Livewire

Posted on Tue Jun 21st, 2022 @ 9:34pm by Lieutenant Commander Mark Johnson & Lieutenant JG Patra Rommel

Mission: Arista
Location: Jefferies Tube to sick bay

Lieutenant Patra had on her comfortable coveralls/jumpsuit with a dark blue baseball cap with the symbol of the Federation Merchant Marine and the motto "To maintain the economic health and strength of the Federation and all of its members." in golden stitching on her head. She wore a tool kit belt and carried a spool of old fashioned copper wire. She was chewing on her gum and stopped at the entrance to a Jefferies tube. She ducked in and began the arduous climb up. Once she arrived at the first of the Wayfarer’s shield generators she sat back and began to unspool the copper wire, cutting lengths off that would allow it to go over and beneath the generator. She blew a bubble in her gum and snapped it back into her mouth. She began the process of slowly creating a copper wire grid cage around the shield generator. She chewed furiously at her gum as she began to perspire from the heat in the confined space. Several times she pricked her fingers on the sharp edges of the copper wire or caused small burns on her hand as she welded the wire together. One time she shocked herself against the generator and the finger nail on her right index finger flew off. Doggedly she pursued her goal, just as she was about to finish an electrical surge touched off and knocked her out. When she came to she had scorch marks all up her left arm and she felt dizzy. She smelt the smell of burned hair and skin. She tapped her combadge =^= Patra to sick bay =^= but nothing came through, she had fried the circuits. She slowly made her way back down the Jefferies tube ladder and staggered out into the corridor. Her left arm and leg felt extremely numb, with pins and needles shooting up and down her whole left side of her body. She chided herself for forgetting to use bypass circuits on the electrical circuits. She stumbled into the med bay and looked around for the doctor. Just great, he is going to have a field day with me, probably get a thorough lecture from him also.

Mark was almost done with his turn and already took off his medical goon and was about to sign off from the medical console when he noticed the blonde lieutenant entering the sickbay with an uncertain pace.
Worried he ran towards her and helped her into the closest biobed at hand.

"Doctor, do you want me to take over? your turn was over tens of minutes ago, we can take care of her" an ensign in medical uniform told him.
Mark firmly shook his head "No thanks, I'm gonna stay here and tend to her" he smiled and politely nodded a thank-you to the ensign dismissing him to other duties to then go back keeping the watch over the woman.

"What happened?" he finally asked Patra while running a quick medical scan with his tricorder to check vital signs and major issues.

With a worried face he kept monitoring heart beat and the basic life parameters while checking on the cause of the illness, immediately noticing the bruises he thought about an electrocution or a plasma burns.

Patra chuckled “Oh the usual with engineers. Forgot to run a bypass on some electrical circuits by one of the shield generators. Got a few zaps then an electrical surge got me a good one. Fried my combadge. May have fried my left side while I was at it.”

Mark rised an eyebrow and slowly breathed out.

"You should be more careful" he started while treating the bruises "Commbadges can be substituted, but I can't resurrect people..." he tilted his head on the side "...well, till now at least. Not sure if we can learn something from the Tyranians" he half joked while tending the patient.
"Don't you engineers work in couple? If that surge knocked you out where you were working no-one would have noticed till it was probably too late" he reprehended her.

Patra shrugged, “Yes we are supposed to have another engineer with us, but when I get an idea in my head it’s like an itch. I just have to scratch it. So I went up and started creating my model Faraday Cage. By the way, the jolt did knock me out; but my Faraday cage is built and functions. The electrical surges are now bounding around the shield generator.” She said with pride in her eyes. “Guess, your going to report me to Captain Misaki and Lieutenant Anor. Back to being in the ‘Dog House’ as they say.”

The doctor finished treating the engineer and breathed deeply at her words.
"Well, this will end up in your medical file of course...but...I might avoid providing a direct report to the captain this time" he watched her for a few seconds "just avoid working on your own next time...even if you have a novel idea or project you want to test" he kept his gaze on her "understood?"

“Aye, aye sir. Told you I tend to bang myself up. I will endeavor to not to go crawling around in Jefferies tubes or other places we engineers haunt without backup.” She said in a serious tone of voice, but a twinkle in her eyes.

Mark nodded silently although not completely sure his words made a dent into the blonde lieutenant.

"You are good to go" he said showing her the exit of the sickbay "...oh another thing...get at least half a day of rest. That's doctor's order" he smiled waving goodbye as the engineer cleared the area exiting the room.


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Lt. JG Patra Rommel
Structural/Environmental Specialist

Lt. Mark Johnson
Chief Medical Officer