Medical Investigation

Posted on Wed Nov 6th, 2019 @ 5:40am by Lieutenant JG Shaille Levine & Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Lieutenant Alexis Aenera & Lieutenant Commander Calvin Morgan & Ensign Jaimie Nolan & Cole Gunnison

Mission: Sounds of Silence

Alexis swept through the corridors like a tempest, though she tried to keep her face as neutral as she could, despite the headache that threatened to split her head apart like an axe. In her hands she clutched three PADDs, two with messages already typed in on them, because she couldn’t speak and it annoyed the living daylights out of her. Of course, it could be she was going crazy, which the pain certainly could have done, sure, why not? She did manage a smile of support as she passed a parent with a little girl who couldn’t control her sobs, leaving Lexi’s one destination.

And then she was there, just about storming through the doors to Sickbay and spotting both of the types of people she’d wanted to see, medical and security, but she went up to the closest of the ones she saw in blue that was swamped and shoved the top PADD into his hands, keying the screen to show the message it held.

“Doctor, I can’t talk out loud right now, so this is going to have to do. I have a migraine headache from hell right now and I’m an I pretty pretty please have something to at least take the edge off the pain? I’m hurting really really badly." Her eyes were truly watering at that, “And whether or not you can, I need you to examine my neck. Every so often it spikes in pain to about a twenty out of ten and I don’t know if anything’s wrong, but it feels like something was stabbing me, and... I think it felt a lot like a really big needle, but it couldn’t be, could it? I just remember a spinal tap I had a few years ago and this felt a lot like that, just at the base of my neck.”

Calvin took the Padd the moment he finished up with the nurse, who hurried off in another direction. As he read he mumbled to himself slightly, nodding at different points. "Yes, we can get you some medication, please take a seat over at that bio bed there. A spinal tap you say? Once you sit down, please point exactly where you feel like it's happening." He followed Alexis over to the biobed he had indicated, stopping at the console to start diagnostics. "Ensign Nolan, normal pain management protocol for our patient please," Calvin asked as soon as Nolan was within earshot. She nodded and wandered off to gather the necessary supplies.

Placing the second PADD facedown next to her as she made the slight hop onto the biobed, she used her free hand to type rapidly on the blank third PADD, even as her left hand was pointing out where she had felt the stabbing sensation from before, "I don't need a lot, just something to let me clear my head a bit. Something isn't right around here."

Reading over her shoulder as she typed he walked around behind her to take a look at the back of her neck. "This might hurt," he said as he first gingerly palpated, then palpated harder around her neck first where she indicated and then around the area. He pulled out his tricorder, popped the probe off and scanned the indicated area. "You are right about that, something is definitely not right."

It was almost all Alexis could do not to pas out from the spike and her hands clenched, but at least she wouldn't be able to scream, right? She swiped to delete the previous text and typed furiously again, "I don't self medicate. Do what you need to do, but can you call the security officers over there to over here please?" She held the PADD up slightly to make it easier for him to read.

He put the tricorder down after snapping the probe back into the top. Ensign Nolan showed up with a tray of hyposprays and placed them next to Calvin. "Ensign, please grab the security officers over there," He asked, administering one hypospray after checking the medication contained within.

There was some relief from that one, enough to indeed take that edge off, though it didn't get the pain from deep down. Alexis gave a thumbs up and flipped over the face-down PADD and reading over it once more while the Ensign fetched the security personnel, where she was a bit more gentle when she handed the first of them this PADD.

"Dear sir, or ma'am, since I don't know who I'm handing this to when I'm typing this, I can't prove anything yet, but I'm pretty sure there's someone on board that shouldn't be. I've been stabbed with something that's like a needle, which should be being checked out by the medical people while you're reading this, and it happened while I was in Science Lab Three. I heard some sort of sound from a corner, I don't know how to describe it, but there wasn't anyone there when I went to look, but there was a temperature difference as if someone had been there moments before and it cooled off rapidly. Has anyone else reported anything, like seeing something that shouldn't be there?"

