Part of USS Valkyrie: Subspace Rhapsody

Chaos in Sickbay

Sickbay, USS Valkyrie
November of 2401
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Sil followed Lieutenant Frisco and kept Vivienne close by. After leaving Valhalla they were heading to Sickbay, or at least trying to.  He ignored the sight of Helena, that occasionally popped up from a corner, as they walked trough the corridors.

“Are we still far from Sickbay Lieutenant? I don’t think I am getting worse, but I am still seeing things.”

Vivienne looked to Frisco, very much wondering the same thing. She could deal with the hallucination – while her sister telling her how much of a failure she was wasn’t exactly pleasant, it was something she was very much used to – she was ill equipped to handle the erratic emotions of the crew that faced their own demons.

Sienna swallowed hard.  “Mom’s still taunting me with the gun, but ignoring her for now is working.  I’m trying not to think of the rest of my life’s struggles that could be used in whatever this is.  Whatever it is, it’s using things that are personal and close to us.”  She pushed forward, around the corner, and spotted the turbolift just within reach. “Being born on Vulcan and living with them for a long time helped me understand my emotions better.  Given what is happening around here, I wish I could have been born Vulcan instead.”  She glanced back at the two, keeping her eyes on them as they moved.  Being the XO and CMO simultaneously had been an interesting perpendicular collision of responsibilities.  That had been in the calm of the day.  This was the chaos of the night.

They reached the turbolift, and she gestured, “Get in.”  She groaned, “And that includes my mother, in case you wanted an update.”

“I’m sorry.”, Vivienne said earnestly, and followed along into the turbolift. She stepped a little closer to Silveira than was probably comfortable for either of them, which wasn’t because she felt terribly cuddly at the moment, but rather because the walls were crawling with imaginary insects.

Sil nodded and stepped inside. Considering the Lieutenants predicament, his hallucination wasn’t that bad.

He almost said something but, wisely he remained quiet, instead turning to Vivienne, who got closer to him.

“What happened, Vivienne?”

“There are bugs.”, she whispered.

He offered her a reassuring smile. Maybe telling her that they weren’t real, although true, wasn’t what Vivienne needed to hear. Sil replied in the same tone, although he was pretty sure Lieutenant Frisco could hear them. “Keep close if you feel safer.”

Vivienne nodded and stayed put, grateful that the Security Officer wasn’t spooked by bugs.

The turbolift doors shut, and Sil turned to Lieutenant Frisco.

“Lieutenant, I have a feeling even our Vulcan crewmates are affected by this.”

Sienna continued to force her focus away from everything around her, finding concentrating difficult. “Indicated by…?” Her medical training ran deeper than her command training, and her reflex was to diagnose, question, and hypothesize.

Sil shrugged. He was a Tactical officer, not a Doctor, but he could add two and two and wasn’t afraid to express his opinions.  “I think the best we could do is leave this area, but that not being possible, some sort of emotional blocker. And a powerful one considering the size and diversity of the crew.”

Frisco replied, “Then our only hope is in sickbay.”  The turbolift ground to a halt, and she felt some relief in her bones.  “It’s out this door and around the corner.”  She led them carefully out and into the corridor, fighting to ignore the various dead patients from her past staring back at her in the corridors.  “Whatever you’re seeing, you have to follow me.  We have to get to…”  The door to sickbay was wide open, and a prone body lay between the path of the doors, a quiet klaxon warning of a biological life sign preventing the door’s operation.  “Shit.”  She scrambled to the ensign, checking his vitals, “He’s alive.”  She glanced into the room, “Help me get him inside, so we can secure the door, at least.”

Vivienne nodded, and helped Frisco. Either this was a shared hallucination, or the body was very very real. She wasn’t sure which option was worse.

Sil kept slightly behind. He was walking slowly and repeating to himself, your in the ship corridor, your in the ship corridor. The way Lieutenant Frisco and Vivienne moved carelessly close to the mountains edge made the logical part of his brain rationalize.

But for someone who was afraid of heights, he was too close for his own comfort. No matter how many times he blinked. It was only after the Lieutenant called for help that he snapped out of it. Running to assist, he stepped inside, crossing Sickbay doors only to stop and see it destroyed. A huge hole was inside, and debris flickered against the forcefield that kept containment. “We still have Sickbay? All I see is a huge hole to space.”

Vivienne glanced at the perfectly normal looking sickbay – well, as normal as it could get. There were several crewmen who had either gotten themselves injured, or injured one another.

Sienna saw a functional sickbay, “Remember what we see isn’t real.  I see a normal sickbay, and Ms. Claybrook seems to not be worried about what she’s seeing – that maybe helpful for us as we go – if all three of us see the same thing, we can be worried.”

Someone seemed to have been clever enough to activate the EMH, who was already busy tending to patients. Vivienne looked at Frisco. “We need to find a way to fix this, or I have the feeling something really bad is going to happen…”

Sienna frowned, “We’ve got people hurt – we have to care for them.”  Her mind was being pulled in several directions with the visions of her mother, dead patients, and the confusion of not knowing what was real or imagined.  It was a lot to think about, she grumbled to herself.

Vivienne bit her lip. She wasn’t used to standing her ground in discussions, especially not with real Starfleet Officers, but this was different. “We need to figure out where the hallucinations come from and stop them. The EMH can tend to the patients.”

Sienna closed her eyes, practicing the methods of meditation and emotional control she’d learned while growing up on Vulcan.  She’d been doing this since the discovery in Valhalla, and the increased frequency of having to rely on decades-old training was starting to wear on her.  She opened them, “You make a point.  Let’s see what the lab can tell us.”

Sil blinked repeatedly, forcing himself to keep his head clear. He was still looking at space instead of Sickbay so he just turned to Lieutenant Frisco and Vivienne.

“Sounds good to me. I still see a hole instead of Sickbay so we really must hurry”