No Other Option

Posted on 02 May 2016 @ 3:49am by Commander Jayla Kij & Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast

2,053 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Outbreak
Location: Sick Bay
Timeline: MD8 || 0900 Hours
Tags: Lt Cmdr Casey

Temerant Bast walked into Sickbay, data padd in hand, and searched the room for Jayla. He'd been getting reports of unusually high power requirements in the medical labs,no doubt as a result of the current crisis, and he'd had to cut back on power allocations to other departments to compensate.

Sickbay was filled to the brim with patients. Every biobed was occupied, and stretchers had been installed in every open space. He guessed there were over fifty patients in the area, which was designed to accommodate at most twenty people. Most seemed to be asleep, trying to sleep, or under sedation. The room as oddly quiet, considering the number of people currently in it. The biobed monitors were dimmed, and displayed the lifesigns of each patient. Some appeared to be in worse condition than others.

He spotted Nurse T'Lura in one corner of the room. The Vulcan woman looked as calm and collected as ever, with only a few strands of her dark hair pulled out of her customary ponytail to indicate that she was a bit overworked. Dark circles under her eyes betrayed her state of exhaustion, but her tone remained cool and professional.

"Lieutenant Bast," she greeted as he approached. "Are you experiencing any symptoms of the illness?" she asked, mechanically taking a tricorder out of her uniform pocket.

"No, actually I feel fine," he replied.

"You appear as tired as the rest of the crew seems to feel," she countered.

Bast was surprised by her statement. He hadn't been having any trouble sleeping - at least, what little sleep he'd been able to get over the past couple of days. He'd been pulling double or triple shifts to complete the required maintenance before they left Yolvanda and ran the risk of encountering Consortium-aligned ships. The current crisis wasn't helping, and the absence of a staff compounded things.

"A bit overworked perhaps, but otherwise I feel fine," he replied.

She raised an eyebrow, and flipped open her tricorder, scanning him.

"I will be right with you," she said, raising her voice slightly as if she was speaking to someone else.

Bast looked over his shoulder, but there was no one there. He frowned. "Actually I was looking for Doctor Kij," he said, now somewhat eager to get away from the nurse.

She put away her tricorder. "Medical lab two," she replied, pointing him in the right direction.

She turned on her heels, looking for the person who had called out to her, and finding no one.

* * *

Jayla sat in the lab, staring at the hypospray filled with enough of the virus to infect twenty people if it were live. They weren't, of course. There was still a bit of risk involved, but they were minimal. She could develop a fever and a rash, but nothing serious enough to kill her for sure. Even so, she was nervous, mostly because this had to work.

Otherwise, Harvey was going to die.

She chewed on her lip as she stared at the hypospray for a moment longer and then she reached for it.

The door to the medical lab hissed open, and Bast walked in.

"I think T'Lura is about two or three days from totally unspooling. Should be fun to watch," he said, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. He looked at his friend, and the hypospray in her hand.

"I take it you've managed to isolate the virus?" he asked.

"Yes," said Jayla, putting the syringe down again. "And I've learned from the blood samples I took from the crew that the only species whose immune systems actually recognize it as a threat are Trill. We carry an antibody that will aggressively fight the virus. I've even isolated the antibody."

Bast nodded. The Trill symbiotic barrier was renowned to be particularly effective, in the same manner that a mother's placenta usually blocked out many pathogens. "That's good then," he said. "That means you can replicate it and start inoculating the crew."

"Antibodies can't be replicated," she said, sounding disappointed. "I can grow them in the incubator, but it would take ten days to make enough to cure just one person. The problem is that the antibodies are so efficient, we don't produce enough of them, even among fifteen people."

"What about using a synthetic T-cell to produce the antibody?"

"It doesn't seem to work," said Jayla. "The problem is that their immune systems just don't recognize it as a threat and I haven't got time to figure out why. The only thing I can come up with is this," she said, picking up the hypospray. "If I inject myself with a massive amount of the virus, my immune system responds with a massive amount of the antibody, which I can then extract and give to patients. It's a little risky, but it's the only option I can see."

"Inject…" Bast paused, and looked his friend in the eye. "Inject yourself? Are you insane?! What if something goes wrong? You're the only medical officer on the ship!"

"I'm not the only medical officer on the ship," said Jayla. "There are others. And anyway, the virus in here is all dead," she added, holding up the syringe. "Sorry, I should have clarified. It's sort of like a vaccine. A super vaccine. There are still risks, like fever and rash, but they're nothing I can't handle."

"Then again," replied Bast, "it might trigger an autoimmune response strong enough to attack every organ in your body. Or your symbiont."

“Believe me, we’ve thought of that,” said Jayla, referring to both host and symbiont. “And we’re both in agreement that it’s worth the risk. If we die trying to save lives, so be it.” She paused, looking at the hypospray. “If that should happen, there are antibodies in the incubator,” she said, voice very small. “They will be ready in ten days. The doctors on Yolvanda know what to do with them and are probably incubating their own."

