Scrub Up: Riley Grey Part 2
Posted on March 13th, 2019 by Emilaina Acacia and Ryleigh Grey

~Emilaina Acacia Featuring Riley Grey~

Doctor Acacia breathed with relief as she finally disposed of her second set of surgical gloves. She hadn’t expected to be in surgery once, yet alone twice in one day.. but she’d been there when her CMO needed her, and now everyone who’d been injured was improving. So why did she still have that nasty, twisting feeling in the pit of her stomach? Why was something still… wrong? For the first time in a long time, Emily kind of wished her human half wasn’t muting her empathy so she might get something a little more specific than vague looming badness.

Just as the Doctor sat down on the bridge to take a deep breath, having announced that the Captain was awake, there was a thud as Riley’s head hit her console. Every muscle in her body still alive with tension, Acacia was at her side in seconds.

This time Emily even surprised herself–she kept a completely straight face as everyone on the bridge crowded around, worriedly watching Riley regain consciousness. Knowing her duty in the chain of crew morale she seamlessly said, “I’m relieving you of duty. Go take a nap.”

Now, the scan did show that Riley was exhausted, but it also showed some abnormal neurological activity. Thing was, the whole crew was waiting on their Captain who had just gotten out of surgery.. so Emily lied. A small lie. Or.. an intentional omission of information. She let them all believe Riley was going off to nap, and she stayed on the bridge for a few more minutes so as not to arouse suspicion before mumbling something about checking on her research specimens and excusing herself.

—

Starfleet Medical had prepared Doctor Acacia for the fact that marines (among others) could be notoriously Doctor-averse, but nothing had quite prepared her for Riley Grey. See, Doctor Acacia wasn’t exactly the kind of Doctor who took patients, if she could help it. She preferred her research, or consultation on someone else’s patients with extremely rare and complex conditions. She liked numbers, cells, and germs, they didn’t have patient consent forms and they didn’t feel pain.

Of course, she figured a few of the crew would end up her responsibility once she was on a starship, but she’d expected Tailor to hand her a list–instead, Acacia found herself instinctively chasing down people who were trying to slip through the cracks because it just came as naturally to her as bringing soup to someone with the flu. Doctor Tailor was great with patients that wanted help… and Acacia’s half-breed brain was programmed to hunt down the ones that didn’t.

Emily had started to get used to Riley’s… behavior. In fact, she’d known full well that Riley wasn’t going to go take a nap, she was even betting on it as she hadn’t yet ruled out conditions that would make sleeping unsafe, the Doctor had just put off convincing her to cooperate until the crew’s attention was diverted. She was almost annoyed at herself for thinking she’d managed to get all the pieces into place too soon as she found herself staring not at the door to Grey’s quarters, but at the door to the ship gym. She held a small silver tray with a cup of warm tea and a tin of cream from her personal possessions that she had planned to bring to Grey’s quarters, her expression betraying for a few long moments that she wasn’t amused.

The door swished open, and Riley was running on a treadmill near the back of the room. She didn’t spot the Doctor so she just kept running, it had only been about ten minutes, and she was just working up a light sweat. Emily sat the tray down in the corner and walked over, calmly snatching the safety out of the treadmill, causing it to shut down.

Riley looked at her, eyes widening slightly at being caught out. She stood up a bit straighter, puffing out her chest, putting on the air of fine-ness as best she could.

“Riley,” Emily began slowly, her tone bit more chiding than she intended for it to be, “I want to be clear, when I said take a nap.. I was telling you that you need to rest. You’re physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. I could understand if you didn’t want to sleep, but of all places, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I swear, I’m not exhausted, Doctor,” Riley began, grinding her teeth together to manage her own tone, which came out a bit more aggressive than she meant for it to, but it also didn’t bother her if it might mean the Doctor would go away… “I know I blacked out, but it’s basically nothing. I’m fine.”