Shaille walked across, glaring angrily at Calvin, still unhappy about the forced sedation. She picked up her PaDD and tapped a few times before turning it around so the others could see the single word in the increased font size.

"ALIENS"

An uncontrolled shudder ran through Alexis at the reading of that, though that had been her suspicion as well despite not saying it, and she nodded vigorously at what Shaille had written, then erased and typed on the third PADD again, "How can we prove it though?"

Will and Cole walked into sickbay. Will had to go pick up Cole from school early after the boy suddenly felt very sickly. Admittedly, Will hadn't been feeling particularly good himself lately, and keeping in mind the earlier warnings from the nurse, Will decided to take Cole to sickbay.

Will noticed the unusually large gathering, including Lt. Levine from security, and his wondering must have been evident on his face, for he was handed a couple of padds. He read them in the order directed, the first apparently from Lt. Aenera, another second, with its single large-font word, from Lt. Levine, and a third, also from Lt. Aenera.

"Dad," Cole said quietly in a raspy voice and pointing at Lt. Aenera's first message, "I've been feeling similar to that since my dream."

"You sure?" Will asked.

Cole nodded. "Dad, I know you think that she," pointing at Lt. Levine, "and I were just dreaming, but...what if we weren't? What if someone is somehow here who isn't supposed to be?"

Will thought for a moment. "If so," he said quietly to everyone gathered, "as Lt. Aenera pointed out, how would we go about proving it? Presumably they'd have some sort of personal cloaking devices, in some way akin to the suits used by Starfleet in those duckblind missions to pre-warp planets but a lot more complex if they've been able to avoid detection from us."

Alexis snagged the third PADD back and wiped it, starting it off with a smiley face she drew, then typed rapidly, "Can't be a suit, the suits we use for duckblind missions control all emissions, there would be no residual heat or noise. None of the chameloid species we know of could avoid detection this long. It's almost as if they just don't exist." She handed over the PADD to William, wiping the first PADD she'd handed to Calvin, "Ensign, "Can we get a scan of the ship for abnormal power sources?" She shuddered again, then dismissed it and handed that to Shaille.

Calvin frowned at the thought of aliens walking among them. He wondered if there were any in the room right now that would be listening to them. He pulled up a Padd close to his face and began going through the scans carefully of Alexis' neck.

Shaille started to nod, stopping almost as quickly as she started, the pain at the back of her neck suddenly becoming significantly worse. With tears forming in the corner of her eyes she waved, trying to get Calvin's attention, finally throwing the PaDD at him when he didn't respond straight away, pressing her other hand to the back of her neck to try and ease the pain.

Lexi was trying to keep her neck still during the scan, but her eyes flicked to Shaille at the sudden pain motions and went back and forth to her, then behind her, something having been seen in that brief flicker of a moment, but she couldn’t place it. Almost as if it had appeared out of nothing for less than a second and then fallen back into nothing. Not a figure, just a glint. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth opened in a nearly noiseless groan as she reached out towards Shaille.

Ducking the projectile at the last moment, he jumped quickly over to Shaille, opening up the tricorder to begin scans of the back of her neck. He scanned the probe around her neck and area, and used his cybernetic eyes to hyper focus on the area, collecting as much data as possible before he lost the opportunity.

Adrenaline spiked in Alexis as her mind went back a couple years and dread grew, but she had to dismiss that. This wasn't the same and she went through the facts that were currently present: Invisible aliens poking people with something needly that did what? What was the purpose? Who were these people? She type slowly on the PADD in her hand and held it to show to Calvin. "Is there anything we can do to get me my voice back?"

Shaille groaned soundlessly. She would have shook her head if she thought for a moment that it wouldn't hurt like hades. Instead, she reached across, pulled the PaDD from Alexis' hand and cleared the message she had written, writing her own in it's place before handing it back to the Science officer.

"Find the Aliens."