Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in Side sim: Matters of the Heart

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in Side sim: Matters of the Heart

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in Side sim: Matters of the Heart

(snip)

Rand raised the head of the bed back up so he didn’t have to lay down, but be supported. “No. You will not.” She rested her head on his shoulder a moment and wrapped her hand around his wrist that was pressing into his chest. “You have to try to relax, Roman.” She sighed, “You are going to hear that so much you’ll want to throw things at us and punch something. It’s still true though. Look, no one is going to make you take the bone fuser treatment. Grat said that. I get it. I hate that thing and I know you do to. Amazing equipment, but it hurts.” He needed information. “Ribs take 6 to 8 weeks to heal on their own, right? The treatments take a little over half a week off. So if you forgo them, you have another week and half of healing to do. More if you aren’t careful. Honestly though, you probably won’t feel it this time with all the meds that are in your system. But if you’re careful, letting them heal naturally would only extend your recovery a few days.” Randy nodded but tipped his head side to side. “It would only extend your recovery for your ribs a few days. It’s linked to the recovery of your heart but doesn’t directly impact how long it will take your heart to heal.” Again neither Rand nor Randy were trying to convince him or scare him, just giving him facts, Roman knew how to deal with facts and numbers.

Roman leaned into her and then back against the raised bed, listening to them both. They were giving him the straight facts. He wasn’t exactly known for being careful. Then again they seemed against letting him sit all the way up at all, it didn’t seem like he was meant to be moving much. “Hang on– what meds?” Roman complained, before he realized, probably heart meds, like the one Rand had talked him into letting Randy give earlier. His chest was hurting, he was sort of dizzy, he didn’t exactly feel good. He gave a long sigh, shaking his head. “I don’t want to extend my recovery. It’s just… the bone fuser… It…” He broke off and looked at Randy. He’d talked about it before, briefly, during their sessions. It wasn’t just that it hurt, because it did, but it stressed him out on its own, likely because it reminded him of that time in his life.

Rand sighed, he wasn’t going to like it either way. She had been trying to do what was best for him, emotionally and physically. Grat had left it up to her to make those decisions for Roman. She knew, she hoped she knew, that Roman would understand she did what she thought was best, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be mad at her. “Heart meds, pain meds, ant-inflammatories,” she rattled off in quick succession. Randy nodded at him. He understood what Roman was getting at. “If you can’t or won’t, whatever the case may be, it’s fine, but you have to go with other forms of treatment. One of those will be extended rest and a lot of down time. Simply being stubborn and willing your body to cooperate isn’t going to do it.” How Randy wished it would.

Roman wasn’t upset with her, not for that, because he had been out. If she wasn’t his medical contact, and it had been up to the doctors, they would have done it anyway. Besides, he trusted her to do what she thought was right… Even if it made him make a face and shake his head. The heart meds, he got were necessary. His heart was struggling with those in his system. But pain meds and anti-inflammatories? Why? His questioning look would show on his face.

It reminded him of a question he’d had earlier: Was it necessary? Was he that hurt, that he’d needed all this, heart surgery, five days kept under, all those meds, two weeks of rest (and that was just the rest he needed to be in Sickbay for, there would be more resting after that)? In the end, the answer was of course it was, doctors didn’t do unnecessary things, but that idea scared him.

Randy answered his unspoken question this time, one because he was the medical person, but also because Rand just looked wiped. The last 5 days had been horrible for her. “You were electrocuted Alden. The current passed into your left hand up your arm across your chest and heart down the other arm and out your right hand. Your hands were badly burned, the muscles and nerves in your arms were fried. As well as your chest. Your heart took the largest part of that damage. The current stopped your heart. You were very lucky though, your heart restarted on its own, but the muscle walls of your heart had the same burned and nerve damage and the left ventricle was enlarged and out of shape. That mean the blood wasn’t being pumped to the rest of your body. Not well anyway. That’s why Great did surgery. He had to get in there to directly heal the cardiac tissue and get the swelling down immediately to prevent damage from lack of blood flow and oxygen to the body. Pain meds and anti-inflammatories were necessary to keep your heart from over working from the pain of the shock but also the pain of regrown nerves and muscle tissue.” It could be a lot to take in, so Randy took his time explaining.

