Unwelcome Diagnosis
Posted on 17 Sep 2020 @ 2:52pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Major Minka Mazur, MD (*)
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Infirmary
Timeline: MD03 ~1400
2520 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure
The Turbo lifts were busier than the big empty halls, being that only a fraction of the lifts were online and people were funneling through them. The lift she had been waiting on opened to admit her to a car mostly full of Engineers with their jumpsuits and hand tools and carts, ready for work.
"You must be recently arrived from the Caelian" Calliope mused out-loud.
"Yes ma'am." Said a stout Bolian woman with the non-comm rank to probably be a crew lead. "We're headed down to Main Engineering to take our orders."
"What's your name, Chief?"
"CPO Reba Zib, Ma'am."
"And your specialty?"
"We have broad training and experience, but we're all power generation and distribution grid specialists."
"You're going to be some very welcome arrivals."
Calliope was hugging her sore wrist to herself and she noticed that Chief Zib noticed, but she also appreciated that Zib didn't ask. Instead she watched Zib's eyes track the deck numbers as they scrolled by on the lift display.
"All of these decks are offline?"
"Yes, many of them."
Zib whistled low. "We've got our work cut out for us, bringing all of this back online."
"You do at that, Chief."
The lift paused at Main Engineering and lightened by everyone besides Calliope. The rest of the ride was silent and alone. It was a long, long shot down to the station's main infirmary, and it left her with a few minutes to think about the throbbing in her wrist. Maybe she should have taken up Lieutenant Commander Kimberlye's offer of first aid on the spot instead of suffering. But then, it wasn't that bad. She shook her head at herself. She'd endured far worse, and yet it was funny in a sense how the little pain of the present always outweighed all of the pain that had passed.
"In a sense, nothing in life is more real than pain. In fact, the way we avoid and react to pain, one might say pain is more real than any of the actual matter and energy we go about measuring and claiming to be reality." Calliope recalled Captain Winters had once surmised after a particularly harrowing experience with some psychotic rogue Klingons.
Calliope hugged her wrist tighter to her chest, compressing it for relief as the lift door released her to the hall outside of Medical.
Medical was better off than most of the functional decks on the station, but it was still a far cry from fully operational. Thankfully Starfleet had redundancy in mind when they built this station and the Infirmary came with its own mini backup power source - just enough to run the more critical devices. No one was going to die here for lack of medical resources. Doctor Mazur was in the main infirmary, since her office was bone cold at the moment and she didn't feel like suffering, studying her last scans of Lieutenant Cavendish just to be sure she didn't miss something. She looked over as a new figure came in, surveying her curiously.
"Can I help you, Commander?" she asked, noticing the obvious in the way she was clutching her wrist.
"Commander Calliope Zahn," she introduced herself. "Yes, I've just a minor injury to have set to rights." Calliope looked around, taking stock of the sick bay. The power was more steady than on the main grid, and though it was in a saving mode, it wasn't emergency lighting.
The Infirmary was pretty spacious, even by Starfleet standards, with more than two dozen bio beds set in a circle around a central nurses station. There were individual doorways along the circle leading to surgery and other diagnostic spaces but this was for certain the main hub. Minka gestured to the nearest bio bed, "Have a set. What's injured?" she asked, assuming to be her hand but not wanting to prejudge. Maybe the woman had a nervous tick.
"I took a spill and tried to catch myself on the way down." Calliope assumed the seat and extended her arm for examination, her teeth gritted. "I twisted my wrist or something."
She walked carefully over to Calliope, determined not to let the baby end her day prematurely or have her on the bio-bed herself resting. She knew she would have enough of that as it got closer to her term and with a million and one other things to do she wasn't keen on slowing down. Minka just rolled her shoulders and pressed on, pulling a tricorder from her pocket and unfolding it to give the preferred wrist a once over. She could already see the redness and swelling, which made her assume a sprain, but best to be sure.
"It's a simple sprain, Commander," Minka quickly diagnosed, "A cold compress, and minimal movement should be all you need. I can give you an analgesic if you think the pain is enough," she added.
"It is rather angry with me, I think."
Minka just offered a patronizing smile. "Also, since you're here, duty physicals are required of all officers," she said with a tight smile, still holding the scanner node aloft and going on with a more detailed scan, not giving Calliope any real opportunity to say otherwise. In her experience, especially with the Marines and Senior Officers, getting them down for a physical was about as difficult as herding Targs.
"Oh, well, since I'm here, I suppose." Calliope watched the Doctor's effort laden movements and while she generally avoided commenting on pregnancies on the off chance of flubbing a guess, this was fairly obvious. "Congratulations. Are you due soon?"
"No," Minka answered succinctly, reading the display on her tricorder. "Your blood pressure is high, but not unexpected," she said, finally snapping the tricorder closed and turning to the wall to the back of the bio bed. She tapped the terminal and Zahn's readings were on the screen where she could consult it in more detail. She stowed the node of her tricorder back and put the whole thing back in her lab coat pocket. Doctor Mazur exhaled sharply through her nose and pointed to a small display in the bottom right corner, "No gaps in your physical examinations. A rarity," she said, giving a glance back, the only partial bit of levity she allowed. "
Calliope hugged the offended wrist to herself once again, compressing it against her breast bone with the opposite wrist for he relative relief that pressure offered. She waited patiently for the promise of something for the pain while the Doctor conducted the exam. "I've never had much trouble keeping appointments, Doctor..." She left a pause, "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Mazur," she replied, her eyes narrowed in focus at the screen. She tapped the display and read the more detailed information, "I see some sort of hormonal inhibitor in your bloodstream... is that... something you're taking?" she asked, turning back to Zahn as she shook her head. Yet, before she could answer, she saw the Nurse she'd been waiting on and snapped her finger to get her attention. "Petty Officer Lorne, I need a dermal regenerator and a hypospray platform," she ordered sharply, "Please," she added with some effort.
The tall, dark-haired man twitched uncomfortably at being snapped at, but nodded, "Yes, Doctor."
Calliope noticed, though she said nothing. Doctor Mazur was either short in more than one way, or else it was the pressure of pregnancy and the pressure of the working conditions they were all under. "Yes, I've taken vamiraxil since I was about fourteen." She said.
"Vamiraxil is meant for adolescents; to aide in the suppression of their hormones," she replied tartly, "They're expected to learn to self-manage, not rely on the drug permanently." Counseling wasn't her forte but she knew her pharmacology; inhibitors such as this were meant as a crutch for species in need of hormonal suppressant but under the supervision of a qualified Counselor working to help that individual manage themselves.
If she weren't fighting tears against the pain of her injury, Calliope might have laughed. "Excuse me? To self-manage?"
"Self manage." Doctor Mazur repeated, turning her attention now to Petty Officer Lorne who had rolled a small tray laden cart to the end of the bio-bed. "Vamiraxil in low doses does inhibit the hormone production, however in large or continued doses it can have strong secondary side-effects," she explained as she loaded up the hypospray and manipulated the controls on top. "The lack of hormones creates a cascading effect," she said, pressing the hypo to the woman's neck and returning to the tray. "You're Starfleet. Consider your body was a warp reactor. It requires deuterium to function. If you provide it with less, or of a lesser quality, will there not be ramifications elsewhere in the ship? Will other systems not begin to fail?" she asked, returning now with the dermal regenerator. She held out her hand for Calliope's and with a gingerness that wasn't reflected in her personality, began a simple regenerative process just to sooth the muscles a bit.
"That is the situation now, Commander. Your other systems are beginning to fail; or have been for some time," she explained, putting the regenerator down on the bed and with one hand, pulling her tricorder back out. She flipped the node free with her finger and rolled it over the back of the others like some flashy gambler with his poker chips - a trick she'd learned from Doctor Corduke back on Aceso, before he too had left Falkirk. She scanned Calliope's wrist, nodding to herself in approval.
For a spell, the patient was silent, opening and closing her fingers in tentative stretches as the pain reduced. Calliope thought back to one doctor who had told her that the low dose she was taking was unlikely to cause any side effects. But that was twenty years ago. Maybe they'd learned new things since. If she were being honest with herself, she never really wanted to find any issues with her medication because she couldn't see any other options. "I... didn't know there was anyway to control my pheromones other than bio-chemical interventions." She admitted quietly.
