Awakenings

Posted on Mon May 27th, 2024 @ 4:16am by Commander Benjamin Jamesson & Ensign David Kipling & Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D. & Ensign Isaac 'Zac' Hughes

Mission: Contagion
Location: Main Sickbay
Timeline: Day 350
2356 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure

The readouts on the medical console were clearly different from the norm that had been established since the people Isaac and Benjamin had brought along with them from the alternate Atlantis. Avira looked over the history over the past twenty-four hours before slowly moving towards the comms. unit on the wall. She pressed the button, released, then pressed it again, "Commander Benjamin Jamesson, please report to Sickbay." She thought a moment on the whole situation and then pressed the comms again, "Doctor Hughes, please report to the sickbay." It was probably better for the man on the medical bed to not open his eyes to her alien visage after barely making it out of the clutches of a energy eating inter-dimensional entity.

Benjamin was confused by the summons to sickbay at such a strange time of the morning that it took him several minutes to get there and even then it was hard work to look slightly more awake. He might have been confused but he was intrigued as it was unexpected it filled him with hope that it might be something related to his crewmen who were still in comas. "Doctor?" He said politely.

Though it was less unusual for Isaac to be called to Sickbay in the middle of his rest period, the circumstances around it usually pointed to some sort of emergency. It added to his haste, which in turn increased the disarray that followed him as he arrived still trying to straighten his uniform and coax his hair into a semblance of professional order. "I got here as fast as I co... Commander?" Ben's presence, unexpected as it was, stopped the doctor in mid-stride.

"I thought it would be best for the two of you to be here. As you know we've been monitoring the rescues from your arrival very closely. It seems like there's a change in activity for Ensign Kipling." She moved towards the medical console that was displaying all sorts of vitals and data on the unconscious man. "It seems likely that he'll wake up soon, perhaps with a bit of encouragement, and I felt it would be best if mine wasn't the first face he'd see."
The first vestiges of light alerted David’s consciousness that he was waking up. He heard voices that he couldn’t place…but he couldn’t hear them that well either. They sounded far away and…underwater? No…that doesn’t make any sense…I was on the Atlantis, not underwater.

Rather than opening his eyes instantly, David forced himself to keep them shut for a little longer. He was sure that opening them right away would be painful anyway.

In the meantime, he ran a self-check. He wiggled his toes, clinched some muscles, and took a deep breath. Everything seemed to be working fine, he thought. And then it hit him; he had been injured, and the Medical team had induced a coma to help him heal. Maybe this was the sign that the Medical team had been able to fix him; he allowed himself to hope. Some memories came back - flashes of images, really. But none of them made any sense…

For the moment, David tried to calm himself and focus on his body. Everything else will come with time, he reminded himself.

Ben had sat down next to the man’s bed often enough to know that he was slowly waking up. The man did not move an inch since he had found him in the corridor on the way off their Atlantis but he could see twinges and twitches. “You are okay, David. Me and Doctor Hughes are here.” He said calmly offering a gentle smile to Avira. He appreciated all the work she had been putting in to get rid of Kowalski's effect.

Avira stood back far enough to be out of the line of sight of the awakening crewmember. She gave a bit of a shrugging nod as a bit of a show of how accurate she had been with predicting the process of him waking up. She held back for Hughes and Jamesson to do their thing in bringing what was a colleague of theirs back to consciousness and understanding of the situation.

Ever since they'd arrived via the quantum stream of an alien who definitely would have preferred to leave them for dead, trying to figure out why the remainder of his patients simply refused to wake up was something Hughes tended to fret about in the middle of the night shift when incident reports tended to be less frequent and there was a good opportunity for analysis and speculation. Not only were they all alive, they were reasonably healthy, as far as any examination had been able to tell. Avira had some theories about temporal misalignment and the possibility that the sleepers were simply experiencing time slightly differently to the rest of them, but that kind of speculation was outside of Isaac's realm of experience. All he'd taken from it was a general sense that they would probably wake up eventually, just nobody could predict when.

As the Commander sat beside the first to prove the theory correct, Hughes pulled up Kipling's vitals and studied them as a comparison to the same set of readings taken from the morning's routine check. Oddly enough, very little seemed to have changed, other than the most obvious signs of consciousness. "He can hear you, Commander, just give him a moment."

David heard the conversation happening around him much clearer now. He heard Commander Jamesson’s and Doctor Hughes’s voices, which he instantly recognized, as well as one that was new to him. In all fairness, there were lots of people that he hadn’t met on Atlantis. Maybe these were some of them? David tried to open his mouth to speak but found that it felt like it was glued shut. All that made it out was a croaking sound. He closed his mouth and tried again.

“Where…” was all he could get out.

“Atlantis,” Benjamin explained carefully. It was not a lie it just was not the Atlantis they knew. This one did not have a Kipling and as far as he could tell the man never joined Earth Starfleet in this universe. “What do you last remember?” He questioned wondering how much to go into with the man just waking up.

David heard Commander Jamesson’s question but, after several moments of reflection, was a bit fuzzy on the details…

“Not sure…” David groaned. He had a vague memory of someone cornering him, but it was very hazy. Had he been in one of the Engineering spaces? Then, there was a flash of a social gathering of some sort, followed by a rush of voices speaking about David but not to him. He tried to replay the scene in Engineering, but much like trying to remember a dream, his memories kept slipping away.

