely on technology. And that means she's needed here.

"Hello-- I'd ask for your name, but I'm not sure about all that at the moment--"

The young man awaiting services on the gurney is quite disheveled-looking. Even his clothes aside, his dark hair sticks up wildly, to reveal a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. These details are probably somewhat less noticeable immediately, though, than the fact his nose is purple and he sounds like he's talking while holding his breath, easy indications that his nose is broken.

Harry had waited awhile. Hadn't wanted to hog crisis stabilization or emergency services, when all that was wrong with him was a crack in some cartilage. He saw her step away from a young woman after referring to herself as Granny, but he's not sure what she meant by that. A cultural affectation? Or real family connections?

His heart squeezes a little, weirdly, secretly hopeful.

"Seems like folk mostly call me Granny." There must have been a time when they didn't. But everything was still a bit of a muddle. People call her Granny and ask for her help when they might be dying. She wants a better picture of who she is, but that's enough for her to know what she needs to be doing. And knowing how to look after the injured was more useful than a first name right now.

"What's troublin' ye?" He doesn't look on the verge of death. Always a promising start.

Harry's face falls, just for an instant. The next, he carefully reaches up his face to push his glasses a bit, glancing to the left then the right, reassuring himself no one needs help more than he does at the moment. Well. You know. Other than the nutty people freaking out still.

"Nice to meet you, Granny," he says. "I think my nose is just broken. I had a couple of those whaling on me." He jerks his head at the nearest man strapped down on the gurney, still frothing and snarling. Winces slightly, when the madman jolts briefly. Somebody's going to need their sedatives upped, he thinks, even if the whole notion of their restraints and so on-- it makes him feel a little queasy. "You look to have made it out all right."

"Ya don't make it to my age without bein' tough." She'd survived the crash without any injuries that wouldn't heal on their own. And much the same in the fighting. No one really felt the need to leave an old woman be, but she's managed to give as good as she got in the fray. Better, really, since she was still walking around and patching people up.

She starts looking over his nose. "That'll be simple enough to set."

Harry brightens slightly behind his nose. Not that he's a very vain boy but he'll take a tiny smidge of good news where he can get it. And Elizabeth would like something relatively intact, he thinks, at least in that instant before that notion disappears like smoke in his fingers. Elizabeth? Granny can maybe see his eyes go out of focus, then snap back into clarity.

"Maybe I can hope to match you for numbers, once we figure out what they are," Harry says, interlocking his ankles below the level of the gurney. "I haven't got much back yet. I'm beginning to wonder if I should make up a name for the time-being." He scrubs the top of his thigh with his hand, careful not to move his head too much while she's checking him over. "'Oy' and 'you there' don't seem like a good way to go about it."

"Bit of a problem in a crowd when everyone's 'You there'." Another reason to establish herself as Granny, even if she wasn't clear on her real name. From what she was remembering, people called her that a lot more than her real name anyway.

She's still studying his nose, but it doesn't look like anything that can't be put right with what they have. "What sorta name ye fancy? There's power in names, ye know."

Apparently she knows. Good to remember.

Harry grins a little in spite of himself. That is, in spite of the fact that he somewhat suspects she's trying to distract him, when some kind of incredibly painful and sudden manipulation is impending. "'There's power in names,'" he repeats. "I like the sound of that." Thoughtfully, he taps his fingers on the point of his knee, his very green eyes getting a bit unfocused behind his glasses for a long moment. And then--

"I don't want to sound like a snob," he says. "Something sort of regular-sounding-- not like, um. Maybe nothing that starts with an 'X.' But lucky." He brightens slightly at the notion. "I wager we can all use a bit of extra luck sometimes, don't you?" He shifts one knee over his other one, like a[n exceptionally skinny] small bird contemplating the situation from its perch. "Bob. Bob the knob. Larry-- uh. Todd? Meh... Moh... Mack-- I don't think I'm very good at this."

"Sensible names. Good sense'll take ye further than luck." For someone who only knew a little bit about her own identity, she was pretty secure in that.

"Jason, Wayne, Darren, Nev, Shawn..." She's not sure where these names are coming from. But they're very familiar. And they have something to do with each other.

And without warning, wrinkled hands dart out to adjust the nose into position and start bandaging it properly. It'll hurt, but she's fast and knows what she's doing. And there's no avoiding the hurt, just being fast.

"I like Darren!" Harry exclaims. He is about to elaborate that Wayne sounds rather American and he doesn't think he could pull it off, when suddenly her hands are on his nose, correcting the trajectory of cartilage.

Harry doesn't scream.

Instead, he sucks in a huge lungful of air for a moment, his face changing colors slightly. When he lets it out, there's a gurgly squeak quality to it, and an underwrit "Uhhhhghh," that suggests it had decayed from a scream in the intervening seconds. He manages not to move his head a lot. He has pretty decent pain tolerance for a boy, and something in him remembers about undergoing medical treatment for certain breakages.

15. MEDICAL TRIAGE dundun medical triage song

OTA

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