With A Little Help From His Friend

Posted on Mon Apr 24th, 2023 @ 4:18am by Cadet Freshman Grade Poppy Koppelman & Lieutenant Commander John Stryker II & Lieutenant Commander Marc Kitchner M.D. & Lieutenant Antoinette Jenkins

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 3: The Peace Ship
Location: Bridge to Sick Bay

It was not as if Cadet Freshman Grade Poppy Klopperman was going to hold up Lieutenant Commander John Stryker, but the stalwart Cadet was able to give him just enough support from the bridge to the turbo lift where he could lean against the bulkhead to give her a break.

"Nice work Cadet." He praised, something she probably got little of. He held up his hand as if to stop her from calling for the lift, "I tend to believe that I'm okay until I move, then I know I'm not. So we'll take a break that we both can use."

"I... I'm OK Commander. I didn't really get hurt when we stopped or whatever it was, I just sort of tumbled forward. Lieutenant Karashka's been making me do lots of exercises in the gym as a punishment for making that hologram of the Captain. I'm so used to doing forward rolls I kinda just pitched into one and rolled all the way to the end of the corridor... like a boll weevil!" she told him.

He looked a bit pale and wan, but most people did after listening to her anecdotes.

Just standing felt better, with a shoulder against the cool metal. They were quiet for a long moment. "So tell me, Poppy, what is it you want to pursue as you move up the ranks? Anything special?"

"Wh... huh? Me? Sir, you're injured, we need to get you to sickbay!" He was asking about her career plans at a time like this?

"We'd better go... er, hadn't we?" she wondered if he was really thinking straight. She couldn't lift him up and carry him. She couldn't order him. What should she do?!

She suddenly felt her tummy.

"Ooooh Sir, I feel funny. I think I injured myself after all! Can you get me to sickbay please, Sir?!" she lied.

Stryker's head snapped in her direction when she complained that she felt funny, he felt, but it was not funny at all, he did not like how he felt, in fact, he did not quite understand how it was that he did feel, but He needed to get her to sickbay as best he could.

Moments earlier he had been standing upright, leaning against the bulkhead next to the entrance to the lift, now it was apparent he had slid down that same bulkhead and was sitting on the highly polished deck.

"Here, let me get up and we'll get there together." He said as he worked his way upright. He paused just a second and called for the lift. The door slid aside and he reached for the young woman. "Here we go, Poppy." With that, he led her inside the lift. "Sickbay." He said, sounding tired. The door slid closed and the left began to descend.

Phew! She felt bad, lying to the Commander but it was worth it if she could get him to sickbay under his own locomotion. When they got there, she could tell him that she suddenly felt better and it must have just ben trapped wind or anything.

She had read somewhere that it was important to keep people with concussion awake, so she plied him with questions as they walked.

"So.. er... Commander... er... who is your favourite Wild West outlaw?" she asked.

His brow furrowed as he looked at Poopy, then he smiled, "Bill Doolin, I suppose. Ever heard of him? Doolin-Dalton gang, Oklahombres, The Wild Bunch?"

“Wow, they sound pretty... Wild!” Poppy gasped. Her knowledge of the Wild West was confined to 1940s and 1950s Hollywood productions. He suddenly slumped a little and she felt like she was holding up a fallen tree.

He exhaled heavily but when the door hissed open he managed to step out with assistance from Poppy. "I tell you, I've felt better, that's for sure.”

"We'll have to talk about them and Rose Dunn sometime." He continued.

“Who’s she, a lady outlaw?” Poppy asked excitedly “Maybe Lt. Karashka would lift my Holo-hacking ban and we could make a scenario about her... and you can be Doodlin” she offered. Even though she was doing this to stop the Commander lapsing into unconsciousness before they got to sickbay, that was actually a cool idea!

"You bet Poppy. We'll do that. I'll speak to the Lieutenant, we're almost there aren't we?" There was something amiss, he didn't feel right. "Best you call for the doctor, if there's one left down here."

He had been unsteady all along, but it was getting a bit worse as they closed on the Sickbay, and he needed to focus, which was not getting any easier, but really difficult. He did not understand what was going on with him.

"Keep going! Keep awake! Oh, please Commander!" Poppy enjoined the fast fading man. In desperation, she opened her mouth and began to 'sing':

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
On this, our weddin' day
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
Wait, wait along
I do not know what fate awaits me
I only know I must be brave...

It was literally so horrible that it kept Commander Stryker conscious until the two of them stumbled and fell into Sickbay.

"Oh, Doctor Kitchner it's Commander Stryker! He's got a skull fracture!!" she yelled as soon as she saw the blue clad medic.

"Christ." Marc said half under his breath. "Orderly!" He barked. "Grab an arm." Between the two men they managed to get Stryker onto a biobed. "Poppy are you alright?" Marc said slapping Stryker across the face. "John open your eyes." He turned his head an say the young woman crumpled one the floor unconscious.

"Huh, I'm, here, I, I'm awake," Stryker mumbled as his eyes fluttered open. "This just doesn't feel right." He added somewhat groggily .

Marc scooped Poppy up in his arms and set her on a second bed. He reached over to the wall comm button smacking it with his fist. =A= Dr. zh'Nolon, Nurse Jenkins and Nurse Switalski to Sickbay on the double. =A=

Jenkins and Switalski arrived first. "Oh my God." Tony said as soon as she got past the door.

"Tony check out Poppy, Swiss help me." Marc said trying to contain the bleeding from Stryker's head wound. "Pass me another towel, then prep a basin with saline a bulb baster, and keep an eye on his vitals."

They both said 'Yes Doctor' almost in unison and they ran to grab supplies.

Luckily, there was little wrong with Poppy, other than her having seen the sight of a fellow crewmember on one of the beds with one of his legs snapped and sticking out at an angle of about 80 degrees from his knee. The there was a bit of blood but it was more the ungodly angle of the limb that made her swoon.

"Urrgghh, I'm OK" she gurgled to nurse Antoinette as she came out of it to a whiff of cordrazine. "How's the Commander?" she asked solicitously.

Tag zh'Nolon

“I’m OK, honest” said Poppy, pulling herself together and jumping up. “Can I please help in any way, I was a Plutonian Girl Scout and have my first aid badge” she revealed. Immediately she was pressed into service by the wily old Dr Kitchner.

"Poppy, pass me another towel." Marc said reaching up with a half blood covered hand.

Well that was easy, Poppy grabbed one and pressed it into his gnarled old mitt with a shout of “Stat!” She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d seen it done on old reruns of ‘General Hospital’ on PTV as a kid.

"Then get the orthopedic scanner set up, he's got a definite fracture. Trouble is these damned head injuries bleed ten times worse than you'd think." Marc said muttering to himself more than anybody else in the room. "Swiss, wipe my hand off." Danielle sprayed some saline solution on his hand and quickly wiped the mess off. "Thanks. How are his vitals?"

Poppy knew she was out of her depth on that one, so she ran over to the attractive blue skinned Lt. zh’Nolan to ask her.

“Doctor, Dr. Kitchner needs the, er... the orthopaedic scanner set up” As when she was talking to her boss, Lt. Zon, Poppy couldn’t help her gaze drifting from zh’Nolan’s eyes to those hypnotically swaying deeply-boppers atop her silky white haired head, as she wondered if her friend Syaffia had survived the ‘crash’ ok.

Poppy busied herself helping where she could and, after a while, the crisis seemed to over.

 

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