Snip

=/\= Sickbay. Bridge here. Captain Glen speaking. Can I have a status report please? What is your mix of casualties and patient numbers currently? =/\=

• Glen, CO

Grahams looked up from where he’d just administered some pain killer to the waking coma patient to help with their headache as they slowly came back into reality. He’d been hyperfocused on his patient as well as everyone else there that the new noise of the Captain’s voice nearly startled him. =/\= Captain, Lieutenant Grahams here. I’ll put it this way, one more patient into Sickbay and I think the walls will just about burst but there’s no casualties here, sir, just a lot of headaches. I’ll your timing is impeccable though, sir, we’ve just started to release treated officers, not many are going to be able to resume duties this shift though. I’d say a few more are a bound to replace them yet though. =/\=

Grahams paused, thinking for a moment. =/\= I recommend all essential staff get checked out too, sir. Whatever has been going on up there has tried turning a few brains to mush. Anyone feeling even slightly off should come down here now. Otherwise, once this rainfall is over, I’ll be sending an available staff member up to do those checks.=/\=

He turned his attention over the nurse and the medic and frowned a little, he wasn’t exactly keen to release either of them but if they stayed there was every risk that they made a mistake, or worse, became patients themselves. Especially the poor nurse who looked like she was going to pass out where she stood.

Making his decision he focused back on the patient again, and happy that they were beginning to show signs of the pain killer beginning to kick it he said, “Don’t try and get up just yet, let the medicine kick in fully before you try to sit up or you’ll feel dizzy.” Then for good measure he added, “Don’t try leaving either until I have signed you off.” with just hint in his tone that whispered… or else.

With his patient sorted he approached the nurse first, quietly pulling them aside. “You’re beginning to fatigue. I want you to go back to your quarters and rest for a minimum of 20 minutes nap time, after that you can choose to come back or continue resting,” he said softly, “But,” his voice firmed up, “If you argue with me, come back before that 20 minutes is up, or come back without enough rest time. You will be relieved of duty for this shift and be on bed pan duty for the rest of this shift rotation,”

Once he’d delt with her he slipped over to the medic and carefully pulled them to the side too. They looked slightly less tired that the nurse had, and he didn’t want to send away any more staff than he needed to. “Go take a break, now things are stabilized I think you can afford to take a break and if you’re still feeling fatigued than I want you to take yourself off and have a nap in your quarters.” he said, and then repeated what he’d said to the nurse about what would happen if they resumed duties while still this fatigued.

Lt. Kah Grahams, CMO

Sickbay had begun to stabilize — at least on the surface.

The moment the Merrimack established sustained contact with the impossible city surrounding them, the change across the medical monitors became immediate enough that several displays auto-refreshed simultaneously.

Neural stress markers that had been wildly fluctuating for hours began to level out. Not normalizing per se but synchronizing.

Patients who moments earlier had suffered from crippling migraines, nausea, vertigo, and disorientation now showed reduced cortical instability. Several of the waking coma patients regained consciousness almost at once, though many awoke with the same distant expression — as though listening to something far away.

MEDICAL STATUS UPDATE:
NEURAL DESYNCHRONIZATION EVENTS DECREASING
CORTICAL HARMONIC ACTIVITY STABILIZING
UNKNOWN EXTERNAL SYNCHRONIZATION SOURCE DETECTED

Then the unsettling part emerged. The crew’s neural patterns were no longer diverging from one another.
They were beginning to resemble each other.

Not identical. But rhythmically aligned in subtle ways that should not have been biologically possible between unrelated individuals.

One of the biobeds chirped softly. A patient who had been unconscious for nearly six hours opened their eyes and quietly whispered:

“…it knows we’re here now.”

Around Sickbay, the headaches were easing. But the silence replacing them felt far worse.

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare