Ship Surgeon 2183- pg 3-4

The comm window flashed on again, with Blankey’s face a bit to the right and looking down to read. 

“Bridge to sickbay.” 

“Sickbay here.” Crikey reported in. 

“There are five patients inbound from Section 5D, all with decompression injuries.  Litter teams are enroute.” Blankey said, while looking down. 

“Roger, standing by to receive.”  The comm window flashed black again.  

The hatch buzzed. Crikey and Grower could see Chief Andrews at the vid portal.  

“Request permission to enter, hallway at 1 atmosphere, reading no contaminants on this end.”  

Crikey checked the atmospheric readout on the hatch and pressed the lock release 

Chief Andrews moved his large frame through the hatch, followed by two hospital Corpsmen that completed the Ship Medical Detachment.  

“Swizdore, Kim.” Crikey nodded at the two.  

“The bridge just reported five casualties in bound with decompression injuries.” Crikey explained.  

“We’ll do a quick triage at the door if they all come at once. If they stagger in the four of us will take the first, and then do rolling triage as the others get here. LTJG Grower will handle triage and comms with the Bridge and COC.”  

“This is very likely notional, so we wont have to dive anybody, but we should setup the pressure chamber as if they had real injuries.” 

“That being said, notional or not, I want us to go through the resuscitation process as if it were real. Hands on for your assessment exam, get IV access on every one. Crikey said. 

“Aye commander.” Chief responded. 

 The sickbay door signal alerted. A sailors face appeared in the screen. He was barely visible behind the fog of his vacuum hood.  

“Litter team with a patient, request permission to enter.” he said. 

There was a pause. 

“What are your atmospherics?” Chief asked. 

The sailor responded with a blank stare and some incoherent mumbling.  

“Speak up sailor, just read the manual gauges on the wall.”  

There was another longer pause, a pause that could have been a literal life time for the patient on the litter. 

They could see the sailor squinting at the dials, trying to make them out. 

“Umm, its 14.7 P.S.I.”  

He looked up and waited for the door to unlock.  

“Good god.” Chief said under his breath.  

“And the next one, underneath?” 

“Oh! It says negative.”  

“Concur, one atmosphere and negative contaminants.” Chief said as he unlocked and opened the hatch.  

“Bring your patient to Doc at the last bed, there.” Chief said as he pointed to the bed with Crikey beside it.  

Chief stuck his head out into the hallway and checked for more litter teams. 

“Just this one for now commander.” Chief said. 

Crikey nodded and turned to the litter as it approached.  

“Can you tell us your name?” Crikey asked.  

“Seaman Recruit Stevenson!” the tallest litter bearer said. 

“Not you, the patient.” Crikey said. 

“Oh, He’s Fireman Anders.” Stevenson said. 

“OK, I’ll get report in a second.” Crikey said. 

He leaned over the litter. 

“Anders, can you tell me your full name?”  

“Jared William Anders.” Anders said from the litter. 

“Great, airway in intact and protected.” Crikey said.  

 Crikey moved his tricorder over Anders’s chest.  

“No pneumothorax or pericardial effusion.” Crikey said.  

“Alright, lets get him moved over to our bed.”  

The litter team employed the stands on the litter and assisted with a four person slide to place Anders on the hospital bed.  

Crikey leaned slightly over Anders again. “Can you tell me where we are right now?” 

“Umm, sickbay?” Anders said.  

“Yes, good.” Crikey said. “Airway is intact and protected. He repeated the tricorder movement over Anders’s chest.  “Negative for pneumothorax or pericardial effusion.  

A slender tube snaked up from the bed and wrapped around Anders’s left arm. It squeezed quickly and relaxed over the course of several heartbeats.  

“Blood pressure is 132 over 95.” A voice stated seeming to come from the middle of the space above Anders’s abdomen.  

Ship Surgeon 2183 pg 1-2

LCDR Steve “Crikey” Irwing is the ship surgeon for the USS South Dakota. An aging battleship that was commissioned in 2124. This will be a growing story as I finish more of it.

"GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS.. ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLESTATIONS"  

The shipwide intercom repeated the message three times. Doc Steve "Crikey" Irwing was on his feet and getting dressed before the first "QUARTERS" was finished.  
 
"What the fuck." he said as he tossed on his uniform.   

He stopped, took a deep breath, and slowly blew it out of his pursed lips.  This typically helped him calm either his fear or anger and it worked this time as well.  

He pulled back the curtain on the bunk opposite his.  His roommate in the small stateroom, Lieutenant Junior Grade Grower, was rubbing his eyes and blinking away the sleep. 

“Let’s go Jim, battlestations.” Crikey said. 

“Yeah, I heard.” 

Jim Grower pulled his long frame into a sitting position on his bunk. 

“I’ll meet you in sickbay.” Crikey said.  He paused in the door, “Hustle up, we have five minutes to be in position.” 

“Yeah, I know, i’ll be there shortly.” 

Crikey moved down the short passageway distance between their stateroom and the ship’s sickbay. 

He was running his mental checklist when another shipwide announcement interrupted his thought.  
 
“HULL BREACH, SECTION 5D, ALL PERSONNEL DON VACUUM PROTECTION APPARATUS.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Crikey said as the message repeated.  

Crikey pulled the kevlar weave hood from its pouch on his left hip. He took a second to don the hood and adjust the grommet at his neck.  

The small oxygen recycler scrubbed the CO2 out of the air and recycled 02 back into the hood. With the newest model, you could expect at least six hours of oxygen before the recycler failed and you slowly asphyxiated on your own CO2.  

