All The Light We Cannot See (Part IV)
Posted on Thu Sep 9th, 2021 @ 3:40pm by Lieutenant Jai
1,780 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
What Lies Ahead, Between, and Behind
Location: USS Vesta
Timeline: 2392
Tags: jai
"Are you playing dress up?"
As the bald youth stepped through the doorway into the child's room, he was presented with a common question. People saw someone who seemed a child in a Starfleet sciences uniform and it was something that sprang to mind. Adults typically found more subtle ways of asking it.
With pediatric patients, they tended to get straight to the point. And so Jai had learned to answer as bluntly.
"I am not," the boy stated. "My name is Doctor Jai. My species refer to ourselves as the Onlies."
The girl seemed, perhaps, just a year or so younger than Jai appeared. Tucked into the covers of a twin sized bed. She tilted her head to one side as she blurted out, "You look Deltan."
He gave a slight nod. That was also not an uncommon reaction to his shared head or the mandala tattoo that crowned his head. Nonchalantly, the boy noted, "You look Bajoran to me."
"I am Bajoran!" the girl exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.
Taking a step forward, the boy gave a slightly bow as he said, "Nice to meet you, Bajoran."
"My name's not Bajoran, my species is Bajoran!" the girl huffed in the same exasperated tone.
Jai paused to ask, "Oh, well then, what is your name?"
"Mika."
"Tashi delek, Mika," the boy uttered, slipping momentarily back to his native Tibetan. Taking another step, he took a seat at the foot of the girl's bed before he said, "I understand you're not feeling well."
"I just," the girl began, before she seemed to struggle for words. After another moment, she just said, "I get tired."
From his hip, the boy pulled the medical tricorder he carried from its holster. "I'll leave you to get some rest in a moment, but I need to scan you first to see if I can help you to understand why you are getting tired," the boy remarked, holding the device out for her to see. After a moment, he opened the tricorder. A trilling sound emerged, as Jai pulled the medical probe free and stood up as he started to walk the probe in his hands up so that it passed from her feet up toward her head.
"The doctor on Bajor said I have amnesia."
Jai's brown eyes stayed on the tricorder even as he asked, "You saw a doctor on Bajor? Was that recently?"
"Before we go on the cruise," the girl added.
"I see," Jai noted, closing the tricorder and returning it to his side before he asked, "Did your doctor perhaps say anemic?"
"That's what I said," the girl rebuffed.
"Your iron is low," Jai noted, holding out his hands as he explained, "Our blood is iron-based. Some species, like Vulcans, have blood that contains different elements. But you and I need iron for our blood to function properly in our bodies."
The prior diagnosis was gnawing at the back of his mind. It was such an apparent, easy solution. But had another doctor already come to the same conclusion?
Was there something else at work here?
Putting forth a smile, the young monk noted, "We'll see if we can improve that in the morning. For now, get some rest."
Backing out of the girl's room, the boy found the parents hovering just outside the doorway. Motioning them to step away with him, he waited until he hoped they were further from earshot before he said, "She mentioned she saw a doctor before you went on this trip."
"She seemed to have no energy. We were told it was just an iron deficiency," the woman explained.
"We were told it would pass with the supplements," the man added.
Jai's eyes widened slightly at that revelation. "She's taken iron supplements?" the boy asked, his head looking up sharply. At the nod, the boy clarified, "Recently?"
"The day before yesterday," the mother remarked. "Not since she collapsed at dinner."
Now he was certain there was something he wasn't able to detect. "She has a distinct iron deficiency and her hemoglobin levels are concerningly low," the boy noted. Then asked, "She's been eating normally?"
A round of nods. "And mostly replicated meals?" the boy asked. Again, a round of nods.
Federation replicators were calculated for nutritional value. The iron supplements shouldn't have been necessary. "I'm concerned that there's something occurring to cause the iron deficiency," the boy noted flatly, looking at each of the parents in turn. "Would you consider moving her to the Vesta? I'm sure that Starfleet could get you back to Bajor, but I need access to the lab back on Sickbay and this could take several days to diagnose properly."
"If you feel that's for the best, Doctor," the man said.
"I'll make the arrangements," Jai noted simply, before motioning toward the door, "If you'll excuse me." Stepping outside into the hallway, the boy paced back and forth for a moment. Then tapped his combadge. "Jai to Vesta."