“Basically nothing?” Emily blinked incredulously. She took a deep breath, then thought for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose, “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Health isn’t a switch on or off, something wrong or right with you.. it’s something you do–or don’t do–every day, and then we keep fucking it up until we die. You and I both know randomly losing consciousness isn’t normal, and you should probably get that figured out, for your own sake. I want to help you *do* that. Are you going to let me?”

Riley sighed deeply, her shoulders deflating slightly. She nodded, “Yes, ma’am.”

Emily shook her head, retrieving the tea and the tin, offering the mug to her, “You can call me Emily. Or any of the dozen other variations of my name. How much sleep do you usually get?”

Riley took the tea, sipping it with a deep, grateful breath and thinking for a moment, “Two, maybe three hours on good nights. What’s the tin for?”

“It’s called oraki cream, it’s a Betazese herbal remedy, helps me sleep. You rub a bit under your nose before bed. It’s not a prescription, nor a drug, just.. a personal recommendation,” Emily realized, adding, “Ah, Betazese is like.. hah, Betazed Australia. Where my dad is from. Anyway, have you always slept that little? Since childhood?”

Riley took the tin and slipped it into her bag, laughing at the idea of Betazed Australia and then taking another sip of the warm tea, “Not usually. I used to get ten to twelve hours of sleep a night before I joined the marines. That’s just what we got during basic, and.. I got used to it. And I’ve been.. sore. And a little blurry, even earlier, before I blacked out.”

“Sore where?” Emily asked, drumming her fingers together thoughtfully, “And how’s your diet?”

Riley placed a finger on her incision, drawing it along to her temple, “Along here. Um.. pretty good, I eat a lot of fruits, veggies, meats. I have to eat more than normal because I burn it off fast.”

“You have a pretty heavy exercise load, yeah?” the Doctor took her tricorder out of her pocket, asking without making a move first, “Mind if I scan that soreness?”

“Scan away,” Riley twisted, turning the sore side towards Acacia. She sighed, “But please don’t send me back to sickbay. I hate it there.. plus, I’ll always escape.”

Taken off guard Acacia laughed so hard she snorted, slapping a hand over her mouth briefly as if to contain it. She shook her head, grinning, “I don’t want you there. I want you healthy,” she began scanning, “So I know it’s contrived to tell you to get more sleep, because trying to relax is one hell of an oxymoron. But a human sleep cycle takes about ninety minutes. If you’re averaging under three hours, you’d be waking up mid-cycle, which makes you feel more tired sometimes, but it also means you lose the benefit of that second cycle. If possible you want to sleep in 90-minute blocks, so three hours would work. A good way to do that is to note the time before you sleep, and set your alarm for three hours later.”

Riley laughed at Acacia’s snort, her smile lingering. Off guard, she blurted, “But why should I change my sleep schedule, I didn’t faint because I’m tired. It was the pain–” she grimaced, immediately regretting her words, “–ah, forget that part.”

The Doctor’s hand paused, and she slowly lowered the tricorder wand. She thought for a moment then spoke, her voice silky, “I will. If that’s what you really want. But… do you want to be in pain?”

Riley hesitated visibly, “No ma’am.” Being the lowest ranking member of the main Atlantis crew, the Doctor could have ordered her to the medbay and she’d have to obey, so what use was lying? She sighed, “I’ve felt kind of.. off for most of the day so far, since I woke up from the surgery.”

“That’s okay,” Emily replied simply, wanting to put Riley at ease, “Surgery is a form of trauma. Every body reacts differently to every kind of trauma. It would really help me figure it out if you could explain, in detail, what’s been going on.”

Riley rubbed her arm guiltily, “It’s been.. sensitive, sore, definitely painful,” she murmured, “We… just sort of slipped past the nurses, went back to duty while you and Tailor were in surgery. So I don’t know if they even checked… over the hours, it just felt worse and worse. Blurry, a little.. fuzzy, maybe.”

