Finding the Culprit

Posted on 16 Apr 2016 @ 1:44am by Commander Jayla Kij & Captain Harvey Geisler

2,134 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Outbreak
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: MD 7 || 0400 hours

Harvey laid in his bed in the dark, his eyes fixed open as he stared at the ceiling. He'd left the shutter on his window open, but with the Black Hawk currently on the dark side of New Risa, there wasn't any danger of light bleeding through. Still, he laid in his bed with every muscle feeling the weight of his exhaustion. Every part of him wished he could violate the quarantine just to take up the hotel reservation he'd made on the planet below. Harvey knew he needed sleep, and even just being able to have a different environment would work.

And, with the holodecks on reserve for medical and security purposes, starting a program with a vastly different room and bed were unavailable options.

"I'm the Captain," he muttered, considering abusing his command privleges.

The other side of him quickly silenced the red collar, the medical side. He knew those resources had to stay available. If an outbreak was in progress, then Doctor Kij would need those.

"Computer, time."

"Time is 0400 hours," came the disembodied voice.

Harvey closed his tired, bloodshot eyes. He'd waited too long to do something about his sleeplessness. Still, he had to do something. Sighing, Harvey threw off the sheets and rose. He hastily put on a nearby pair of uniform trousers, and covered his torso with a plain gray shirt. After placing his feet in a pair of lightly cushioned slippers that he'd purchased on New Risa, Harvey left his quarters, bound for sickbay.

Jayla had opted to kip on the cot in her office rather than go back to her or Harvey's quarters, just in case they needed her at a moment's notice. The moment Nurse Hurley stepped close enough to the doors to make them swish open, she was awake. "I'm up," she told him tiredly, throwing back the blanket and hauling herself off the cot. "Who?" she asked, yawning.

"Captain Geisler," answered Hurley. "He says he's having trouble sleeping."

"Oh, right," said Jayla, following him into main Sick Bay. She was supposed to take him some melatonin. "Good evening, Captain," she said with a bright smile. "Or is it morning?"

"Morning I suppose," Harvey replied. "And it's certainly not good."

"I know, I'm sorry," said Jayla. "I was supposed to bring you some melatonin, wasn't I? I completely forgot. How are you feeling otherwise?" she asked as she went to retrieve the mild sedative.

"I feel like I got hit by a hovercar." Harvey sighed. "I've been awake all night, and nothing has helped."

"Nothing at all?" she asked, forcing herself to be objective. "Sore throat? Was there a point where you couldn't seem to stay awake?"

"Last night, I was going over personnel reports and the news feeds from New Risa," Harvey explained, yawning. The yawn did trigger an unexpected cough. "I needed to know what the planet is officially putting out there. You never know what someone will say that could invite unexpected company. All the while, I felt like I was about to fall asleep. Never did."

Jayla frowned at the cough. It sounded like the others. "And the sore throat?" she asked him.

Harvey merely nodded. There was no point in a verbal reply as he was sure she'd already assumed when she heard the cough. "It is getting worse," he did explain.

For the first time since she came aboard, Jayla's forehead actually creased in worry. "You're staying here," she said firmly. "These are the same symptoms everyone else is having. First they can't stay awake, then they can't sleep. May as well make yourself comfortable and I'll try to find something to help you sleep."

"Are you kidding?" he asked her. Part of him understood where she was coming from, but he was the captain. Abruptly ending shore leave was one thing, but the Captain taking a biobed in sickbay for observation... that was a hell of a blow to morale. "It's probably just a cold."

"It's not just a cold, Har- Captain!" she insisted. "You've got the same symptoms as all the rest of these people. Sore throat, followed by sleep, followed by sleeplessness. I am absolutely not kidding. Until I or someone on the planet figure this out, you're staying here."

He stared at her with narrowed eyes, fighting his exhaustion to understand what she was saying. Then it struck him. His expression did not change when he said, "This is what hit the planet, didn't it?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "And they have no idea how to fight it. The body doesn't even recognize it as an infection."

"So what do we do?" he asked, looking around the room. "Obviously it's here. How long do we have?" How long do I have?

She gave him a pained expression. The doctors on the planet had told her between six and seven days from infection to death. But, she just couldn't tell him that. "I have no idea," she said instead. "But, I'm doing everything I can to help them figure this out. I'll have everyone on their feet in no time, don't you worry."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Harvey wasn't about to just sit on a biobed. Four pips or not, in his soul he still had a love for medicine, and maybe a good mystery would be enough to snap him out of this exhaustion.

"Probably," she replied, expression softening. "I could use some help with the cultures, if you feel up to it."

Harvey nodded, looking around sickbay for a moment. An expression of thought eclipsed his face as he did his best to remember where the lab was. Once a week, during his morning inspection, he made it a point to visit that lab and check on the technicians in there. Masking his lack of memory, Harvey asked, "I don't suppose you'll need samples from me, do you?"

"It would probably help," she said. "I'm doing throat cultures and blood samples. So far, I haven't got very far, but the first batch of cultures should be showing something by now."

"Care to give me a hand then?" Harvey asked, knowing how difficult it was to get the throat cultures from his own means. Drawing blood was easy in comparison.

She retrieved a long stemmed, sterile swab and a plastic bag from a nearby drawer. "Okay, open," she instructed.

Harvey did his best to not show his disappointment. Still, he did as he was told. His mouth opened wide, as far as his jaw would let him.

She swabbed quickly and deftly, having done this many times. After being vomited on once, every doctor learned to move fast. She then stuck it in the plastic bag and sealed it. "Okay," she said. "Let's go get this to the lab. We can do blood samples later."

Harvey actually grinned, as he finally had the chance to get to the lab without being told where to go. As soon as Jayla's back would turn, he'd heave that sigh of relief that he wanted to release so terribly bad. Nodding to the Doctor, he instructed, "Lead the way."

She headed to the lab, hoping the cultures would show something- anything- with which she could work. She'd put them in to grow a few hours ago and should have something by now. "Here's the cultures I've already done," she said, pulling out the 25 dishes and laying them out. "Oh, good, there's a lot of growth. All we have to do is see if there's some common pathogen among them."

"Looks like a lot of testing then," Harvey said, trying to smile. For a brief moment, he felt like the good old days had returned. "We'll need a scan table and a tricorder." Harvey said, starting to look around the lab. "And a microscope..."

"Right over here," she said, indicating where everything had been set up. Perhaps working on this would help keep their minds off of what was going on.

Yawning, Harvey grabbed a couple of the cultures and began to load them onto the scanning table. Once all twenty-five dishes were in place, they could easily perform twenty-five individual scans without having to load them one by one into a scanning unit.

Jayla helped him load the cultures. The only problem with this was that it was mindless work and she was left thinking of those fifty deaths while she watched Harvey work. It was uncomfortable to say the least, but she managed to put it out of her head by concentrating very hard on what she was doing.

Finally, all of the cultures were loaded. Harvey fumbled for a nearby PADD and loaded the appropriate program. "Scanning, now," he said as he pressed a button. He could hear a small pulse as the table lit up ever so slightly, an increase so minute he'd only picked up on it after years of working in research labs. Rather than focus on the PADD, which the text was so small it began to blur in his vision, Harvey focused on that slight illumination and waited for it to fade, all the while not even wondering why he could see the light and not what the PADD displayed.

Jayla peered over his shoulder at the PADD, but to be honest, it was more for lack of anything else to look at than to actually see what it was finding. She chewed her lip and sighed while she waited for it to finish, crossing her fingers that it would find the unknown pathogen.

The illumination faded at last and the computer beeped, beginning to process the results. In the meantime, Harvey took a look at the cultures, and noted various color variances. "What all do you have here? Human? Andorian? Trill?" Harvey purposely did not ask for names. In his years of research, connecting a name to a sample only made the emotional impact more devastating.

"Yeah, humans, Andorians, Vulcans, just about everyone," she said. "Well, in this batch. There's more waiting to go in. Wait," she said, thinking. "No, no Trills. Interesting. I know there's quite a few of us, too. Adan, Bast, and myself, of course, but there's a bunch of unjoined junior officers, too. A dozen or so, maybe?"

Harvey nodded with another yawn. "We should get some samples from people we think aren't infected, especially different species. It should help establish a baseline at least."

"Not a bad idea," she replied. "Of course, we don't know that we are't infected. We might be. We've been exposed, certainly."

"And the entire crew could already be exposed for that matter," Harvey surmised with a heavy sigh. He leaned against the nearby bulkhead, suddenly having a flashback of his Dominion War days with security performing daily blood tests. How could Starfleet have come so far after the war to only have to circle back to here?

At least they wouldn't be collecting blood to search for Changelings this time. No, this was blood that could hold keys to unraveling this new mystery that could kill each and every one of them.

Jayla smiled gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We'll figure it out," she promised.

Harvey sighed. "Hopefully people don't start dying." If there was one thing he hated more than working without sleep was working without sleep against the clock. Especially since he was showing signs of being infected himself.

Jayla winced involuntarily. She didn't like to think about people dying. "Well," she said. "I've never lost a patient yet and I'm not about to start."

Still leaning against the bulkhead, Harvey tilted his head and closed his eyes, stopping himself from saying, Good. I wouldn't want to be the first. Afterwards, he found it difficult to open his eyes, no matter how hard he tried.

Jayla decided to let him rest for a bit, but when the computer indicated that it was done and found 16 common pathogens, five of which were unknown, she tried to shake him awake. "Captain," she said. "Captain. There's results to look at. Harvey?"

Harvey grumbled as he tried to open his eyes. "I..." His voice trailed off as the energy in his voice quickly dissipated. Finally, he managed to open his eyes and looked at Jayla. "Results? What do we got?"

"Five unknown pathogens common in all 25 samples," she answered. "Now it's just a matter of finding our culprit."

He grunted, taking a look at the monitor. "And that's the easy part," Harvey muttered.

"Yes," agreed Jayla. "But it's a start. And you have to start somewhere." She took a deep breath. "Shall we begin?"

"Indeed," Harvey said, pulling up a chair next to the microscope. "Just like old times," he muttered just before a big yawn.

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