At The Sharp End - Part 1

Posted on 29 Oct 2023 @ 6:32pm by Lieutenant Commander Raviran Dattek-Winters
Edited on on 15 Nov 2023 @ 9:52am

1,135 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Outbreak
Location: Planetside
Timeline: three days ago

Raviran had worked for so long this shift she couldn't remember how many hours ago she had left her little allocated room this morning - well, she'd been on nights so it had only just been this morning technically having been a 01.00 start as she vaguely recalled it.

She stumbled out, not having done any more than wash and clean herself up to a suitable medical standard and throw on a light coat. It was late afternoon it would seem, beginning to shadow up towards dusk. That was a surprise. Just a handful more hours and it would have been a whole 24hr shift. No wonder she was so exhausted.

Carrying her medkit, her own from the Cygnus - she never went anywhere off ship without it - she felt light-headed. ~When did I last eat?~ she was just wondering, trying to think what it was she had been given for a meal. Nothing..... there had been no dinner break - No breakfast break - No lunch break. ~Dammit! Slave-drivers could at least have brought me a snack!~ she cursed silently inside her own head. She began to try to remember if she'd even been brought drinks? ~yes, a Tea.... when?~
She was just trying to piece it together as she thought she might have been brought water but was so dizzy she couldn't really pin that memory down either.

Suddenly a foot shot out directly in front of her and as she tripped, someone hit her with something hard, on her shoulder, accelerating her fall to a heavy one, all four limbs on the ground and he bag sent flying.

Someone growled at her. It was a long way up to the person's face as Ravi strained to turn back to stare upwards to see who it was. He spat at her and raised a heavy object to strike again but another passer-by caught his arm and remonstrated with him.

"This is the little doctor who saved my Flerill! I won't let you hurt her!" the saving Antocian said to the attacker and the two wrestled over the staff - or whatever the heavy blunt object was - Ravi couldn't tell from her position on the ground.

There was a flurry of Antocian words, angry and determined before the more people approached and the attacker was finally convinced to go back to wherever he came from.

Ravi got up heavily. Adding the blow to her shoulder and the heavy landing to her previous exhaustion and hunger, she wasn't very steady on her feet and swayed alarmingly.

The Antocian who had saved her was vaguely familiar but Ravi was too out of focus to place him exactly. She did remember a child called Flerill though. Flerill had been a very sick little girl indeed and Ravi had tended to her for more than a week of high fevers that wouldn't break and resisted all attempts to soothe them. There had been several moments when they had nearly lost her, but she'd been a fighter and had pulled through, thank the stars or what might have happened here just a few minutes ago? Ravi dreaded to think!

"Thank you!" Ravi told the towering Antocian who had rescued her.

"You should get home.... to the dormitories...... there are riots on the street and in the centre of town." He told her, helping her to stand straight and facing her to the direction of her rooms.

"Riots?" Ravi said, in alarm, her head creating its own personal riot and making the whole vertical position into a serious challenge to her, never mind making her way back to the rooms that had been allocated to herself and CPO Nurse Paul Harriss, also from the Cygnus and the only person on this whole planet that she .... wait, there was a Security Detail here, she remembered. ~What was happening to *them* if there were riots?~ she thought feeling a shot of adrenaline from the fear of what might have gone on out here lately whilst she was working inside the hospital complex with no awareness?

The 'fight or flight' reflex lifted Ravi's consciousness and she heard the tall voice continue:

"Yes, that was where your attacker had come from." Flerril's father's voice was all the fainter for his height above her, probably only average height for an Antiocan but hugely tall to a Cardassian/Bajoran who only came up to his hip - even at her own full height - if she could stay upright enough to display that measurement?

"I had no idea." she stammered, wondering if these people had discovered something that she so desperately didn't want them to know yet. Not until her own people could get the epidemic under control at least!

"It's been happening all day. It happened yesterday too" the tall man explained in very good Federation Standard. Ravi suddenly realised he had used that language to explain to the rioter that she was "the little doctor who had saved his daughter" but had then returned to Antocian to continue their quarrel. ~Curious?~ she thought fleetingly, her focus fading again for a little bit there.

"Hurry off the street! I can't be expected to save you again..... I have to get home myself." he ushered her forwards to the sidewalk.

"Yes......" Ravi tried hard to refind her focus again - she needed to know where exactly she was. Looking all around her surroundings, she realised the man was leaving and almost out of range of her words now
"Thanks again" she called after him.

She had *stumbled* out of the medical centre earlier, but now she was now seriously hobbling, tripping, wobbling and staggering about like a drunken person! Somehow she managed to recognise a corner that she was sure she had to turn and then a building she recognised that she needed to approach. Barely into the porchway, a mob barrelled past and swept the outer door closed behind her with a slam and although someone seemed to shout out and point at her, the momentum of the crowd swept them all on down the street before anything else could happen.

Terrifying flashes of towering Antocians with angry contorted faces, loud bellowing voices yelling and a frenetic pace that was gathering speed as it passed-by, were all too much for the injured and exhausted doctor so she bolted inside all the way through the doors, down the corridors and, probably by instinct but certainly not by conscious navigation skills, she found herself scrambling in her battered med-kit for her device to unlock the door to her room and the sanctuary it offered.

Alone and finally safe in her room, breathing hard and sinking down to the floor, her back sliding down against the door she had just closed behind herself, Ravi lost consciousness.

tbc...

 

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