Acacia scrunched up her nose, trying and ultimately succeeding not to roll her eyes. She couldn’t fathom the lack of self-preservation instinct these marines had, “They may’ve done while you were still out. But a basic tricorder scan comes back normal. Surgery is painful, could just be that.. could be soreness, bruising, or something really serious. Don’t know yet. Do you have any personal or family history of clotting disorders? Blood disorders of any kind?”

“No,” Riley replied immediately. A few seconds passed, and she snapped back, “Wait, yes, my maternal grandfather had a clotting disorder. He took twice as long to heal as a normal person.. I don’t remember the name, but he died from an undetected bleed in his heart.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, and before she even spoke, her expression said, ‘well that might have been nice to know’, “Now see, that’s not fun. I definitely need to run some of the real tests… you don’t want to go to sickbay? Honestly, I usually don’t either. Have you seen the medical research lab?”

Riley nodded rapidly at the prospect of not going to sickbay, “Sickbay reminds me too much of a hospital,” she finished her tea, holding the warm mug in both hands to warm her fingers, “You can test me there?”

“If you can stomach it. It’s my home turf, I promise it’s not so bad. Plus we have way cooler toys than sickbay,” Acacia gestured for Riley to follow her, and she did.

The two made their way down to the medical research lab. True to the Doctor’s word, it was full of big machines, metal, glowing blue lights and science crewmen working with samples. It definitely felt a bit more like a scientific operation than a medical one, which could be useful for putting someone like RIley at ease.

Riley looked around at all of the machines, wondering what they did, “Sssooo… what tests are you gonna run?”

“I’d like to run blood factors if you don’t mind, ah–a machine that separates your blood into everything that makes it up, all the different little parts, looking for.. well, anything. Then the main thing I need is a live tissue scan of your brain around the surgery site, maybe your heart, spinal column, or other places if we don’t find a problem there,” the Doctor stopped next to a table with a bunch of gadgets on it, turning one on and fiddling with it.

Riley glanced around Acacia at the table, eyeing all of the gadgets. She raised an eyebrow, “So, hop up, or…?”

“Just.. configuring..” the Doctor smirked, giving a small “hah” of triumph, spinning the device around to face Riley, “Put your hand on this and it’ll take the blood for factoring. I’ve finagled the medical transporter to be able to do blood draws in here so it shouldn’t even pinch.”

Riley put her hand on the pad, looking around suspiciously before slowly taking it off. She looked back to Acacia, “How bad off was I?”

“Bad off? Meaning?” Emily grabbed a chair, putting it on the big display pad at the center of the room, her white lab coat billowing slightly as she hopped back off the pad. If her hair weren’t up any time she was on duty she’d look a lot like a mad scientist, wide grin on her face from enjoying the cool toys her grueling education gave her access to. Acacia grabbed one of the thin translucent program nodes out of the wall near the front of the lab and stuck it into the machine, the white light of the pad turning to a pale blue.

“Like.. could I have gone without surgery?” Riley’s eyes were fixed on Acacia as she stepped up to the controls of the device, translucent blue computer screens appearing around her at elbow height.

“Oh, um..” Emily was caught off guard, an exceptionally human moment as she was visibly uncomfortable, “No use dwelling on the past, but… no. We had to.” She cleared her throat, gesturing to the pad and moving on, “Now this thing here is either the most fascinating or horrifying experience of your life depending on your stomach. It’s gonna project a live 3D image of your innards we can peel layers off of to look for anomalies. You can keep your back turned if you don’t want to see it. Thoughts?”

“Sounds interesting,” Riley replied, looking at the pad, “How do you want me?”

“Sitting,” Emily gestured, and Riley stepped up, sitting down in the chair, “I’d say you can stand, but it works better the less you move.”
The Doctor began punching in a bunch of commands into the controls.

Riley hoisted herself into the chair, watching the doctor’s every movement, before she relaxed slightly, “So, if you find something… what would that mean? More procedures or what?”