Minka shook her head, "Why do you need to control your pheromones?" she asked.
"Social reasons," Calliope tried to summarize. She'd had a rather... interesting experience during middle and highschool that had caused her mother to acquire the prescription. Everything had seemed to be more-or-less typically teenage awkwardness after that.
Doctor Mazur set the regenerator back on the tray heavily, making it clang loud enough to draw attention. "Just to make sure I understand, you're purposely and in this instance, detrimentally, altering your body chemistry just in case someone like... say Petty Officer Lorne..." she said, gesturing to the man who looked suddenly worried to be in the spotlight, "Can't control his own hormonal reactions to your bodies natural pheromones?" she asked, shaking her head. "Are you really serious?"
"Mister Lorne, I'm sure, is a man above reproach. " Calliope smiled gently. "But it's not so simple. The added pheromones make things more difficult for everyone. And secret feelings denied, they add up to poor working relationships, jealousies, and ironically.... social isolation. It seemed only fair to limit that where I could."
"Those are their problems, Commander, not yours," Doctor Mazur answered sharply, gesturing to belly, "This makes it more difficult for everyone. They tiptoe around me, constantly asking if I'm ok. It adds up to frustration in working relationships, irritation and my own social isolation to get away from the constant offers of assistance. So should I have not?" she asked, shaking her head.
Calliope let the question remain rhetorical. There were similarities and there were differences. A pregnancy might make others expect less of Minka, but even that wouldn't last a life time, and it was somewhat opposite of Calliope's own conundrum. A pregnancy evinced an existing relationship of one kind or another, possibly a committed one. The handful of times Calliope had been off her medication for one reason or another, her wedding ring had barely made a difference to some in their smitten overtures. Would self-management equate then to being cold and emotionally distant, so as to prevent those sorts of misunderstandings? Calliope was struggling with the implications of which she'd managed to forestall worrying about for decades now and honestly wished to continue to never deal with.
"You're risking further muscular degeneration, which is beginning to be more evident as you age. In addition, this lack of hormones will continue to cause a host of other issues, to include a rapid decrease in your ability to have children, among other less obvious symptoms," the doctor explained, walking to the screen and showing her each of the indicative features as she spoke.
And that couldn't be ignored. Calliope rubbed her wrist as she processed the evidence from the display. "I understand," she said somberly. "I'll need a little time to consider all of this."
Doctor Mazur turned off the display and turned around, folding her arms over her chest, "There are a couple of regenerative therapies I recommend to counter the long-term effects of Vamiraxil. If fertility is on your mind, there are additional therapies to manage that as well. My concern is your overall health," she explained, "Which is why you'll get no Vamiraxil from this Infirmary, from me or my staff here," she added sharply. "I'll not participate in what is effectively poisoning a patient under my care."
The hard stance was something like a slap to Calliope. Standing from the exam bed, she collected her padd as she pictured the hypo and the three vials she'd thrown in her overnight bag, one of them already spent. She'd left the Paracelsus so quickly that she hadn't even picked up her next prescription. If she skipped some mornings, maybe she could coax a week out of her medication before...
Nurse Lorne began collecting the instruments to roll away the cart and Calliope came back to the present moment. She looked at Minka with the shock still in her eyes. "I served aboard a medical frigate for seven years, and I've met more than a few doctors, but none quite like yourself, Doctor Mazur."
"Flattery isn't going to change my mind, Commander," Minka answered, folding her arms. "A cold compress tonight on your wrist and do your best not to bend it. I understand we all have work to do to get this station operational. If it becomes a problem, I can replicate a splint," she offered, "Anything else?"
"No. No thank you. That will be all for now, Doctor." Calliope stood up and said in a sort of dismissal that functioned more as an escape for herself, afraid as she was that if she tarried another minute, Dr. Mazur might find some other way to disrupt her life. She pressed her way back to the hall and keyed the turbo lift.
During the wait for the lift car, the dim hallway was eerily silent, and remained so while Calliope closed her eyes tightly and suppressed a fit.
