Surgery

[Images 0]

“Under the knife”

Duty Log Of Dr. Victor Images (Ensign)

 

Victor was leaning over the patient watching with extreme interest as Dr. Jones finished off the surgery. The Vulcan subject was laid out on his front and his red command shirt had been cut open to allow access to the damaged area, his spine. Captain Sorehl’s back was entered with a laser scalpel and the immediate area around the damaged vertebrate was cleared using a much more precise drechtal beam. The automatic cut and cauterise function of the laser scalpel and the surgical tractors had cleared the operating zone of most obstructions though Victor could still see the colour of the blood as they removed bone fragments. It had been green. They had attached the neural transducers to the nerve endings; all the light damage would be repaired within two weeks, when the implants could be easily removed. Doctor Jones was putting in the two artificial disks to replace the bones that had been shattered during the accident. He was about to fit in the second plate when he turned to Images and said; “Now you place this one in”.

 

Images was taken aback, he’d helped with diseases and performed minor surgeries yes, but this was spinal cord repair, one of those most delicate of all procedures, and on a Vulcan. A Vulcan ‘Captain’ no less. Training lessons are quite different from the real thing! He slowly took the disk in one hand and the bonding tool in the other. He positioned himself over the wound and slowly placed the disk in place with the tweezers. His pulse was racing, his whole mind focused. One wrong move, just one fraction of an inch to the left or right and he could cause irreparable harm to the Captain. Bit by bit he eased it into it’s slot. Victor slowly released the tweezers. Then taking the bonding tool, a variation of the dermal regenerator he sealed the bone into place. The second he stopped, Image’s whole body relaxed, he quickly grabbed the medical tricorder and scanned over the spine. The readings reported it was in perfect order with a beep. Images wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

 

“Nice work Images”, Doctor Jones said over his shoulder “Now do you think you could close him up?”

“Yes sir” Images replied

“Thank you” Doctor Jones said then added "excellent work on that disk...it took me three tries in the academy to get that done." And with that he left Images to close up and went to his office.

 

Images was motionless in shock, taking in what Jones had said. Three times. Three times! Something that took the chief medical officer three times to achieve in the academy and he gave it to him to do on the real thing! It had been terrifying! He stood frozen until he realised the humour in Dr. Jones’ little test and with a smile and a small laugh to himself he picked up the Protoplaser and the Auto-Suture and went to the task. The wound gradually closed under the steady buzz of the tools. He was feeling pretty good; it had been the first time he’d assisted in major operation. But now what he felt a lot more strongly, for the hundredth time so far, was that it was damn overdue that he had a really good drink. Though pausing his job for a moment to think, it seemed that he would never get the chance. The work never stopped coming! With exploding consoles, fires, ant men, crazy captains, sleep therapy and the ear-piercing shout of a certain strict Ferengi security officer who he now foresaw as becoming a possible regular irritant in the future, Dr. Victor Images came to the sad conclusion that he would probably reach eighty before he saw the bottom of a pint glass again.