“Depends on what I find,” Emily said softly, “could be anything from bedrest to a gene edit–err, rarely that, mind, though I am one of the few who can do it. Weird and unusual and hard to find is what I actually do. My specialties are cross-species hybrid genetics and immunology. Three of my recent patients’ treatment plans are now published as studies because they were the first of their kind. I.. guess what I’m trying to say is… I hope you can forgive if I don’t make promises. It’s not you, it’s… statistics. I see an unusual amount of the worst possible things that can happen, and I do a lot more germs and genes than blood and bruising.”

The machine whirred to life, the pad illuminating a little brighter, thin beams of blue light hitting Riley in a few places from above. An image of a sitting woman appeared mirroring Riley—due to the nature of the program, some features were obscured. The figure was blue, had no face, wore no clothing, and didn’t have many outside details.

Riley nodded, finally deciding aloud, “I trust you.” Her expression confirmed her words, her expression absolute gratitude for the Doctor’s help. Riley looked at the mirror image before straightening up, which it also did. Riley nodded, “Okay. Let’s see what’s causing the issues.”

Emily smiled softly, punching in the last bit of math. The figure’s body disappeared below the head, and the head enlarged. It peeled back the blue skin to reveal skull, the site of the injury clear from the small cracks leftover.

The skull then peeled away, and below a semi-translucent layer of white fluid, the grey brain became visible, pulsing in random spots with colored activity, electrical pulses showing up as blue sparks across the brain.

Acacia still typing, the image peeled away the layer of cerebrospinal fluid, leaving the pulsing brain image exposed. On the surface, all appeared normal, if not unnerving. Then the program peeled away the top layer of brain, leaving a strange shaved shaped of the brain missing about a quarter inch of tissue. Emily grabbed a pen and stepped onto the pad to get a closer look.

Riley tilted her head, causing the image to flicker out. Realizing, she immediately straightened up, grinning crookedly. Her smile was wiped instantly as she spotted something, pointing at it as the Doctor walked up next to her, “Is that a bleed? A… big one?”

Emily looked at the image, frowning as well when she saw the bubbling red pouring out of a spot on the image, “That’s what it looks like to me. you’re perceptive, most people assume they can’t read these,” the Doctor used the pen to zoom in on the bleed, grimacing, “Now we can talk options. You need a graft, basically we put an artificial blood vessel in place to stop the bleed. We can go in surgically. There’s also a method, it’s becoming more accepted but it’s still experimental, where a graft can be done with a medical transporter without surgery.”

Riley hesitated, thinking over both offered options. “Can I ask what would the surgical option entail?” she asked slowly, “I don’t know if I want to attempt something fairly new, you know? Nothing against your skill as a doctor, just… I think I want to go with the surgical option.”

The Doctor waved a hand almost to dismiss the sentiment, “It’s more about whether your trust a machine to make subatomically precise calculations inside your brain, but I appreciate your confidence,” she nodded, “Surgery is similar, I make an incision big enough for the needle, and graft on a bit of artificial tissue to repair the blood vessel. I just do it by hand. Really, up to you.”

Riley pursed her lips in thought before answering, “Surgery. I underwent it once, so a second time shouldn’t be hard.”

Emily bobbed her head lightly, unable to help a small smirk as she felt deeply self-satisfied at having gotten her to willingly agree to treatment. She turned off the device, the holo-brain disappearing as she stepped off the control platform, “Then to the ICU we go, unfortunately we do need the sterile environment. I’ll have two nurses meet us there. Shall we?”

—

“So, Riley, if you want, you can stay conscious. I have to give you a heavy sedative so you don’t feel anything, and you do have to be restrained to be sure you don’t move, but this can be fairly minor if we move fast and I prefer not to knock people out if I can, what do you think?” the Doctor tied the string at the back of her neck to secure on her scrubs, her fingers aching as she wished she could at least change the color of the damn things.

Riley’s eyebrows raised, and she thought about it for a moment, “I won’t feel it?”

