Cmdr Tuts & the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
29 Dec 2016Tuts
*** Cigui System, Clark City (orbital), Medical Section, StarDate 12.26.3302 ***In a sentence: Don't you just hate it when this happens?
Before I even opened my eyes today, I knew something wasn't right. Sound alone immediately told me that I was not aboard my ship. In fact, the telltale rhythmic beeping beside my right ear was a huge clue that... yep, it's speeding up, that machine is definitely monitoring my heartbeat.
Well, shit.
I'm definitely in a medbay somewhere. A quick look around (without moving AT ALL) verifies that I am the sole occupant of a bed in a closet-sized, windowless room. I'm in a paper gown, and there's an IV in my right wrist - yay, I still have wrists! And feet too! An experimental wriggle of the toes on each foot tells me that at least some of my systems are still operational.
The next couple of minutes are spent slowly sitting up (not painful, but way more tiring than it should be) and removing various leads, shunts & bandages. I'll spare us the details, let's just say that removing a catheter sucks & leave it there. A medtech walks in on me during the process and asks me not to try to leave the bed, while he summons my doctor. I can only shrug in reply. To be honest I've expended all of the energy I have. My mouth tastes of bile, and I gladly lay back down again because the room has developed a slow drift - wish I could adjust the yaw a couple of degrees...
Time passes and then a lady doctor comes in & introduces herself as Dr. Beth Ambrose, the physician currently handling my case. Apparently I have been a guest at their facility for over two months - admitted prior to Dr. Ambrose's rotation so she doesn't know the particulars of my arrival. Just that I was recovered from a stasis pod, still recovering from a serious trauma that caused deep & widespread tissue damage due to heat. She rattled off a litany of complications that I had suffered while in care, including a bout of good old fashioned necrotising fasciitis, that required extensive muscle & dermal regeneration. Extremely painful process if you're awake, so they kept me in an induced coma for the duration.
I look down at my hands. Everything is there, but the skin is all soft, pale and abnormally smooth. I'm gonna be super sensitive for awhile.
The doc asks me a few questions about how I'm feeling and if there's any pain, which I only halfway pay attention to because I've realized that I don't remember having an accident at all. I'm assuming the Lucky Strike is toast if I ended up in such bad shape, but how? Did I lose a dogfight? Fly into a neutron star? Prang it on some parboiled moon's surface? I tell the doc that I can't remember what happened, and she says that's not abnormal, but assured me that I didn't suffer any brain injury and that the memories would probably return over time - not to worry too much about it. After giving me that gem of advice, she recommends that I stay one more night while they run one last evaluation. After a brief sympathetic glance, she departs to attend to other matters.
It's only after I'm alone with my confused thoughts that I discover the cherry on top of this whole craptastic sundae.
I access the datapad attached to my medical bed. Sure enough, I'm about 8 million credits richer than I remember being, most of that had to be the insurance payout... I'm about to run a search on the local galnet feeds, see if there's anything about myself or my ship, when I see today's stardate.
Today is not "just" two months later than my last memory. It is, in fact, almost ELEVEN months later.
Well, SHIT.