"Dots"
=/ Somewhere in the Jeffries's Tubes, USS Charon \=
Jack followed the red dots to an injured young woman, "How are you hurt?"
She sniffled, "My leg. I barely got in the shaft. I hear screami..."
He patted her shoulder, "Shhhh." He got close to her ear as he
whispered, "I don't want to alarm you but if you're found, your leg is
the least of your concerns."
He got out the tricorder he used to communicate with Savant to scan
over the woman. It wasn't a medical tricorder, but it was something.
Well, it didn't really tell him much here.
She was still sniffling, but managed to keep her voice at a whisper,
"I ran into a bulkhead when I was running. My hip and knee smacked
into it."
"Can you move them?"
She tested them and sure enough, she could. She wasn't the darkest red
on his screen, but she was on the way. And if there weren't people
worse off, he'd coddle her. But there was a darker red further down
the tube.
"Look. You'll be fine. Just stay here and be quiet, alright?"
She nodded and gripped his uniform sleeve, sniffling hard, "Please
don't leave me."
He gently took her hand away, holding it as he smiled at her
reassuringly, "After all this is over, I'll buy you a cup of tea." He
meant it as a completely platonic offer and didn't have time to
explain or care that she knew he meant it as such. It seemed to make
her feel better and that's all he needed right now. He put a finger to
his lips to remind her to be quiet and moved around her carefully to
continue on.
After several more minutes of slow, careful crawling, Jack could
immediately see why the man ahead was a dark, dark red. The trill
ahead of Jack was sitting limp against the wall of the tube with a
horrible gash from just above his temple to his jaw. Jack could see
that the man's eyes were closed as he came closer and scanned him with
the tricorder helplessly.
It showed life signs. Weak life signs. Well, bloody fantastic. He
could tell that much just by feeling his pulse. The only thing he
could do at that moment was put his hand on the man's shoulder and
whisper, "I'm sorry I couldn't do more." It was pointless and taking
more risk than he needed, but just in case, he needed those words to
go into the man's ears. He felt his pulse again. It was the same and
hopefully would stay the same until a doctor could get to him.
Seeing the time displayed on the tricorder, he decided he needed to go
check on the status of his transmission. After checking his masking
tricorder, he looked at the map on the "Savant tricorder" and saw a
red dot turn to black with a red outline. It was only a few shaft
intersections ahead of him.
He rubbed his face with a hand, trying to remind himself he could have
done nothing. Could he? He could have stopped bleeding. He... He might
still have time. He started to crawl quicker toward the black dot,
still trying to keep quiet.
He got there and found no pulse and cooling skin. He did what they
were trained for in first aid. Nothing helped. Only when the trying
left him heaving for air from exhaustion did he stop and close his
eyes for a moment of respect before taking out the tricorder to record
the life sign and commbadge registration, and then attaching a memo
stating the time of death. He added a note that it was an assumed time
of death. He wasn't a doctor. The man may still be technically alive a
few minutes more.
Still, Jack knew Death had a grip and he didn't have what it took to defy it.
=/\=
Jack Fellos, II
Engineer, USS Charon
