Chapter Text
The first inhale hurt like hell. With what little oxygen you could take, the tube going down your throat obstructed it. Some machine above you whirred, along with the faint distant noise of beeps and alarms in your ringing ears.
Nope. No, not happening. Back to sleep right now- -
“Alert—…complications with—…activity increasing—…Alert” The mechanical hand took out the tube from your throat methodically, causing you to vomit and cough up fluids from your system. You could barely make out what the voice was saying, was it even a voice? It sounded too robotic for a woman and it was accompanied by that annoying beeping.
“Eye movement: Detected.” Ah, you could understand that clearer. “Cognitive assessment bypassed due to potential fatal crew member alert system. Please proceed to the patient. Protocol Sanare: 01 in effect.” The robot arms slowly lifted you up from your cot, the plastic-like jumpsuit wrapped around your body is tugged off by the smaller tong like fingers.
You groan like you just hit by a freight train, shoving off the robot arms and rolling out of the cot with the arms now pulling out the tubes from your suit. Food, water, and waste tubes, your surroundings now becoming clearer. You suddenly remember it.
“Protoc—“ You cough and hack up more fluids, doubling over and wiping your mouth with your plastic jumpsuit. There was no time for this. No time to wallow in pain and a sudden craving for drinking an entire lake of water. Being woken up was not a mistake, this was the job. Crawling on hands and knees seem like the best way to travel at the moment.
“Status…status of the patient?” You order at the ship, looking up and down and trying to orientate surroundings. There you see it, the ladder leading up to the other coma pods your crew mates were sleeping in. One of the four slide out of the wall and gets sent slowly down to table height.
You bump into another table, but your sight is severely disoriented so you stumble against it. You push off the table, not caring to see whatever weight was on it, your focus was on your pilot.
“Commander Yáo Li-Jie in critical condition. Systemic organ failure and cardiac arrest detected. Please proceed emergency Protocol care”
“No that’s…n-no that’s not supposed to happen..” Your mind races, but everything blurs together as your muscles and whole body feels weak to the core. Being jolted awake from a coma and trying to save a patient was not as simple as you thought back at Earth. Your hands tremble and your legs feel like jelly. Looking over Commander Yáo’s body, you brace yourself on the table for stability and zip off the protective semi-transparent suit he’s also wearing.
Asleep, you can tell he’s severely malnourished. His eyes are sunken in deep, the skin seemed tight and more wrinkled than how he usually looked. He looked like he aged maybe 10 more years. Checking for a pulse, there’s no heartbeat. You know the cold hard truth signs already. Hes going into cardiac arrest from malnutrition.
This shouldn’t have been a problem, the ship was designed to keep coma patients fed and watered constantly. Your body goes into hyperdrive. Immediately ordering the ship to lower the table down so you can perform CPR. Your elbows nearly give out with each pump of your hands interlocked onto his chest. Breaking a sweat already, you groan frustrated that your body hasn’t gotten used to being awake yet. How many years have you been asleep anyways?
“S-Sedative- -hah..” The alarms still beep loudly in your ears, your vision starts to become blurry as your body doesn’t want to do what you need it to do. You shake your head and with a grunt you continue the compressions even though your muscles feel like they haven’t woke up yet. “Christ sake- -turn the alarm off! Sedative 52 and an AED!” You order at the robot arms.
They immediately slide into the compartment in the wall and come back out with an injection that sticks into Yao’s neck and administrates it. Another set of arm pop out of the wall, equipped with a prepped AED box. You’re not able to properly perform only CPR like this, an AED was your next best help.
“C’mon Yáo—“ You grab the stickers and hurriedly place them on his chest in the correct placements, you then step back with your hands up as practiced, ordering the computer to deliver the first shock. “—Clear!” Once the machine informed the shock was delivered, your hands flew to his chest again, compression over and over until you found any sign of breathing, eye movement, heartbeat detected.
“Push in glucose and lipids, administer another round of shock in 3 seconds” “Cardiac failure detected, all metabolic systems failure detected. Patient: deceased. Treatment of the patient no longer required. Systems check for redistribution of life support procedure to other patient- -“
“- -No! No, administer the AED! Do it!!” You bark, your voice cutting harshly due to your throat being hoarse and dry. A beat and your hands were away from his chest again, the shock goes through his body. And you fly back into doing CPR. After what seemed like minutes, and more shocks from the machine, your hair grown from the years of being in slumber covers your sweaty face as you heave exhausted breaths.
Yáo’s face never changes. His skull-like closed eyes were shut forever, his hands and arms were skin and bone like the meat got sucked out of him. You could see his ribcage through the semi-transparent film of the jumpsuit wrap.
Your pilot was dead. And if that wasn’t enough, you turn around to realize the foul stench of another dead human body. The table you stumbled against earlier wasn’t a table, but another pod. inside the still-closed wrapping was your other fellow crewmate. The pod read on the outside and flashed a red word you hoped wasn’t true.