This was a bit of overkill, Crikey thought as he opened the sick bay hatch. Without a full space suit, you would be frozen and or fried in empty space long before the O2 ran out.  

“Does make sense for a hull breach, though,” he thought as he plugged the ship’s air hose into his hood, taking the load off of his recycler.  

He paused for a brief moment as the fresh airflow cleared the fog from inside his mask.  

He began to run the sickbay battlestations checklist as Grower joined him.  

“Hull breach? Seriously?” LtJG Grower said as he secured the hatch and opened the external comm terminal to review the atmospheric readouts for the sickbay and the hallway, he had just come in from. 

“What are the chances it’s real?” 

“Less than 1% of 1%,” Crikey said, “We would have felt something when the hull breached.” 

“Once you get plugged in, can you check the airway stuff?” 

“Sure thing, Crike!” Grower said as he pulled the flexible video laryngoscope out of the drawer and powered it on. 

“Hah!. Crike and airway? That’s punny.” Grower said as he cycled the scope through its movement function check. 

He slid the auto-sterilize safety and pressed the button. The scope flashed briefly and he waved it in the air to cool down before replacing it in the drawer.  

“You don’t need to wave it around before replacing it,” Crikey said. “It won’t burn the drawer. Hell, it won’t burn you. The safety slide is a CYA from the manufacturer.”  

“Roger,” Grower said as he grabbed the next scope.  

“Hemorrhage Control and Circulation Support systems functional,” Crikey said. 

“Tracking, H&C systems up,” Grower said. 

“Ventilatory tubes functional,” Grower said. “Wait, one of them is down.” 

Crikey looked over and saw the dull red blinking from the middle tube.  “We’ll check it out later. Tag it for now.” 

“Roger, tagging,” Grower said. 

The comm window blinked on the large wall screen in the lower right corner.  Blank patient monitor windows surrounded the comm window. 

“Station check?” the officer of the watch asked.  

LT Rod “Blankey” Blankenship’s face filled the small window as he peered through his vacuum hood.  Slowly changing lights could be seen in the dark background of the battleship’s bridge.  

“Sickbay established.  Ready to receive.” Crikey said.  

“Acknowledged. Stand by for further word.” Blankey said before the comm window flashed black.  

“Do you think we will done in time for a nap before sick call?” Grower asked. 

“Maybe,” said Crikey, “but don’t count on it.

Art Big and Small

Art can be anything you put effort into, painting, singing, or cooking for your or another’s enjoyment. Art is vital to the human soul. The making of art is as important as the enjoying of art. Art is meant to be shared and enjoyed.

Big art is for the masses- to move societies to make us all feel. I think big art is the summer blockbuster, the Mona Lisa. It is art that enters into the cultural zeitgeist. Other examples are Star Wars, Harry Potter, and mainstream radio music. Big art is important. I think most artists would like to make big art. To have their art appreciated by the public and to have the glory of that high achievement. That is a universal human desire. We all want recognition for our efforts.

Big art is essential, but it is impersonal. A great song can make you feel like it was written for you and genuinely great artworks can make each of us feel that it was made just for us. As we step back from it and hear someone else sing the same song with the same enthusiasm, it loses that touch of intimacy.

Then there is commercial art, art that was created for sale. To sell itself or sell something else. Commercial art can be good, but it often feels vulgar and cheap. The concept of your favorite artist “selling out” to reach a larger audience reflects this.

Which brings us to the concept of small art. Small art can be commercial, such as the art found in these pages, or the local artist sell their pieces at a small market fair. This art is valuable in its own right and approaches the ideal of small art.

The art with the most beauty is art that is made for a single individual or group. The smaller the group, the higher the value. Compare and contrast the value we place on music of varying audience sizes. Starting with a publicly released song, played on the radio for everyone, music interspersed and interrupted by advertisements. This is given away for free. Next is the value we place on a song we put in our digital library or purchase the hard copy medium. We have intrinsically increased the value of that music. Now we have the ability to play that music whenever we want for ourselves. Rising in value is purchasing a concert ticket to see that artist live. The market and our obvious intrinsic value system place a higher point on smaller venues. Your favorite artist playing in a small, intimate venue is more valuable to us than a large concert with thousands of others.

A similar analogy can be made with paintings. The Mona Lisa is beautiful, and we, as a society, have determined that it is priceless. When you see it in person, it is relatively underwhelming as you view it from the back of a large crowd in the Louvre. It was, however, very likely priceless to the individual it was created for.

Everyone can make art, and the value of interpersonal art is priceless. Quality increases the value but is subjective and is overshadowed by effort and intent.

Think of a small child struggling to make a Mother’s Day card. The quality of the drawn flower and how closely it resembles an actual flower is quite meaningless compared to the value the recipient mother places on the art piece.

Infinite examples exist to reinforce this theory. Please think of the immense value we place on the poem written for a lover’s eyes only or wedding vows for that day. These words are immensely valuable. They are beyond monetary value surely. They are so valuable they transcend the concept of money.

A simple home-cooked meal, made with artistic love for a family, has immense value well above the monetary value of the food or the service.

Small art ties the world together. Intentional artistic acts improve the world for everyone.

Anyone can make art. If you can’t sing, act. If you can’t act, paint. If you can’t paint, cook. If you can’t cook, draw. If you can’t draw, play an instrument. If you can’t play an instrument, dance.

You get the picture.

If you can’t do any of the above…

Bullshit! You can do any of them. The value of small art is not in the quality.

Find your Art.

Make your Art.

Share your Art.

-V/R
Bigcat