"Then inject me," said Bast. "If something goes wrong, you'll be in a much better position to do something about it than I would."

"No," said Jayla. "I can't let anyone else do this. It's just... I just can't."

"Doctor Kij!" he snapped, in a loud voice meant to rattle her back to her senses. "You're the primary investigator in a medical crisis that is affecting over thirty percent of your ship's crew. You're also third in command of this ship, and the Captain is currently incapacitated, which means that in effect, you are currently the First Officer. You cannot risk incapacitating yourself by injecting yourself with this virus."

"And if I fail, he's going to die!" she shouted back, eyes filling with tears. She hadn't even realized that was what was behind this desperate solution, nor that the thought bothered her so much that she was willing to follow him if she was wrong.

In fact, she'd rather follow him.

The thought disturbed her so much that she turned away and blinked furiously to banish the tears from her eyes and swallowed to clear the lump that had grown in her throat. "I can't handle that," she said finally. "I can't live with it," she added in little more than a whisper.

"And if you inject yourself and something goes wrong, he'll die too. You need to remain focused, and clear-headed. Which is why you can't do this."

"And if I inject you and it doesn't work, then what?" she asked, turning back to face him. "He'll still die. He's got two days at most right now. If this doesn't work, I can't keep him alive for the ten days it's going to take to grow more antibodies in the incubator. I don't have time! This," she said, picking up the hypospray, "is my only option. And I can't ask anyone else to do it." With that, she pressed it to her neck and injected the virus into her bloodstream.

Bast lunged for her hand, and wrestled the hypospray out of her fingers. He checked the vial, and saw that a quarter of the viral suspension was gone.

"What have you done?" he breathed.

"Hopefully I've saved a lot of people," she said. "And if not... well, we can try again. Or just grow the antibodies in the incubator. And if it leaves me too damaged to inject myself again, well... there are more Trill."

"There are more Trill, but no other Chief Medical Officer. And no one on the ship who knows as much about this virus right now as you do. I can't believe you'd do something this reckless... Now I recognize Lorelei's influence on you."

Jayla opted not to reply to that. Instead, she picked up a tricorder and turned it on herself. "Well, I'm running a very slight fever," she said quietly. "Although, that's likely from stress. It's too soon to see any antibody growth. I'll know in a few hours."

Bast shook his head. "Should I tell you again how many ways of stupid this was? You know more about this virus by now than anyone else on board. If you develop any form of reaction to this virus, any allergic reaction that could harm you, or your symbiont, this could set the search for a cure back by several days. How many people would die then?"

"I know," she said. "I know. But, as it stands, it would take 10 days to grow the antibodies the safe way. A lot of people will die if we had to do that, so I can't see how a reaction from me is going to make things much different."

Bast sighed. He knew there would be no reasoning with her at this point, and in fact it was pointless, since she had already injected herself with the virus. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if her body would develop the antibodies for the virus, and isolating the T-cell responsible, and growing it in a cell culture to reinject it to the other patients, hoping they would also develop an immunity to this thing.

"The nurses out there are overworked already. I took basic field medicine at the Academy, so I'll have to play nurse for you now."

She gave him a weak grin. "You don't have to," she said. "I can take care of myself."

Bast shook his head. "Not this time. You fought me over the inoculation, you won't win on this one. Someone needs to keep an eye on you."

"Oh, all right," she relented. Maybe a second set of eyes would be helpful. It certainly couldn't hurt, after all. "I've even lost my will to argue, it seems," she said with another weak grin.

"Trill may be immune to this virus," said Bast, "but you still look like hell. When's the last time you slept?"

Jayla thought about that. "I don't even know," she admitted. "I've got a cot in my office that I've been kipping on, in case they need me, but I don't know when was the last time I actually got a solid 8 hours. Oh, it must have been shortly after the outbreak. Two days ago? Three? I'm not sure."

"Okay," said Bast. "We're getting that cot and moving it in here, so we can keep an eye on you. You're getting at least four hours of sleep right now. And I'm getting Commander Casey in here to help investigate this virus. The Chief Science Officer should have been involved a long time ago."

Jayla was surprised she hadn't thought of it. She supposed that with his daughter being one of the infected, she hadn't wanted to bother him. That and the fact that she'd been so caught up in everything, she hadn't thought to consult someone else. "I guess I don't have to do everything myself, do I?" She said with another weak grin. "This really was a stupid idea, wasn't it?"

Temerant merely looked at his friend with one eyebrow raised, judging that her last question didn't warrant a response. He signalled for the orderlies in Sickbay to bring the cot in the medical lab, and hit the comm panel.

"Lieutenant Bast to Commander Casey. Please report to Med Lab Two as soon as possible."

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