Roman had to smile a little bit at what Randy had said. Simply willing his body to cooperate typically worked just fine for him. Until his last Sickbay stay, when trying that for much longer than he had would have killed him, or caused permanent damage to his leg. “I don’t want to be stuck in bed for the next week.” That applied to both, his ribs would keep him in bed longer if he wouldn’t take the bone fuser treatments but his heart could, too, whether he took those treatments or not. “What if we see how the first one goes? If I won’t feel it much anyway?”

Randy nodded, “It’s up to you. Ellbirt, Rand, and I try to get you to take meds and treatments you don’t necessarily want because it’s the best course of treatment. Grat is the same. In the end though it is your choice. If the fuser is going to cause you distress then we won’t do it. But yes we can try one treatment and see how you feel after.

Rand slipped onto the bed beside him, one arm draped carefully along his waist. “I am not telling you to have the bone fuser treatment, but you only had 3 left.” It was information to help him be aware. “Your heart needs time to heal, but maybe your ribs will be healed at the same time? I don’t know. You will have to take it easy. It’s hard, Roman. I know, I do. You want to do something, anything, but at first you get tired easy, so you listen, and then one day you aren’t tired anymore, but everyone tells you to stay in bed, but you just want to get away and breathe. So you do…and you wake up in the hospital again.”

“I should tell you what happened, but..do…do you want to rest first?”

Rand

Broken ribs would take six to eight weeks to heal naturally. With three bone fuser treatments left, there could be as many as three to five weeks left. And his heart had a week and a few days left technically two to three weeks but after the second week since the incident it would be safer to let him rest in his quarters, as long as he figured out how to take it easy.

When she finished what she was saying he looked up at her. He remembered Randy once mentioning Rand’s heart had had a relapse and she’d ended up in the hospital again. But it was her story to tell, and he’d never asked, so he hadn’t heard the whole tale. He shook his head. “What happened?”

~ Roman

Rand leaned back, kind of pressed herself closer, already feeling the panic the memories invoked. “I couldn’t move, when I woke up. I was hooked up to this machine, I could feel it or more like I was aware of it, and the sounds and the smells. Doctors and nurses, Randy, my parents would stand over me and tell me to relax and calm down. I had no idea what they were talking about, I wasn’t doing anything, I couldn’t move. I could feel my heart beating, and then it would stop or race or stutter, and it hurt, and then the machine would shock me. Trying to regulate my heart. It didn’t hurt really but the sensation was scary. Sometimes it would happen several times in a row and then I could breath a little easier, other times I blacked out because my heart would try to give out.”

“When I was finally able to sit up, I still couldn’t move, not much. I wanted to, but everything I did set the alarms off, made my heart work too hard. The room was always dark. Every time the door opened I could hear the media outside, they wouldn’t leave me a lone. One even got into my room when Randy went out. We couldn’t open the window because there were drones trying to take pictures. The situation wasn’t good for me. Kind of like yours right now, just in a different way.” Randy shifted in his seat slightly, but if they cared to look at him, he was haunted. “Eventually my parents convinced the doctors to let me go home, and they arranged to get me out of the hospital. I had to go by ambulance, and when I got home, it wasn’t home. My bedroom had been turned into a cardiac unit. I mostly slept the first few days, after that my frustration got the better of me. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. Just sitting up on my own was exhausting and scared me because my heart would start pounding. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone. I tried once and almost blacked out. Everyone tells you to relax, calm down, don’t think about what’s upsetting you. It’s true but it’s frustrating because you don’t know how. And no one would talk to me. I might ask upsetting questions about what happened to me, or want to talk about topics they thought was too stressful.”

