Autopsy

Posted on 12 Jul 2017 @ 11:17pm by Commander Jayla Kij & Lieutenant Jennin Rhula
Edited on on 12 Jul 2017 @ 11:40pm

1,421 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: The Finnean Crisis
Location: Pathology Lab
Timeline: MD 5 || 1515 hours

Rhula had beamed directly to his lab with the deceased Starfleet officer. He pulled up the readings from the quick scans he'd taken on the da Gama. He sat at his computer console and touched a serious controls, first to begin the computer running more in depth scans and second to summon a med tech to assist with the autopsy.

Once she returned to the Black Hawk, Jayla hurried back to Sick Bay where a dead body was waiting for her. This was the part of Medicine she hated most. There was nothing she could do for the patient and her only job was to find a cause of death.

She made her way back towards the morgue where she found a body already laid out on an exam table with a couple of nurses prepping the tools she would need. "All right, she said, automatically holding out a hand for a PaDD. "What have we got?"

"I've got a corpse," the Bajoran man stated, annoyed that he was going to have to deal with his other Trill. Just then, the doors opened again and a petty officer walked in. "Give me a hand," Jennin said to the med tech. "I'll let you know of my findings when we're done," he informed Kij.

Normally, Jayla would have simply thanked him, turned on her heals and left; she hated autopsies, if you'll remember. But, something about this man's manner caused her left eyebrow to raise. "Excuse me," she said. "I am the chief medical officer. Performing autopsies is my duty unless I delegate it to someone else. And I don't remember asking you to do it."

"Actually," he replied, "as the ship's pathologist, autopsies are my duty." He activated the overhead sensors so they could begin the in-depth scans needed to determine cause of death. "You are, of course, welcome to observe."

Damn. He was right. But, in Jayla's defense, she wasn't used to having a pathologist. His manner made her want to argue, but she opted to swallow her pride instead. "You're right," she said in a carefully even tone. "I apologize. I haven't had a pathologist before. I'll assist," she told the technician. "That is, if Lieutenant Jennin does not object," she added quickly.

Anything but that! "Fine," he answered curtly. He turned back to his console and began looking at some of the scan results. "No signs of toxins, drugs, or poisons," he read out. This wasn't a surprise based on the blood staining the uniform around a small wound on man's chest. The console chirped. He had restarted his algorithm to identify the body. It had returned a result. "Ensign Yoshihiro Akagi. Chief Operations Officer, USS Vasco da Gama."

"How sad," muttered Jayla. It was worse, in her opinion, when someone young died. She shook herself and opened her mouth to start ordering tests to run when she remembered that she wan't in charge and quickly closed it again. So many things were just automatic. She felt like she understood now how Doctor Road must have felt after stepping down from the CMO spot on the Patriot.

To Rhula, that someone died was simply a result of having been born, a simple function of life. But then, tending to the dead was his job, so his view was decidedly different from others. Besides which, he'd spent the first half of his life on Bajor during the Cardassian Occupation. He'd seen many things worse than death under the boots of the reptilian bastards who had stripped his homeworld of resources, including enslaving his people, for several generations. Sometimes, death is better than living, he thought.

"Check his lower extremities for physical injuries," he instructed, more than asked, Kij. Meanwhile, he began a detailed exploration of the chest wound.

There wasn't much to find there as Jayla quickly realized. "Old bruise on the Anterior left thigh," she reported. "Almost completely healed at the time of death. Probably didn't even know it was there." She continued checking and reported two chipped fingernails, but nothing of note.

"Well, well, well," Rhula said, leaning over the body with a small sensor probe mounted on the end of an explorer. He pushed the end of the tool into the wound and began gathering more data about the injury. "This is how he died," he said matter-of-factly. He directed Kij's attention to the display on the bulkhead above the slab where the probe readouts were showing. "Severe internal trauma. I'm surprised there wasn't more blood when we found him."

As she examined the data on the display, her brow wrinkled. "That's a lot of damage for such a little wound," she pointed out. "Lacerations all over his lungs, score marks on a few ribs... and look at all that sort tissue damage! How in the universe did all that come from that tiny wound?"

"That," the Bajoran man started, "is a very good question. One which, hopefully, we will be able to answer." He pulled the probe out and, after setting it down, went back to his computer console. Using the results of the internal scans he'd just run with the probe, he had the computer generate a model of the implement that caused the damage to the Ensign. Putting the image on the large display side-by-side with the wound data, he studied them. "Doesn't look quite right," he said aloud, talking more to himself than anything. "That wouldn't do that much damage. Not with a single insertion. But to stab someone repeatedly....and perfectly land in the original point of entry....Not the act of a crazed person. This took focus and attention."

The story just kept getting worse. Jayla shivered. "Even if someone did have the focus and attention to do that, how did they keep him still long enough to do it?" she wondered aloud. "Unless they sedated him? Should we check his blood for sedatives?"

A decent doctor after all, he told himself, but that doesn't make her any more likable. Motioning towards the corpse, he indicated that she should do as she suggested.

Without wasting any time, Jayla quickly took the sample and plugged it into the computer to be analysed. Almost immediately, the results began scrolling across the screen. He'd been in decent health- his blood sugar was slightly high, but not dangerously so- but toxicology showed nothing. Not even a pain killer. "He's clean," she said, puzzled. "No sedatives."

"Not sedated....," his voice trailed off. How could this happen? Who could do this? were the questions in his mind. "Not sedated, but subjected to a careful, prolonged attack. An attack that killed him," he muttered. His eyes darted over the readouts in front of him.

"And with no bruising or abrasions of the extremities, it isn't likely that he caught back," she added. "So either he was caught off guard and the attacker acted very quickly or he was a willing victim."

The Bajoran looked up at Kij. "Suicide," he suggested.

Jayla gave him a highly skeptical look. "How could someone commit suicide that way?" she asked. "I'll admit that stabbing oneself- even multiple times- is possible, but to somehow manage to stab oneself multiple times in the same place? How?"

"That," Rhula said, turning his attention back to the corpse, "is the question. I want to collect some tissue samples. In case the sensors aren't picking something up." Modern technology generally worked decently well, but there were times when you just needed to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. During the Occupation, he'd done a lot of that as a young medic. He was used to practicing far more hands-on medicine than what most in Starfleet were used to.

"Thank you for the assist. I've got it from here," he stated. "I'm sure you have still living patients who could use some attention."

Jayla shrugged. Nobody was really that bad that they required much attention. "Are you sure you can manage on your own?" she asked. "I could send a tech if you need an assistant."

"If I need further assistance, I will let you know."

"All right," Jayla agreed. With nothing left to say, she returned to main Sick Bay. This was, by far, the strangest suicide she'd ever seen.

As the Trill Chief Medical Officer left, Rhula opened a drawer containing his instruments and some sample dishes. He had work to do.

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