Star Trek: Starbase 777

Diahjir and T'Sanga's body were beamed directly into sickbay, where the body could be loaded onto a biobed for whatever the medical team decided needed to happen.

The nurse wasn’t too sure who T’Sanga was, but that didn’t really matter at the moment, now did it? The android had already snapped to attention at the ACOS’s comm broadcast, and with the CMO and a body arriving via transport, she’s quick to hop up and begin moving the now-dead Romulan onto a biobed. “Is there any exterior indication as to how this individual passed?” She asked Diahjir as she snapped open her medical tricorder.

In customary Eicran fashion he had been asleep in the break room once again. There was nothing quite like an emergency medical call to work as an alarm clock, however. Going from dazed to completely alert in a near-instant, he found himself responding alongside a flock of other people. "Passed?" He questioned as he tried to get a look at whatever was going on. "Were they found deceased? I thought this just happened - we're PLEing already? Aren't we going to, you know-" he gestured his hands vaguely as if to say 'do anything?'

Anne had been entirely occupied by her book of nursing studies. The day had been slow, and instead of cursing them all with the 'q word', she had decided to make use of her extra time on her first shift. That was until the distinct sound of materialisation and panicked murmers tore her from her chair and had her launching towards newly transported patients.

There were no outward signs that pointed towards T'Sanga's cause of death, though from the complete lack of heartbeat even though she'd not been dead that long, one could guess. Time for chest compressions, baby!

As Anne bounded toward the body shrouded in the shadows of others looking it over, she gathered a variety of hypos along with her own tricorder. "I've got... Stuff! Pretty much anything we might need, actually. And I'm ready for anything I need to do to help! Are we trying to bring them back or asses just how dead they are?" As she spoke, she answered her own question as she began to peel back some of T'Sanga's clothing, getting a better look at the skin, and attatching probes while she waited for a response.

For a very brief moment he looked back and forth between the others there and the figure who wasn't breathing - and then he shoved any indecision aside. If no one else was going to confirm anything and this had just happened, then he wasn't down for not even attempting resus. While moving forwards he listened to the slow drone of of the biobed's monitors. Asystolic? "Push 1mg of epi," he stated firmly to the officer who had stated they had 'stuff,' for stuff was exactly what they needed right now, "and attach a cortical stimulator. What's their readings? There's got to be a reason for this SCA." In between giving out orders, he already had hands-on-chest.

Oh shit - oh SHIT. Alanna hadn't expected a dead body to just materialise in the sickbay. She put down the box of flu hyposprays she was carrying and rushed over, taking a cortical stimulator from a nearby cart. Placing it on T'Sanga's forehead, Alanna synced the readings to the biobed's screen - there was too much happening to hope that readings came up, right now she could settle with it just working.

As per Aria's readings, vital signs were... nonexistent! Some residual brain activity, as was usual for the recently deceased, but no heartbeat, no pulse. Curiously, nothing obviously flagged as having caused this, except, for some reason, the fact that her levels of potassium were dangerously high. Like, almost impressively high. It should be nearly impossible to consume this much potassium.

If the nurse could pale, she would’ve upon being met with flatline after flatline on her tricorder screen. Luckily, Aria was good at keeping her expression very still. She lifted her head up to Eicran, “Doctor Kehal,” She said softly, before holding out the screen to him. Not a single vital sign, save for a spiking potassium level.

"Activate the cortical stimulator," he stated. Speaking didn't throw him off the rhythm of compressions - that was like muscle memory. When another one of the officers (god, he should really get to know their names instead of only showing up in the medical bay to sleep) said his name, he squinted up at the tricorder. "Hyperkalamia. Start a HCO3 infusion, ten units of actrapid, 50mls of glucose, and get a blood-gas infuser over here."

Oh, also. Easy to overlook. But the person being scanned was a 20-something year old male. Not the 40-something female T'Sanga was supposed to be... but that was probably secondary to the fact that somebody just died, right? Right.

7

“Yes sir,” Aria quickly began to move, turning her attention toward her tricorder once more as she began to put it away. However, she paused for a moment, rereading the information. Her mind began to buzz, but she snapped the tricorder shut, holstered it, and grabbed the infuser before rushing back to the biobed, “The readings on my tricorder are inconsistent,” She said, starting the infusion, “It is reporting an incorrect age.”

"Inconsistent how? I doubt the tricorder would report an incorrect age without reason..." Diahjir asked, trying to put everything together, since he was here too. Even still, he was letting the rest of his team work on the patient for the time being. His own knowledge with emergency medicine was a little... outdated, he had to admit.