[ "Vesta here, Doctor. How goes your away mission?" ]
"Concerning," the boy answered honestly. "I am unable to properly diagnose the condition, which appears to be impairing either the oxygen-carrying capacity of her blood cells, or the production of the blood cells. Or both, potentially. I'd like to have her moved to Sickbay."
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USS VESTA
S I C K B A Y
===============
The away team returned to the ship, while the SS Sun Wukong continued on its voyage of tourist exploration. Mika didn't even wake up as she was transported from her bed to a biobed set aside for her.
At this point, Jai’s role became more familiar to him as a student. Doctor Sorenson was responsible for the patient, delegating to the junior doctor work that was mostly research. Jai found himself juggling a variety of lab samples, case files, and medical appendixes on Bajoran physiology and anatomy. From a detached perspective, it seemed as though the former monk had stumbled upon a seminar in advanced Bajoran pediatric immunotherapy.
Certainly, the oaths of a physician required a detached perspective. And, yet, what had drawn the boy into this work was fundamentally human. Since he’d been a child, he’d been at the mercy of doctors. Seen the miracles their science was capable of, and the terror wrought by those whose intentions took precedence over their morals.
Being that he was, himself, afflicted with a pandemic disease, medicine had been the area of science that held a natural interest for him. Jai’s condition didn’t make him sick, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t changed his life or necessitated care in managing. It did, however, make other people sick. In humanoid adolescents and adults, it accelerated the cellular metabolic rate to dangerous and, ultimately, fatal, levels.
The experience of living through a viral holocaust and then witnessing Doctor Leonard McCoy save them from themselves had driven him to want to learn more about the means by which his life had been saved. And instilled in him a desire to possibly do the same for others. Yet, in reality, Jai had found a challenge that often mired him in mundane elements of growing up that were, quite frankly, disgusting. Routine medical exams, for example, brought him, on average, about twelve cases of a diaper rash a week. Then there were the parasites, stomach bugs, ear infections...
It left the boy standing between the dream he had of saving children and the harsh reality of actually working with them. Medicine could be complicated around rational, mature beings. Remove the capacity, or desire, to be rational and medicine could become an extremely taxing ordeal for both the doctor and the patient.
Working over a microscope, the boy sat back for a moment. With a few keystrokes, the young medical student transferred the raw data to a small padd, and then picked that up and walked over to the far side of the room. A swipe of his finger and he’d virtually cast the information upon the main display.
The screen blinked for a moment, as pre-programmed algorithms sorted and began providing analysis of the information that was based on species, age, and a variety of other biographic details set for this particular patient.
Based in the light of the luminous, false color ribonucleic strands now visualized, Jai was confronted with any number of inconvenient truths.
White blood cell count was falling, but red blood cell count had nearly doubled - but the red blood cells were anemic. Even as the volume of blood stayed constant, she was suffering a distinct hemoglobin deficiency that was complicated by... something... that was attacking her autoimmune function.
He could list off the symptoms and diagnose methods to treat them to a degree, but he wanted to get to the root cause. To stop treating the disease and start curing it. But, no matter how much he tried to sort through the data, he was confronted by the harsh reality that the devil in the details eluded him, time and time again.
Aboard the SS Sun Wukong, the girl had been to Tellar, Vulcan, Alpha Centauri, and Bolia. Jai had cross-referenced environmental and various species disease factors against the data, but thus far nothing seemed a perfect match for what was right in front of his eyes.
Her parents wanted to know when she'd get better.
He was a doctor. They expected him to have an answer. Jai expected the same, but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t. And that could be a hard dose of reality for a doctor to admit. With over 120 member worlds, the ship's library had access to incalculable resources from Starfleet Medical, the Vulcan Science Counsel, the Trill Science Academy, and myriad other academic institutions.
It seemed a golden age of galactic peace, one in which the superfluous flow of knowledge supplied more answers than there seemed questions. Information recall was instantaneous. Technology had fostered hubris -- arrogant belief that the answers were all there.
But there were lessons that no class could teach.
There were questions that begged no easy answer.
He had access to technology the likes of which could bring people back from the very brink of death. Knowledge to prolong life and improve its quality. The Federation had ended disease across countless worlds.
But now, as Jai stared at the tissue scan results on the display, he learned the most valuable lesson a doctor could.
He learned what it felt like to be powerless.
To be continued...
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