"Sorry to keep you waiting, ma'am," the Duke's senior Hospital Corpsman said apologetically, brushing through the curtained doorway that separated the small, four-bed ward from the equally tiny sick bay office-cum-examination room.
"Forget it, Chief," Amanda replied. "How's he doing?"
"He's stabilizing. I think we've got the shock under control. His blood pressure is up, and his heart action looks good. There are signs that he's starting to come around again. I think that, for the short term, he'll be okay. No immediate danger."
Amanda noted both Bonnie Robinson's words and her grim expression. "You're qualifying yourself all over the place, Chief. What's the full story?"
"Erikson has suffered a deep puncture wound to the chest cavity."
"That sounds bad."
"It is, ma'am."
Robinson turned to the printer unit of the sick bay's compact X-ray unit and punched the processing key. After a moment, a fresh negative was extruded into the Chief's hands with a soft whir. She stepped to the rear bulkhead and clipped the negative to a glow plate.
"Come here, Captain. I'll show you."
Amanda stood at the Corpsman's shoulder as she outlined the problem. "He took the hit almost dead center in the chest. There was a clean penetration into the chest cavity, but we've got that sealed off without getting a collapsed lung. There was some damage to the right pleural sac. That sort of shadowy area indicates that there was some hemorrhaging within the pleural cavity, but not too bad. The big problem is right here."
Robinson's slender fingers moved to outline a jagged black silhouette.
"A shrapnel fragment?"
"Yes, ma'am. Drilled right in among the major blood vessels above the heart. It's a certifiable miracle that nothing critical was directly involved."
"He lucked out."
"Not by all that much, ma'am."
"You're qualifying again, Chief."
"Yeah, I am. That fragment could shift, cut through an arterial wall. It could still kill him very easily."
"What can you do about it?"
"Nothing. This is a job for a full surgical team. We've got to get Erikson medevaced out to one as soon as possible."
"Chief, the closest medical facilities we have access to are over a thousand miles away in the Falkland Islands, way off station. We've got to deal with this with what we have available right here."
Robinson shook her head with great deliberation. "I don't know what I can say, Captain. I've had the basic indoctrination into emergency surgical procedures and, with a real doctor coaching me over a video link, I might be able to pull a hot appendix if I had to. This kind of operation, though, is so far over my head, I might as well be cutting his throat directly. I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's how it is."
Amanda nodded a reply. Turning, she took the two steps to the ward doorway. Pushing aside the curtain, she looked in at the still form lying in one of the lower bunks, bound down by his web of IV tubes and oxygen cannulas. Somehow she felt it was important that she be looking at him when she made this next decision.
"What about the alternative, Chief? The fleet will be up with us in about a week. Can you hold him stable until they arrive?"
"Captain, the book says that the faster this kind of wound is treated, the better. His general physical condition is bound to deteriorate. There is danger of infection, and that fragment could shift at any time."
"I'll grant you that and more, Chief. Can you keep him alive?"
"Well, maybe if I can be advised by Fleet medical—"
"No joy. We'll be going full EMCON soon. You'll be on your own. Now, what about it?"
Chief Robinson sighed. She was one of the Duke's plank owners, having been aboard since the commissioning. During that time, she had learned that her captain never demanded miracles. She just quietly required the absolute best that was humanly possible.
"We'll try, ma'am. We'll really try."