After setting up the infuser, Aria scanned the body once more before handing her tricorder to Diahjir. Assuming that it gave the same readings, she’d tap at the screen gently, “Inconsistencies here, and here.”

The young doctor followed Eicran's orders, getting the actrapid and jamming it into T'Sanga(??)'s neck. If it wasn't T'Sanga then it really was a good imitation, from what Alanna had read they had fooled the media, tabloid news and everyone on the Starbase.

Diahjir nodded, looking at the readings, the potassium spike was... troubling, to say the least, that might indicate a cause of death -- and possibly a murder. The other inconsistency? Well that was baffling to say the least. "This was caused by a potassium overdose most likely, I am going to report this to the investigation team, if there are no objections."

“I believe that this course of action would be best. Cause, alongside these differing readings, should be reported to Security,” Aria took her tricorder back and holstered it once more, “It is possible we have uncovered something,” She wasn’t about to speak in absolutes.

"Security? You really want them all up in our domain? What do we even tell them?" Anne questioned the order aloud, though she wasn't intentionally being entirely dismissive. Just genuinely confused. Back in the academy, it was always drilled home that the med team would always have to work with and for themselves.

Having loomed nearby and helped out where she could, Twelve elected to remain silent for now. She was too focused on what remained the most pertinent thing at the moment. The patient who all individuals present currently battled to save. "Observation, we tell them what has been observed that is pertinent to the immediate investigation at hand, especially due to the observations made by officers." Twelve stated simply then as she continued to work. "It is not normal to intake the amount of potassium indicated to be present in their system."

Eicran was still elbows-deep with chest compressions. "Again with the cortical stimulator," he stated, seeing as how there had been no indication of ROSC from the patient yet. He had no idea what was being talked about with inconsistencies in tricorder readings, but the fact that Security was involved meant that there were obvious suspicious circumstances surrounding this sudden cardiac arrest. "Bolus a litre of fluids. How's the potassium levels? Is there any..." Again with the talking about Security and what to tell them, was this really the time? "Can we please stop playing detective and start playing doctor?" Was what he ground out then through gritted teeth while he continued compressions. If people wanted to talk to Security, then they could do that away from where there was a literal resus in progress.

"Well, yeah, that sure would be a lot of bananas..." Anne cringed physically at her own comment. Who knew that joining in a stressful moment with brand new co workers would make your lack of social skills... worse? "I mean, yeah, totally, we should for sure tell sec. Let's get right on that." Rubbing the back of her neck nervously and returned to the patient. She quickly checked the pupiliary response once more. Just in case.

1

Twelve triggered the cortical stimulator and then moved to help with the Bolus situation, she suspected another officer would report the levels but if someone didn't Twelve would. As she worked she glanced to the Ensign to see what they were doing and then returned her focus to her work.

"Fixed and dilated pupils, doctor. Do you want me to take over compressions? Protocol is 2 minutes per person" Her words came tumpling out slightly more confident sounding than Anne had expected. She just wanted to be put to use. She wanted to prove she knew what she was doing.

It wasn't much, but it was honest work. T'Sanga's heart was beating... sort of. Every so often. It certainly wasn't doing it by itself, but this was progress!

“Heartbeat!” The nurse quickly said, having been moving in a flurry to keep up with Eicran’s movements and requests.

Twelve checked the Potassium levels then once she'd finished assisting with the Bolus. "Cortical stimulation triggered, Litre of Fluids Bolused, checking Potassium levels." With the heartbeat declaration, Twelve's eyes flicked to the patient for a moment and then back to the readout.

Potassium levels were less unmanageably high, but still kind of ridiculous.

Eicran was just about to relinquish compressions to Anne when the biobed's chimes suddenly changed. Pausing compressions - hands still hovering over the patient's chest in case they had to resume - he looked to the biobed's readings for the patient's cardiac rhythm. They were nearing ROSC but there was still no sign of respiratory effort. Come on, patient who had died under suspicious circumstances, just breathe... Even agonal to show that you're trying.

"Marked reduction in Potassium levels." Twelve stated as she passed on the relevant information on that. "Levels still dangerously high, but reducing." Twelve reported as she then moved over to the cortical stimulator and other equipment readied to respond to any direction from the other officer.

It was faint... very faint. Could barely be called a breath, really, but... if you were to hold a mirror in front of her mouth, it'd undoubtedly fog up ever so slightly. Was it something? Yes, absolutely. Eicran was carrying.

