Special Recognition of a recently new Player

Kirok · March 01, 2017, 12:53:59 AM

Fleeters,

I want to take a minute to recognize one for our recently new players, Hannah Peeters, on a post she recently wrote.

It was actually sent to my by Alex Wu who served as this person's instructor in the Academy. He said the following:

'Although she is a new member to Shadowfleet and the post was submitted as part of her OTC, the content itself is highly relevant to her character's background and development. Asides from being incredibly well written and emotionally touching, I believe it offers valuable insight into her character's past in a unique and intimate format. If this is only a sampling of Ms. Peeter's literary abilities and devotion to detail, I believe she will rapidly become an important contributor on her simms. I personally look forwards to reading her future submissions and collaborations.'

And here is the post he is talking about:

Quote from: Hannah Peeters on February 19, 2017, 10:06:47 AM
[USS Galileo - Turbolift]

Beeeeep

"Mom!"

Beeeeep

"Mom, wake up!"

Beeeeep

$=/\=$ Hannah to Captain Peeters. $=/\=$

Beeeeep

$=/\=$ Hannah to the bridge. $=/\=$

Beeeeep

$=/\=$ Hannah to anyone on the ship. $=/\=$

Beeeeep

"Computer ... can anyone hear me? Is it ... are they all unconscious, like my Mom?"

That information is unavailable. Internal sensors are offline.

"Why isn't my comm badge working?"

Communications are off line.

Hannah may have been only ten years old, but she knew that didn't make any sense. At its core, a comm badge was just a radio transceiver. As long as it had power, it could function independently of the ship's systems.

Your logic is flawed, Hannah.

Hannah frowned and looked up. "No, yours is!" She was pretty sure the ship hadn't been programmed to talk to her like that. Besides, since when could it read her thoughts? "I want to call the Captain! Let me talk to my Dad!"

Captain Peeters is dead. What do you hear, Hannah?

She looked at her mother, still lying motionlessly next to her where she had fallen a few eternal minutes earlier, then back up to where the computer's disembodied voice came from.

Beeeeeep

Asystole. The term came to her unbidden. She couldn't remember where she'd heard it before; couldn't remember what it was, exactly. And then an image flashed in her mind. A flat line. Cardiac arrest.

Very good, Hannah. What do you do when a patient flatlines?

"I'm ten years old! I don't know these things!"

Yes, Hannah. You do. Think. It will come to you.

She closed her eyes tightly, trying to conjure something up; more words came unbidden. Tachycardia. Ventricular fibrilation. Shockable rhythms.

"Do I place a heart monitor?"

That wouldn't show you anything you don't already know. What do you do with a flatline?

Push epinephrine. Or any of a number of other adrenergic drugs. Cross your heart and hope to God it starts back up again. Then find the cause before the next bout of cardiac arrest.

"I have no med kit here! No drugs, no equipment, nothing!"

If a medic came in here with the right equipment, what would that person do?

"Transport the patient to Sickbay for immediate resusciation."

Unable to comply. Transporters are off line. Think harder, Hannah!

Initiate mechanical resuscitation. Ventilate the patient. Periodically check for restoration of spontaneous circulation and breathing.

Better. What if there was no spontaneous restoration?

Hannah closed her eyes. "He'd want to know if a schock had been administered."

Correct. Would there have been?

Slowly, she shook her head. "No. You don't shock a flatline."

And what's the third criterion?

"The arrest having been witnessed by emergency medical personnel."

+++

Hannah sat bolt upright in her dorm room bed, breathing hard. "She should never have been resuscitated!"

All this time. All this time, she'd carried a huge burden of guilt for not having been able to save her mother, ten years ago in that turbolift. But if the patient hadn't been the Captain's wife, and the first responders had followed protocol ...

"Computer, what are the criteria for termination of resuscitation in the field?"

Cardiac arrest not witnessed by medical personnel. No shock administered. No restoration of spontaneous circulation.

Three out of three. Hannah remembered, now, that by the time she and her mother had been freed from that turbolift, the resuscitation stimulator from a standard med kit didn't do anything for her anymore. Her circulation failed to spontaneously pick up again, even after the twenty minutes on the stimulator that it took to get her to Sickbay, with the turbolift still off line. She was eventually brought back to life using Sickbay systems, but ... she shouldn't have been. Hypoxic brain injuries, resulting from long periods of arrested respiration, are usually irreversible. She shouldn't have been.

"It wasn't my fault," Hannah said softly, into the darkness of her dorm room. Nobody could hear her, but that didn't matter. It didn't in any way diminish the importance of this realization. If she'd been an adult, she might have been strong enough to keep her mother's circulation going with manual heart compressions. But she hadn't been. She'd been a ten-year-old child. And by the time the adults got there, by all rights, they should have let her go. They didn't. Now, her mother was blind and cognitively impaired because of that.

That night in her dorm room, for the first time in ten years, Hannah cried. She cried for the helpless child she had once been. She cried for what had happened to her mother. She cried for all they both had lost. But for the first time in a long time, she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt: it wasn't her fault.