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

Eponine smiled reassuringly. "you know more than I do. I picked my own name, with assistance from Robin." she'd helped her pick out names. It was better, to have something to better associate herself with. "I am Marigold, as far as I know now." she was lucky she hadn't been hurt in the fall.

"all of us were on that ship, I believe. none of us remember anything so you are not alone m'sieur." she wrung out the cloth and doused it in cold water again to continue mopping at his brow and, slowly, his neck and what of his chest was visible. "But we must think of a name for you. let me think... You are a handsome man, so you must have a handsome name. it is only fitting..." She pressed her lips together as she thought.

as she thought, with one hand she began to undo the buttons on his shirt, to better cool him. A few scars peaked out and she found herself running her fingers along them. there was something familiar there, an urge to bend down and mouth along them. But she stopped herself, forcing herself to think of those names. "Beauregard! no, no, that is too obvious. Elliote, Julien, Alain, Jean- but that is common-, I do like Marius. Perhaps Remí. or Soren. There are many handsome names at your call." To spare him, she returned to his brow, wishing, despite herself, that she could lean down and kiss it.

"Picking a name...that doesn't sound so bad." Combeferre seemed to drift for a moment, letting names run through his mind there. Burnet, Atlas, maybe? They sound rather impressive names, titles? To start with though, and he's not certain he would class himself there just now. Or, honestly, that he's probably all that handsome at the moment. Still, he flushes a little.

"Ah, I fear that I have seen better days but thank you all the same." He could not, despite everything else, fail to be a little, quite a lot, actually, flattered at her words there.

Was she going to...it felt right as she got closer, in a way he couldn't quite define, and then found himself smiling at those names a little.

"Jean does seem a bit...as though it is the name of every man in Paris, somehow." Paris...Paris felt right for whatever reason, though the other names...Hmm...

"Marius does feel...something." He's not sure what, but "Less...foreign somehow to me if that makes sense." It COULD do.

"So have I," she informed him, before holding up her palm to him so he could see the odd scar. "I don't recall what it's from." At least she hadn't seen a mirror in days, or she'd have more to worry about. "I believe we all have." She wrung out the cloth once more into the basin.

Undoing a few more buttons, Eponine nodded along with her patient. "Marius. Then you shall be Marius. Here, let us make proper acquaintances!" She stuck her hand out towards him to shake. "Bonjour, m'sieur Marius, my name is Marigold." She beamed at him, a natural rapport already forming between the two of them.

Why did it feel so familiar?

Familiar, yes. Along with the name, there was something else there and he, 'Marius' had to laugh suddenly, as something occurred to him. "I AM rather glad we've reached the exchanging names portion of things before the rest of this. I remember it was always...fairly intimate even as one tried not to be, for the patient's sake."

Wait. Was that...some sort of a memory? Maybe?

He seemed to remember offering first aid at least and perhaps with Marigold? His face screwed up in thought there.

"Were you...perhaps you nursed alongside me, or I helped the injured in other ways?" It seemed reasonable as an assumption, yes?

"I shall try not to make it intimate," she said, sponging off his chest carefully with the cool cloth.

"Perhaps. You remember helping people, Marius?" She glanced up at him for a moment. Something so familiar and yet so strange. "I cannot remember much. But if I try, I can remember great crowds of people. And such loud noises." Marigold shook her head.

"Perhaps that was of the crash." She'd stopped washing him for a moment, though she kept her hand on his chest, only the cloth separating their skin.

"Great crowds, a few of them and so much shouting..." He shook his head a little, trying to clear the images, which were disturbing. "And something with a disease, a brand new, fairly violent one..." Those images were awful too. "So many children..."

No, this was probably not the right time at all. "Forgive me. I should not... The crash has me so jumbled. But I do appreciate that you are here."

At the mention of injured children, she withdraws her hand quickly.

"No- no, m'sieur Marius," those words felt right on her tongue, "the crash has us all jumbled. Perhaps we only think of nightmares. But..." She looks down at her hand, then shows it to him.

"I awoke with this." A round scar, there, on her palm.

He stops at that, seeing what's frightened her.

"The...whatever it was called...at least some were helped. There was a free hospital, there SHOULD have been much more. I think...it would have made so good a world if only such diseases could be conquered. Science was on the brink of some, and making it not hurt when one had surgery, but I do not...I know that there was so much more to go. But still...when they were able to leave, some, the smiles on their faces...It was beautiful."

He did not, after all, want to focus on only death, but on LIFE and it's continuance as well. And peering at her scar, he studied it, squinting rather badly for the lack of spectacles, tracing it with a finger.

"Now you mention I have some pain..." He pointed toward his chest, near the heart. "As though it were an old injury not...whatever has happened to my neck that they wish me to be still as much as I can. It is so ODD."

His touch draws a gasp from her, small and quiet, reverent in tone. "Do you?" She asked, forcing herself to take her hand away from him, and placed hers back on his chest, pushing the fabric away so she could better see his chest.

With careful hands, she traced the scars there. "Oh, Marius- what has happened to you?"

"I wish I could remember. And that we knew what happened to you as well. Yours looks as though...something's passed through it, maybe?" He frowned, considering the hole. But his own looked different, more jagged. Had something stabbed him, perhaps?

"They are old wounds at least." He said, trying to make that sound, well, better. "Whatever else has happened to us we have survived that pain. Perhaps they can..." He reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly. "Perhaps they'll serve as some kind of reminder that we've gotten through so much."

His hand held hers. She kept her hand on his chest, tracing the jagged wounds. "Perhaps they will. We must only hope."

She squeezed his hand back, her hand small and thin in his.

"Do you believe you knew me, m'sieur Marius?"

15. MEDICAL TRIAGE dundun medical triage song

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