The Days Run Together
Posted on 17 Mar 2021 @ 10:15pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Major Minka Mazur, MD (*) & Commander Kasra Turan, MD & Lieutenant Commander Ethan Walker, MD, Ph.D
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: OC and Ardeshir Sick Bay
Timeline: Backpost— following Rock Bottom
863 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure
The lights were pulsating. Calliope could sense the repeating rate in the bulbs, flashing into the back of her head like disco. It was worse when she closed her eyes, the flashing became colors as her eyes twitched under the lids, a swimming pool of angry paisley amoeba peeling and folding into one another. The throbbing of her own circulation in her ears whooshed endlessly, the stormy tide of her own blood masking the sharp sounds all around. Her skin felt like it was crawling with a million little tiny insect feet and she couldn’t be still, twitching and rubbing at her arms and face. Then Calliope was clawing at her neck, the raking of her own nails still not finding the familiar chain, nor the comforting wire loop to fidget with. Where did she leave it, where had it gone? She opened her eyes against the strobing light, holding her hand out to try to check if the necklace was laced there, she opened and closed her fingers and discovered there were multiples of five fingers on the end of her hand, stretching out like the form of spider’s legs, animated infinitely in repeating patterns and moving as if played back in choppy missing film frames. Time was no longer short, nor long. Calliope wasn’t even sure it was backwards or forwards or fixed. She resumed scratching at her neck until there were long tracks in her skin. And then she found she could no longer scratch. Something had her hand. There were voices and they echoed as if she were in the mouth of a cave.
“This isn’t going to work.” Calliope recognized that stern voice. Dr. Mazur was fed up. “There are too many trauma patients and she’s pulling out her line. She needs to be in a ward under supervision.”
Calliope had no real opinion. Maybe it would be quieter, and maybe the lights could be lower and maybe the rushing and ringing and itching could stop.
There were more voices not so far away and not so close. She only picked them out of the never-ending internal and external din because there was a familiar cadence there. Lance’s proper british vowels. Was it him? Or just someone with his accent? The privately spoken responses had a similar shape from the isles but different, sing-songy, with r’s that rattled a little. The voices came, and they went again.
She tried once more to relieve the itching but found her arms wouldn’t move, tucked tightly down into the coverlet like a swaddled baby. She panicked like a trapped bird, and began to flap against it. More voices, more hands….
“Catch her!”
“Dammit, are we going to have to use the straps?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
When Calliope reached to try to swat the army of crawlies all over once again, her hands were useless against them. She had no fingers? She tried to hold them up to examine them light and thought she saw… knitted mittens? She examined them over and over with a what-in-the-hell kind of look, as if mesmerized by the nordic patterns. Calliope was puppeting the mitts and trying to decide what the pixelated animal forms were while overhearing another voice, this one accented thickly, strangely. There were long slowly recited made-up sounding words echoing in the sound cave. Echoing and then, disappearing.
“Shit,” She heard someone near her swear sharply under their breath. “How long has it been since this ran out?” There was some shuffling as a cart was rolled over, the hum of the hover motor buzzing in Calliope’s ear relentlessly. She cringed. A nurse replaced the fluids pack.
“Her heart rate isn’t right. It’s dipping.”
“Do you think it’s the dosage?”
“I think…. I think we have to bring in a consult. This isn’t my field.”
Fields. The deer were in fields, stitched with little white peeks. Calliope began to rub the mittens against her face, the wool couldn’t catch all of the ants’ feet but the pressure on her skin almost hid the itching and crawling.
Calliope felt someone pulling back her hair and, feeling as if every follicle was being yanked, she winced and arched to try to sit up. They started shushing like sandpaper on glass and Calliope shouted to protest, her voice stabbing in her throat. Then there was a very cold metallic touch on her temple. It hummed in a digital lullaby and she relaxed involuntarily. Her eyes grew heavy and all of the feelings she couldn’t stop feeling seemed to swirl around a dark maw of sleep with her consciousness fading. The last thing she heard echoing through her head before the sleep inducer took hold fully was the banter of two people nearby.
“Sure, I guess if Hamish is bored and wants to do a full transplant on top of everything else. But it’d be a whole lot easier to just change the dosage,” a plain American voice declared.
“I’ll ask Kasra to have another look at the script,” that familiar sing-songy voice from before answered.