Hardcore (Backpost)

Posted on Fri Jan 17, 2020 @ 3:07pm by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Lieutenant JG Aergad Halvor

1,861 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Nibiru
Location: Sickbay

Halvor walked into sickbay and looked around.

Nurse Carson was at the Nurse's Duty Station and looked at up him as he approached.

"Good afternoon, can I help you?" she said.

Halvor answered, "Is Doctor Anderson here?"

"Yes, but I'm sorry she's currently engaged in something. Can I help you?" she saw him favor his arm and gestured towards it. "Are you in some discomfort?"

"In my file, there is information on that. I came for my shot."

"I see," Carson said. She sat down and pulled up his file, going over the notes. "All right, I can help you with your injection," she said. She read through the notes and set up the equipment the report said to have ready, then picked up a hypospray. She programmed it and brought it up towards his arm.

He grabbed her hand and looked at the setting. "You are off by a 1/10 of a milliliter."

"I have it to the average of the specified parameters," she said. "The dosage is--"

"Dr Anderson came up with this treatment. It needs to be as precise as possible," he said, raising his voice in hopes the doctor would hear. His arm was starting to hurt. The grey skin was starting to spread.

"Dr Anderson!" He wasn't playing anymore. If he didn't get the treatment now, the hypospray wouldn't work. "Doctor!"

Nicole rushed out of an exam room at the sound of the shouting. She saw Faith standing being held by a tall, imposing...someone, and her eyes narrowed. "Let go of my nurse. Now."

Aergad looked at the doctor and then the nurse. He let the nurse go and looked at the doctor. "My name is Aergad Halvor. Technically, your nurse was about to inadvertently kill me. I would prefer that not happen."

"And I would prefer you simply tell someone when there is a problem, rather than manhandle them," Nicole said, walking over and putting herself between him and the nurse. She flicked her head at Faith who left Sickbay quickly. "Now," she said, "let's see what we're dealing with."

She pulled up his bio scans on the nurse's monitor and looked them over. His weight and height were in flux, along with his bioelectrical energy. "What the hell," she said, looking over the DNA scans.

"Please," he said. "If I fully transform, it will be hell to get back to a standard humanoid form. It also requires that I use specialized chairs and utensils. It also requires that the doctor approve an order for triple portions. I will be hell on the furniture." His face was already showing signs of turning grey and harden.

Nicole looked at him closely and opened a tricorder, scanning him slowly. "What in Providence..." she said as readings appeared on her screen. She took the hypospray and looked over the notes in the system again. Some of the chemical markers were familiar, and the notes had a style she recognized but couldn't place. She put that out of her head, however, as she programmed the hypospray. Before she approached, however, she looked him in the eye. "Why did you grab my nurse?"

Aergad answered. "The last ingredient in that little cocktail is a toxin. It has to be very precise in measurement. She was 0.1 milliliter off. She said it was the average, i.e. close enough. Last time I was close enough by that margin, it stopped my heart. She went to use the hypospray, I grabbed her wrist. I called for Doctor Anderson. I don't like my heart stopping." His answer was concise. He looked her over. "I assumed you were a man."

"I get that a lot," she said dryly. "In the future, simply asking her to wait will suffice. Your file says a range of acceptable dosage. If that's incorrect, we'll update our records." She adjusted the hypospray, and updated his file. "Does this satisfy your requirements?"

Aergad pulled up a file on his padd, "I have to be on a ship with a doctor with certain skillsets. As, this ship's CMO, you need to have those."

"Well, fortunately for you I have skillsets coming out of my ass," Nicole said, folding her arms.

"I assumed you were the Doctor Anderson--a man--who designed the treatment," he said.

Nicole looked at the file again, including an audio file on the design of the serum and the toxins it contained. As soon as she heard the voice reading the notes, she understood. "Wrong Doctor Anderson, indeed," she said, half to herself. She adjusted the medication and found a clear spot on his neck and injected him. "That should do you up in a trice," she said. "How long does your body take to metabolize it completely?"

"In a couple of hours, my heart will be beating normally; the little grey patches will be gone. In a week, we go again." He looked at her, "I apologize for mixing you up with that other Doctor Anderson. I chose this duty post in part because Dr Anderson worked on the treatment, and I thought I would be able to talk with him personally. I hoped for a more permanent solution, eventually."

"I'll see what I can do for you," she said. "In the mean time, I would like to take some samples from you before you change back."

Aergad looked at her and answered, "take as much as you want."

