Extraction

Posted on Wed Mar 18, 2020 @ 7:25pm by Lieutenant Calista Aereen MD & Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes

Mission: The Nanjing
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: After Staff Briefing

Following the staff briefing, a nervous Tom Barnes arrived in sickbay. He'd rarely been to the medical facility. After all, it was hard to forget the Zahara-possessed EMH that one tried to neuter him. Between ethereal lifeforms and getting injected with Borg nanoprobes, he certainly had the ability to attract deadly forces while aboard the Triumphant. Maybe he really should volunteer for more away teams, especially if it would keep him away from the ship that seemed to try and kill him with every chance it got.

He spotted a nurse, and flagged her down. "Nurse! Excuse me. Is the Chief Medical Officer around?"

"Right here." Calista said looking up from the PADD she was consulting, she tapped a few orders into it and handed it off to a nurse. "What can I do for you today Master Chief."

"I, um..." Tom looked around to make sure there were no prying ears. He wasn't embarrassed by his request, but he knew that the untrained and uninformed ear could instead spread scuttlebutt and create unwarranted fear aboard the Triumphant. He lowered his voice and answered, "I have some Borg nanoprobes removed from blood stream. Checking for additional assimilated parts wouldn't hurt either."

"Of course, why don't you grab a seat in exam one." She said gesturing to an exam room off the main ward of sickbay. She followed him in and took a PADD off the console and pulled up the MCPO's file. "I assume this is related to the ship's recent encounter with a cube?"

"It is," Tom said. As he crawled up on the biobed, he wondered why the Chief Medical Officer didn't remember what he'd shared during the briefing when he was connected to the Borg's version of a flight recorder. To recap, he said, "The Borg device we retrieved thought I was some sort of receptacle and downloaded its final moments into my memory. What's done is done, and I just don't want to take the chance that the nanoprobes left behind will reactivate and... assimilate me fully."

"Luckily we've gotten pretty good at preventing that, compared to when we first encountered the borg at least." She replied, "I'll start with a complete cellular scan it should determine if there are any, even inactive ones in your system." She said as she begun the scans. "It will take a few minutes but hopefully we'll have some good news for you."

"Sounds good," Tom said, his tone a little nervous. He tried to lay still as the scanning waves washed over his body. "I don't need to do anything, right? Just lay still?"

"Nope, just let the scanner do it's thing." She replied and she consulted the results, the scans appeared on the screen, and all through of the master chief's system tiny green dots representing nano-probes. "Bad news, you have nano-probes in your system. Good news, they're inactive, and in fact they're dormant. Which means not only are they inactive, they've shut down entirely. It's possible that after they did what they did they shut down as the memory transfer was a short of final command. How much do you know about an old medical procedure called dialysis?"

The report pleased Tom, evidenced by the relieved grin on his face. Part of him still tugged slightly at a desire to repeat the experience, but he quickly pushed that away. "Dialysis?" Tom asked, looking over at the Doctor. "Are you talking about a transfusion or something?"

"Not quite, it was a procedure common before the ability to easily replace organs with artificial or bio-synthetic replacements. Kidney failure was addressed by a process called dialisis, specifically hemodialysis where the blood was removed from the body, proceed by a machine to remove accumulated waste and then returned to the body. It removed the waste products and toxins that would normally be filtered out by the kidney. If we were to perform a similar process we should be able to remove all the nano probes. Since they're inactive it's just a matter of filtering them out from the blood." She said.

"About how long do you think that will take?" Tom asked. He was a bit unsettled about having his blood flushed from his body, but such was the price of ridding his body of the Borg technology. "And will there be any side effects from all of this?"

"Side effects no, other than maybe a few less toxins and wastes that your body won't have to deal with. The process isn't the fasted, it will take about 3 hours. The trick with removing all the blood from your body is you can't really do it all at once." She said with a small grin, "We would set it up in a private room and once we get it going you'll be required to stay put during the procedure but you can read or catch up on paperwork and things like that so it's not three hours of staring at the ceiling of sick bay at least."

"Three hours!?" Tom instantly echoed. As long as Triumphant remained in the Badlands with this unknown threat, the ship remained in danger and his place was at his post. He nearly forgot for a second that this action of his wasn't just voluntary, it was also necessary. The Triumphant couldn't afford for its Chief Engineer to transform into a Borg and begin assimilating the ship from its heart. He would now have to rely on his Assistant Chief Engineer, assuming she was out of sickbay as well.

"I know it is an inconvenience, however, given the dormancy of the nanoprobes and what we know about how they behave it the procedure does not need to be performed immediately, however I'm sure you would like them out of you as soon as possible." Calista replied, "It will take us about an hour to set up the equipment and get everything ready, when would you like us to begin the procedure?"

Tom sighed as he thought about what needed to happen. "As soon as possible, that way I'm no danger to the crew throughout the rest of the mission. Do I need to stay here while you get set up?"

"No why don't you take care of any matters you need to, we'll set it up and whenever you're ready come back and see us." She said.

Nodding, Tom hopped off of the bed. "Let me know as soon as it's ready." He didn't cherish the idea of walking around as a dead man walking, but it was better than nothing at this point. "Thank you, Doctor."