"What can I do to help?" Diahjir asked, planning on doing whatever he could to assist Eicran. He could focus on his own inadequacy later, now they had a patient who needed them.

"Wait! Did you see that?" Anne quickly looked between the patients and her more senior officers before placing her hands on her patient cautiously. The, more assuredly, she place two fingers on the patients forhead and used the two below the patient's chin to open the airway. She then instinctively lay her head above T'Sanga's face and watched for chestfalls. "Respiratory effort! They're breathing! Baaarely, but they certainly are."

It might have been the most pathetic, least dramatic agonal breathing ever, but it was something. He nodded to the nurse in acknowledgement. "Keep the blood-gas infuser on high flow," he mentioned to Anne - and then looked to Diahjir. "Two ccs of cordrazine should hopefully get them back into a steady rhythm, and if you could keep going with the HCO3 infusion for the hyperkalamia..."

"Understood," Diahjir said with a nod before he went to go and do that, following proper routine like he always did in this sort of situation. It really brought him back to his first job in the field, not that this was the time to mention that.

After what seemed like an eternity, T'Sanga, or someone who looked like T'Sanga, was confirmed to be stable, breathing with no assistance and, slowly but surely, even the potassium levels were coming down. She was exhibiting stable lifesigns (not healthy ones by any stretch of the word, and it'd likely be a while before she woke up), but at least other things could gain focus now that she rested.

With the patient -- whoever they were -- in the ICU for the foreseeable future, it was the perfect time to run some tests! Though Diahjir would have to be careful with everything that he did. First, he needed to determine the source of the potassium overdose. There were two options that he could think of at first, first was ingestion, the second was through injection. To test for that, it should be as simple as scanning the stomach contents... right...? "Now let's do a little bit of investigation, we are uniquely positioned here, after all," He offered.

Curiously, there was actually quite a bit of potassium in the (sort of) bioavailable compound KCl in the stomach contents. It was by no means enough to cause another massive spike, but the patient would need to be monitored for a while still to ensure hyperkylemia wouldn't cause more issues.

"So far there is quite a lot of Potassium in the form of KCl in the stomach, this... might have something to do with the overdose. Perhaps we should warn the investigation team to further study what our patient has been consuming, as I fear it might just have been poisoned." He spoke out loud, mostly to himself, but also to anyone who cared to listen to his ramblings. This was where he tended to shine after all, since half of his job was before taking a CMO or ACMO position was investigating what was wrong with a patient.

Something wasn't sitting right with him, and that was the identity of their patient, of course, if the patient was awake, this would be much easier, but since 'T'Sanga' was Distinctly not awake yet, they would have to make due. And so, he started by checking biobed readings against any database that he had access to.

Anne had been watching the monitors in silence since things calmed down. She dared not avert her gaze, fearing that if she did, she would return to flatlines. Pulling at the fingers of her gloves, she made a small hole and cursed under her breath. Okay Anne, get it together. Making her way from her spot beside the bed, she went to wash her hands. Eyes still firmly fixed to monitors whenever she got a chance. Then she returned to the only worker still pottering around the body. "Uhm, Lieutenant? Do you need anything? You seem quite bothered..."

Starfleet's database was a bust, there wasn't even a familial match to be found. This wasn't outside of expectations, though, so looking further... In the interest of cooperation though, there was something to be found in Romulan databases. Specifically, a full-blood sibling currently serving in the RRF as a triage nurse, named Hanni s'Dharvanek. It seemed the reason their file was easily accessible was because they had a rare blood type that they were open to donating in emergency situations, which T'Sanga didn't share, but the match was clear anyway. Looking at their photo though, there was a clear lack of family resemblance. Hanni's round, open features and button nose were in stark contrast to T'Sanga's sharp aquiline nose and pronounced brow ridge.

"There is something strange about our patient. Specifically. Who they are not. We haven't been treating T'Sanga, but rather a male in their mid 20's... here is their sibling... something us quite amiss here..." Diahjir shared, pointing out the parts of the readings that didn't make sense to the Ensign. "Any information we can gather would be helpful, after all."

"Do you think we've been treating the supposed sibling? That this is... someone, and the sibling is out there being the 'real' T'Sanga?" Anne thought for a moment, raising her fingers to her mouth before grimacing at the taste of soap. "Or maybe, this is just some weird genetic glitch, and there's no real relation?"

"I may not have any answers yet, but perhaps sending a message to Nurse s'Dharvanek would be pertinent. I do not think it is a glitch, however, considering the markers that we have discovered." He did not shut down the ensign, not at all, just explaining why certain things did or did not make sense. (edited)