“No,” Acacia assured, “If you do you can say so and we’ll up the dose.”

“I’d really like to try that,” Riley nodded eagerly, and the Doctor glanced to Nurse Hastings, who got up to prepare the IV. Once Acacia had her gloves on she took Riley back into the surgical suite, and had her lay down on her stomach. The head of the table was fitted with metal straps, and as the nurses brushed her fingers and toes and Riley confirmed she had no feeling, the Doctor carefully tightened the straps.

“Alright, begin recording, emergency surgery on Riley Grey, performed by Doctor Emilaina Acacia and assisted by nurses Julia Hastings and Laura Ortez. We’ve detected a brain bleed, presumed post-surgical complication, and we’re going in to graft. The articulate needle is loaded with the artificial blood vessel, are we good to go?”
The nurses nodded.

“Do you always do that?” Riley mumbled a bit drunkenly, her vision blurred from the drugs.

“We do. Helps prevent mistakes. Julia, aim the laser scalpel,” Acacia took a moment to pin down Riley’s hair around the spot, leaving the spot bare. She then double checked the nurse’s math–which was correct–and fired the laser scalpel into Riley’s head, creating a linear hole for the needle right through the skull without boring any deeper.

“Feel anything, Riley?” Emily purred.

“Feel what? I feel great,” Riley mumbled happily.

The Doctor smiled softly, grabbing one of the strange tools at the end of the surgical table’s arms. It had a long needle on the end, and she pressed the button to test it, causing the needle to bend and snake freely as she manipulated the thumb pad. She took a deep breath, practicing the correct snaking a few times before leaning in, resting her elbows on the table to steady herself, “Alright, here we go.”

Both Riley and Acacia took a deep breath. The Doctor pressed the needle into the incision, carefully manipulating the needle around the bump of the brain she was trying to avoid, allowing it to reach the bleed while breaking the smallest possible amount of brain tissue. A screen on the table showed a simple image of the brain, allowing her to see when she reached the depth she needed to.

She flipped a switch on the arm and the device lit up with a blue light. She began slowly pulling the needle out, and the light shining out of it fused the artificial blood vessel it was delivering to the damaged tissue. When the needle came back out the vessel was in place, and the light briefly reactivated to fuse the bit of brain it punctured to get in.

“Alright. Julia, get the live scan up. Riley, it’s done. We’re checking now to see if it stuck,” Acacia handed the tool off to the other nurse for cleaning, walking around to see the screen the nurse had pulled the scans up on. She flipped through them, nodding slowly, “Looking good…”

The computer bleeped, thinking for a second. The scan image switched to live, showing pulsing blood and sparks of blue light around the tissue. Doctor Acacia leaned against the table, sighing with relief, “Okay. It took, she’s pumping blood. Undo the straps.”

Riley rolled over, sitting up slowly with the help of Nurse Ortez, who was holding a cotton ball to the site to wait for it to stop bleeding. She smiled a half-drunk crooked smile, “hwell I feel better already.”

“You’d still be feeling the drugs,” Nurse Hastings chided, poking and prodding Riley with tests, “Try not to move too much until you can feel everything.”

—

Doctor Acacia checked briefly that the door to her quarters had shut behind her before stripping off her uniform, replacing it with a clean one. Well, her uniform might have been clean and in fact probably was, but it still felt, in the spiritual sense, that it had the Captain and Riley’s blood on it. She tossed her uniform into the sanitizer and fell onto her bed. A small light on one of her consoles caught her attention.

“Computer.. notifications?” she gritted her teeth, already sitting back up to get back to work.

“One new message in program Acacia 52,” the computer replied. Emily raised an eyebrow.

“A new message from dadbot? What’s it called?”

“Hat trick,” the computer replied. Emily snorted. She smiled, shaking her head and getting back to work.

—

Some indeterminate amount of time later in the medical research lab, the blood factoring test would complete, a small green light ominously signaling its job done…