Itty Bitty Bigger World - Resuscitation
Jul. 7th, 2015 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittySome days just don't end. If I remembered the submarine displays correctly, plus-minus SF rush hour traffic, it was about 8 PM. Four hours to go until a brand new day.
No guarantee that I would see midnight.
A California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection ("CalFire") submarine fireboat is equipped to provide hospital level lifesaving care, up to and including neurosurgery. The fact that they had literally punted, fired me like a torpedo, to UC Stanford Hospital, meant that my case was beyond their capabilities.
I'd been to UC Stanford hospital earlier today, visiting a still not terribly well friend (Amy, that would be 'Captain Amy' to you ... or 'Major Amy' if we were still on the fireboat). She and I had been asked to leave, pointedly, after an orbital attack had blown a hole in the side of the hospital building.
Probably the same building I was back in.
Least hypothesis, given Steven's collapse and my direct exposure to him, is that I am now infected with the same nasty that Amy had, and several other people have had. Amy had survived - a CHP paramedic whose only sin had been sharing a lifter with me had died.
I ran through my memory of the tense moments in which Steven had collapsed. No, I hadn't heard any sounds suggesting that Steven had been dragged to the next nearest bed. So he's probably dead. Of this? Or something else, given that his usefulness had ended?
My musing was interrupted by horrible things being done to my body. The worst was the central line - a direct plug into my aorta, which if it came loose would kill me in moments.
I could feel the faint buzz of topical stunners, which cut down on the pain, but Amy had already explained that pain medications were simply not going to happen. Too dangerous.
I knew from my own paramedical training that all sorts of awful things were going to continue. My blood would leave my body, travel through miles [kilometers] [OH SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU ANNOYING SHELL SCRIPT!] of tubing as it was screened and purified, then returned to my body to carry on the pedestrian task of keeping my brain oxygenated. My throat was already raw from the tentacle shoved down it - a convenient way of guaranteeing an airway and providing direct access to my respiratory and digestive systems at the input end. I will draw a merciful veil over the output ends except to state that no orifice was left in peace.
Direct neurosurgery was unlikely, I thought, as I sensed rather than saw an array of machinery poised over my hospital bed. A slight sliding motion, and the presumably inferior critical care bed / torpedo slid out from under me for eventual servicing and return to CalFire. Back in the day of my adolescence, it would have been a plastic backboard with a stenciled ID in actual molecular paint. Primitive, I know.
When the laser started cutting into my now braced and padded head, I wanted to scream but could not. Acupuncture needles and medical stunners as well as good old fashioned padding kept me from thrashing and flailing.
The laser kept cutting through my scalp, removing bone, and ... stopped hurting, like someone had flicked a switch. Someone probably had, a neurosurgeon looking over a VR command console and deciding that the risk of blocking cranial nerves was better than the risk of thrashing myself to death against the restraints.
My smartware rebooted and brought up a diagnostics display I recognized.
Eyeball tracker calibration. Look upper left, lower left, lower right, upper right, focus on the target. Zoom in, zoom out. Track the bouncing ball. Blink - or at least try to, the left eyelid was not working.
Bingo. VR came up. I hate VR.
"Good evening, Alan Anderson."
I was sitting in a lounge chair on a tropical beach. An untouched drink was at my right hand. A dapper older man was sitting in the lounge chair besides mine, talking to me.
This was NOT the standard hospital VR application! I immediately subvocalized a short string of commands. Or tried to. I couldn't be sure.
"I'm sorry, Alan, I can't afford for our discussion to be interrupted. The tedious mass media has come up with a name I actually like. Helps that I planted it memetically."
The dapper older man, salt and pepper hair and beard, smiled broadly.
"I am the Mastermind."
No guarantee that I would see midnight.
A California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection ("CalFire") submarine fireboat is equipped to provide hospital level lifesaving care, up to and including neurosurgery. The fact that they had literally punted, fired me like a torpedo, to UC Stanford Hospital, meant that my case was beyond their capabilities.
I'd been to UC Stanford hospital earlier today, visiting a still not terribly well friend (Amy, that would be 'Captain Amy' to you ... or 'Major Amy' if we were still on the fireboat). She and I had been asked to leave, pointedly, after an orbital attack had blown a hole in the side of the hospital building.
Probably the same building I was back in.
Least hypothesis, given Steven's collapse and my direct exposure to him, is that I am now infected with the same nasty that Amy had, and several other people have had. Amy had survived - a CHP paramedic whose only sin had been sharing a lifter with me had died.
I ran through my memory of the tense moments in which Steven had collapsed. No, I hadn't heard any sounds suggesting that Steven had been dragged to the next nearest bed. So he's probably dead. Of this? Or something else, given that his usefulness had ended?
My musing was interrupted by horrible things being done to my body. The worst was the central line - a direct plug into my aorta, which if it came loose would kill me in moments.
I could feel the faint buzz of topical stunners, which cut down on the pain, but Amy had already explained that pain medications were simply not going to happen. Too dangerous.
I knew from my own paramedical training that all sorts of awful things were going to continue. My blood would leave my body, travel through miles [kilometers] [OH SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU ANNOYING SHELL SCRIPT!] of tubing as it was screened and purified, then returned to my body to carry on the pedestrian task of keeping my brain oxygenated. My throat was already raw from the tentacle shoved down it - a convenient way of guaranteeing an airway and providing direct access to my respiratory and digestive systems at the input end. I will draw a merciful veil over the output ends except to state that no orifice was left in peace.
Direct neurosurgery was unlikely, I thought, as I sensed rather than saw an array of machinery poised over my hospital bed. A slight sliding motion, and the presumably inferior critical care bed / torpedo slid out from under me for eventual servicing and return to CalFire. Back in the day of my adolescence, it would have been a plastic backboard with a stenciled ID in actual molecular paint. Primitive, I know.
When the laser started cutting into my now braced and padded head, I wanted to scream but could not. Acupuncture needles and medical stunners as well as good old fashioned padding kept me from thrashing and flailing.
The laser kept cutting through my scalp, removing bone, and ... stopped hurting, like someone had flicked a switch. Someone probably had, a neurosurgeon looking over a VR command console and deciding that the risk of blocking cranial nerves was better than the risk of thrashing myself to death against the restraints.
My smartware rebooted and brought up a diagnostics display I recognized.
Eyeball tracker calibration. Look upper left, lower left, lower right, upper right, focus on the target. Zoom in, zoom out. Track the bouncing ball. Blink - or at least try to, the left eyelid was not working.
Bingo. VR came up. I hate VR.
"Good evening, Alan Anderson."
I was sitting in a lounge chair on a tropical beach. An untouched drink was at my right hand. A dapper older man was sitting in the lounge chair besides mine, talking to me.
This was NOT the standard hospital VR application! I immediately subvocalized a short string of commands. Or tried to. I couldn't be sure.
"I'm sorry, Alan, I can't afford for our discussion to be interrupted. The tedious mass media has come up with a name I actually like. Helps that I planted it memetically."
The dapper older man, salt and pepper hair and beard, smiled broadly.
"I am the Mastermind."