"If you insist," Nicole said. She turned and put her fingers to her mouth, giving a shrill whistle. "Alpha team! Full cart and sample case, Room Four!"

She turned back to Aergad. "If you have anything planned for the next few hours, cancel it," she said, and gestured to a door on the far side of the room.

Aergad looked at her and walked to the door. "Unless the Captain needs me, I can do anything I need from my tablet." He walked into the offered room. "You recognized something in the cocktail I take as treatment. You aren't the Doctor Anderson who sent me the instructions, but you clearly know his work. On Earth, is Anderson a common enough name that it would continue through recolonization of other worlds?"

"It's common enough," Nicole said as she helped him onto a biobed. A medical team was wheeling in a cart and setting up sample vials. "And yes, I'm familiar with the Professor's work." She picked up a laser scalpel and carefully took off an upper epidermal layer of his hardened skin, while a nurse began taking a blood sample.

He was watching her facial responses and it seemed like she was detaching herself. It could have been to focus on work, but he didn't know for sure, but he didn't push. "You have seen records of what I was before treatment? What I will go back to?"

"No," Nicole said, trading sample containers and tools with her team. "Your file's overview was lacking in photos, but I'm going to be going over the detailed file after this, I can promise you."

"Doctor, both evac samples?" a nurse said.

"No, Dennis, just chemical breakdown will suffice," she said. "No sense getting too personal on the first date."

"Yes, Doctor," he said.

Nicole took a blood sample and handed it off to another nurse. "I'm going to need to take a few more samples in a week, once your system has metabolized most of the serum," she said. "You'll report to Sickbay in exactly..." she did some quick math in her head, "152 hours."

Halvor looked at her, "I don't know why. Starfleet Medical took a lot of pictures when I entered Starfleet. However, I know my personnel record has the height and weight I entered at. It also has my Xhaldian Military Record, which I am back to those measurements for the most part."

"I prefer having the most accurate information possible," she said, giving him another head-to-toe scan as her team took hair and skin samples. "I have a feeling you are going to pose an interesting study."

Halvor looked at her, "In the other form, my skin is too hard for hyposprays to work. My understanding of medical science, isn't complete. Whatever the Romulan scientist hit me with, broke down my DNA. It made the hard skin fall off. Then the hypospray worked. To rebuild my DNA chains, they used my son's DNA. My transformation was pervasive. It started to come back. I am one of the few left who didn't get the cure when it first happened. The doctors at Starfleet said it could be because I was transformed so long, that I may never truly be Xhaldian again. I would be okay with that, but I wish I had control over the change."

"For what it's worth, I understand your dilemma," Nicole said, evenly. She took another patch of upper epidermis off and set it in a sample case. "Doctors have a duty to improve quality of life. I'll do what I can to help with yours. If I'm right, your serum could prove rather interesting."

Halvor looked at her, "Part of me was happy being able to serve Starfleet the way I did, Xhaldia didn't want anymore transformed, it kept me away from my fiancée, now ex, and my son. However, whatever the Scientist on the mission did to my skin to make it melt off, damaged my DNA. They repaired it with my son's DNA. They were able to use Crusher's cure on me. It didn't keep me cured. The treatment created by the Dr Anderson, that one that isn't you, keeps me from transforming. Being cured, or treated, means that I'm not a One Trick Pony. Is that the human phrase? The Xhaldian Government has the bloodwork of the children of the transformed, some of them are being born different. Would that help?"

"Possibly," she said. "I'll review everything there is on the subject, and ask Professor Anderson for his notes. For what it's worth, I'm going to give this quite a bit of my attention. Now, if you'll follow me to the exercise room, we're going to give you a physical."

Halvor followed her into the room. He got on the treadmill and let her put sensors on. As soon as it started moving, he was running and singing Cadence.

When my granny was 91,
She did PT just for fun.
When my granny was 92,
She did PT better than you.
When my granny was 93,
She did pushups just like me.
When my granny was 94,
She did PT more and more.
When my granny was 95,
She did PT to stay alive.
When my Granny turned 96,
She did situps just for kicks.
And when my granny turned 97,
She double-timed straight up to heaven.
She met St. Peter at the pearly gate,
Said, Gee, St. Peter I hope Im not late.
St. Peter said with a big wide grin,
Drop down Granny and knock out ten.

Considering he was Xhaldian Military and then Enlisted before becoming an officer, running meant Cadence.

*Oh good, he sings,* she sighed internally as she sat back to watch the readings. It was going to be a long, but interesting day.

 

RSS Feed