“But then one day you wake up and you feel amazing. I wasn’t tired anymore, I knew where I was, my chest didn’t hurt, I could breathe easily, my fingers and toes were warm instead of cold. I felt good, wide awake, I could remember everything that had happened. Yeah it was scary, but I wasn’t confused. I had energy, I was hungry, I could yell for Randy from my room and not feel like I had run a 10k. I wanted to get up, but was told no. Don’t push it. I just wanted out of that room. I would have laid on the couch, I just wanted out of the isolation, to breathe away from the machines. “

Rand

Roman sat quietly, leaned against the bed but pressed towards Rand as he listened intently to her story. He was already doing better than she had, his chest would only hurt when he let himself get stressed out like this, or at least, so far. He was able to sit up, briefly, though listening to her he realized if he’d stood like he wanted to, he would have probably blacked out. She described a lot of how he felt, he’d only been awake a few hours and yet he felt exhausted. He’d thought it was because of Sickbay, because of the stress. That probably didn’t help, but his heart had to do with it too. He’d set off the alarms himself multiple times, either by sitting up and making his heart pound or by stressing out and making it beat too fast, work too hard. At least he’d been able to eat. It sounded like he was lucky in some ways, and that made him feel… Kind of bad. He sat quietly and listened as she spoke, her voice helping to relax him like when she told stories even though this one was so upsetting for both of them.

~ Roman

“Every day I felt better, I was awake longer, I was weaning more and more off the medicine. I started sneaking trips out of bed when no one was looking. To the kitchen, the bathroom, to stare out the window. At first I could tell, when I stood up or sat down how the movement messed with my blood pressure and heart rate. I figured it out though, how slow and fast to move, when to rest and to be near something I could hold onto. I was getting better though and…” a sigh escaped her, “I felt I knew my body better than the doctors. I was annoyed and bored and cooped up and stubborn. I didn’t want to sit in bed anymore. I didn’t want to go to work or run or anything like that. I just wanted normalcy. So when no one was paying attention, I left the house.” She looked over at Randy, “Tha mi cho duilich.” Randy shook his head and smiled at her. “I went for a walk. It was wonderful and freeing. I only walked, I didn’t do anything else but breathe the air and keep walking.” She moved around, uncomfortable with the memory. “Everything was fine, and then all I remember is suddenly my chest felt like fire and I couldn’t breathe. I....I woke up in the hospital, several days later, back on the machines, back on the meds. They kept me on fall and elopement watch. And sedated, so I wouldn’t do it again and being back in the hospital would stress my heart into another relapse. I set myself back months, and I didn’t get to leave the hospital again for 3 months, until they new I was completely healed.”

Rand

She sounded so much like him that Roman started to laugh. The movement of his chest caused some soreness, but the secret walks were exactly the kind of thing he would do. Except, he’d not care if someone found out or saw him. He’d tell them he was going and that’s that. He was very stubborn that way. And then he shook his head. On fall watch, sedated, and an extra three months? No, thanks. He hugged her, tightly but carefully. “That sounds awful. And precisely the sort of things I did when I was in Sickbay after…” he knew she’d know what he meant.

But what he said next would surprise her, because he never, ever, talked about his time in Sickbay after the Ardent’s attack. “I could, through stubborn determination, limp around on my leg, about a week after… what happened,” his voice shook and caught, but he went on, “and I’d wait until the nurses had someone else to deal with, then get up and limp my way to the observation deck and just look out the window. I ripped stitches twice and set back my recovery… probably a long time. I would get up and go somewhere anytime I had the chance.”

~ Roman

Rand was laying there, next to him, eyes closed, face turned into him, dealing with her own bad memories. Her hand wrapped around his and squeezed though as he talked. Her next words weren’t argumentative or pointing out anything, simple stating her fear. “Except now instead of ripped stitches your heart could stop and away from the machines they may not get you back fast enough.” She had been lucky someone had found her out on the dirt road.

Rand nodded, “Now on the ship normally, once you are doing better,” he held up a forestalling hand, “It’s not even been 12 hours yet, so hold it. Normally once you are better we encourage short walks to build your endurance. However we have to contend with our security issue now. So that changes things. How much I don’t know yet because you aren’t ready for short walks away from sickbay just yet.”

Randy