Engineer Olesya Ilyukhina: Deceased
Two dead.
Your brain couldn’t process the information. This was all a nightmare. Somehow your coma induced state gave you a realistic hyper dream that showed your two crewmates dead. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
The ship’s Protocol was to wake you up immediately if any of the others were even slightly having medical emergencies during comatose. How was it possible you were too late in saving them?
With wobbly legs, you lean over the table Yáo is laying on, your arms and wrists are sore from being still as a rock for however many years and jolted awake sent straight do medical care. It all didn’t feel like it was happening, but here you were.
—
“All I’m insinuating Ms. Stratt, is while—yes Dr. Lamai’s tech will aid in the project, it has major complications in regards of the patient’s care. I’m seeing some small structural issues in her boat that can cause major leaks.” Eva Stratt continued to walk in her calm constant pace, you had to keep up with her strides as she crossed the flat terrain of the airport flat to the jet she ordered back to the interstellar research vessel in the ocean.
“Dont speak to me in metaphors, Doctor. I’m inclined to listen, really. But after seeing your reaction to her primate test subjects, i advise you keep your strong opinions to yourself about such ‘sensitive’ procedures. Her tech will be very helpful to the cause regardless of the risks.”
You hide a cringe as you run a hand through your hair. “Okay okay, i know, forget about my outburst on seeing 12 monkeys being in induced comas for science. Can you blame me though?”
“12 monkeys sleeping for science should be the least of your concerns. Like she said animal testing is necessary for this part of our mission and I see this conversation is not.”
You scoff, raising your arms and letting them fall. “It’s crazy though, admit it! If any of the comatose patients during the mission have medical failures, the care tech won’t be able to act upon it if there’s no proper physical assistance from a real doctor! It’ll pull the plug to save supply for the others, how can that make sense?!”
“We have the means to ensure the astronauts will be in perfect form before take off and during the mission spent in transit, Doctor. I can provide the best medical programming in Hail Mary, I can ensure that. Now please, stop talking my ear off and get in will you?”
You had a sock forced into your mouth by Stratt, but no way were you going to keep quiet about the potential risks this plan had once you got back. The jet planning to fly you three back to the Interstellar Research vessel in the ocean fired up its’ engines.
‘Three?’ Remembering now, yes there was a third person there.
His eyes darted between you and Stratt as she climbed into the jet. The man fixed his glasses and pulled on his collar as let out a long regretful sigh at the plane. He did not like riding in these horrible awful things. He turns to you, leaning over with a trying-to-be-helpful smile.
“For what it’s worth, i didn’t like it either, the monkeys. Couldn’t stare at them for too long or I think i would’ve stormed out” You give him a sigh, stuffing your hands in your coat pockets as you follow Stratt with him by your side to the jet, the engines humming louder. You then toss him a pill bottle, motion sickness pills that he accepts with a nod.
“Try not to throw up again, yeah Dr. Grace?”
—
Your head snaps up to the last pod lining the highest wall of the med bay. The pod containing your fellow crewmate hopefully still alive and breathing. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save him?
“Status on Dr Ryland Grace!” You yell up into the med chamber, then see the bed containing his body slide out and being transported down next to Commander Yáo.
“Dr. Ryland Grace: Alive”
You let out a shaky breathe, your legs stumble as they try to carry your heavy body across the other side. Zipping open the placenta-like jumpsuit, you see his sleeping face. Stubble now grown out to a longer beard and his hair now at his shoulders.
“Check cardio, digestive, respiratory system, e-everything check it all.” You immediately check his pulse, looking up at the screen to see the bpm normal looking. His face, healthy looking enough for someone who’s only gotten nutrients through IV.
“All medical system tests running…” You hold your breath, inspecting the line that leads to his IV for nutrients.
“Flow seems to be in check.”
“Medical tests completed. All major bodily functions inspected. Minor bone and muscle fatigue.”
“That’s normal, u-uh—change regulatory muscle function stimulator, crank it up a little bit.” Don’t want him to be sore with fatigue when he wakes up like how you’re feeling right now.
Speaking of, you’re not feeling too great. Your limbs feel heavier and heavier and the weight of your muscles feel like they’re dragging you down. Gravity almost feels like it’s betraying you as your legs give out and you plop down on the med bay floor.
Your body feels the urge to curl up into a ball and sleep more, but you can’t right? You had to keep watch on Dr Grace. You were waken up for this, Protocol Sanare was your part of the mission you fought to have, there’s no way you’re sleeping on the floor right now.
But damn does the aluminum feel nice and cold on your sore muscles. Your head hits the floor, you groan as you see blurry robot arms above your head, inspecting your status.
“Doctor—…recommended that—…care of patient”
“Shh shh, just five…five minutes…”