“I…think…I was….in Engineering,” David explained after another moment. He felt a twinge of frustration rise as he tried again to focus on the memory.

“Could have been at any point,” Jamesson commented with a sigh looking at the doctors around them. It was not as if it was easy to just announce that they were no longer in their own universe but the man was going to have to reveal it soon.


“It’s all so…,” David twirled his right index finger around in the air, as if to finish his sentence. Nothing he remembered made any sense at this point. Was he going insane? Is that why he was in Sick Bay?

“Sorry, sir. It’s just so…jumbled…” David admitted.

The former chief engineer pinched his nose. He was just going to have to chuck it out there and hope for the best when his fellow engineer was trying to sort himself out. “Aye we are on the Atlantis but it’s not exactly our version of it.” Benjamin admitted shrugging.

"You've been under for quite a while," Hughes piped up, stepping away from the readouts to join Jamesson by the bed. A glance shared with his former Commander conveyed the need for patience, Kipling wasn't yet registering strength enough to completely conceptualise everything that had happened. "And our situation has changed, which the Commander and I will do our best to explain once you're feeling stronger. First thing's first though, are you in any pain?"

David tried to follow what Jamesson and Hughes were saying but…what did they mean “not their version of it”? What kind of double speak was that?

David thought back. He remembered hearing that Starfleet was going to be launching some other ships…but not another version of the Atlantis. How could there be another version of a ship on active duty? Had he missed some kind of refit, maybe?

David was, thankfully, distracted by the question from Hughes.

“The light hurts…” he groaned after a moment and built up the strength to flop a hand over his eyes. He sighed as the tension in his eyes and head lessened. He took a deep breath, smelling the various ointments and cleaning agents in the Sick Bay.

“My head feels…fuzzy,” he said, making it more of a question than a statement.

“And my mouth is... " David said, smacking his lips as he tried to produce some moisture. His tongue felt twice its normal size and coated in sand.

“…dry,” he managed after a moment.

“I can imagine it does. But I can solve one of them.” Benjamin stood to his full height and stomped over to the light control turning it down by 50%. They all still needed to work and respond to things in sickbay but he could at least put it to night operations level. The other issues were all medical related and out of his skill set. David was not the ship or piece of equipment.

Several strides took Hughes towards the refrigeration unit, and after a brief clatter, he returned with a small cup of ice to hand to Jamesson. Having delegated the task of rehydration to the Commander, the doctor moved to quickly examine his crewmate's pupils before taking pity on the dazzled man and returning to drag the portable scanner around to the other side of the bed. "Humour me for a moment. Do you remember your full name? Date of birth?" In an attempt to inject some light-heartedness into the situation for the sake of limiting anxiety, Isaac added with a faint smile, "Worst date."

David exhaled a sigh of relief as the lights in Sick Bay were dimmed. He finally opened his eyes slowly and looked around. He was greeted by the familiar faces of Commander Jamesson and Doctor Hughes…but he didn’t recognize the Andorian doctor present. To make sure his eyes were working correctly, David blinked several times.

“David Elias Kipling: 26 May 2128…” David croaked out in a staccato rhythm. The last part of the question threw him for a second.

“Penny Jackson, Senior Prom…she complained the whole time, then ditched me and went home with someone else,” David chuckled around a mouth of ice.

Benjamin sighed and scrubbed at his face as he shifted to stand next to Avira. “Any of the others close to waking?” He wondered softly.

Avira quickly glanced at the rest of the charts to confirm what she already knew. "No change in any of the others, sir." Both the ones affected on their version of Atlantis and the few more people that Jamesson and Hughes had brought over were in the same state of stable unconsciousness, with no signs of waking. Perhaps with the information from Kipling to compare to Karalo they'd be able to start discerning some sort of pattern, but that kind of work would have to wait until a quiet moment.

Benjamin could accept that, he was already convinced that no one else was going to wake up so having David there was more than he felt he owned after his errors with the creature that had caused all of it. "Thank you." He stated. "I will come back when you are feeling better David." The former Executive Officer explained thinking that it was time for him to leave and let the man rest up and get checked over properly.

David slowly sat up and swung his legs over the gurney's edge. He dodged the scanners and looked at Commander Jamesson.

“I’m good to go, sir,” he said hoarsely. “Just point me to the warp core and a tool kit.”

Avira stepped closer the moment the engineer sat upright. When someone had been out for so long, sudden movements usually only resulted in one thing. It was only a second as he tried to get up on his feet that his body protested against being upright. The Andorian doctor grabbed him around the waist to prevent him from falling to the floor.

“Or not.” Benjamin prompted kindly. “You have been in a coma over a four months. You are not going to be getting up to anything for a little bit.” He could remember coming to this universe and trying to function with all the new knowledge he had to learn.

"David." Empathy drove Hughes' tone towards a gentle rumble, entirely sympathetic but also without room for argument. "Our situation has changed, we aren't where you think we are. And, given that you've just come to after a prolonged coma, I can guarantee that you'll have plenty of time for me to bring you up to speed...right here in Sickbay." The doctor pointed back towards the biobed. "Don't make me sedate you."

Avira guided David back towards the bed indicated by Hughes, "we'll have you up and about as quickly as we can, Ensign." She gave a nod towards Benjamin as well, reassuring him of the same.

“Then I will leave David to you both.” Benjamin said simply and nodded to them all before he left the compartment. He had to find a way to wake up the others but he just did not know how… yet.

 

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