Multiplications – By Kat Calls
* * *
Disclaimer: It's all mine, and I'm getting paid millions to write it! mouah ha ha ha ha! And I seem to remember some pigs flying back there. (That was supposed to be sarcasm, for those who think too literally)
Note: This was the first trek story I ever wrote. I began to write this before the end of the show even came on the air. I was an untrained trekkie, and so a lot of the things were wrong in terms of the facts. I have since edited this and deleted most of the problems. But a lot of the time, the facts I invented were integral to the plot. It was sort of like trying to completely wipe out the ground floor of a tall building, while leaving the rest intact. I hope you aren't too confused. I certainly was, but I think the end result is reasonable. Just don't measure this one against my other stories please. – Kat Calls (Beth)
Chapter 1 – Illness
* * *
Ensign Swinn Powell was helping Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres realign the forward sensor relay when suddenly the floor began to pitch and sway. She smelled a sickly odour and she leaned on the side of the engineering console to try to catch her breath. She sucked in the air slowly and evenly to keep herself from throwing up the lunch Neelix had prepared for her. It was definitely not any kind of meal she wanted to revisit.
"Ensign Powell could you please hand me the coil spanner on your left… Ensign?"
Swinn stammered, "Just wait…I…I…need to just…I can't…" The whole ship was spinning around her and she found herself listing dangerously to the right to compensate.
B'Elanna poked her head out from behind the console just in time to see Swinn lose her desperate fight to remain upright and conscious.
Swinn collapsed, and the coil spanner she held rolled out of her hand.
"Swinn!" She called "Engineering to transporter room two! I have an emergency here! Beam Ensign Powell and I to sick bay! Lieutenant Carey take over!" The two disappeared in a blue haze and reappeared moments later in sickbay.
"Activate the Emergency Medical Hologram!" B'Elanna picked up Swinn's unconscious form, and deposited her on one of the bio beds.
The doctor appeared beside her. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Hey! You shouldn't be lifting heavy objects!" He pointed accusingly at B'Elanna's slightly rounded belly.
She narrowed her eyes at him, and then quickly went back to Swinn. "I'm not entirely sure what happened here. One second she was fine, helping me with the relays and the next, she just passed out!"
The doctor took out his tricorder and started humming it above Swinn's body. "Hmm… Well this is strange."
B'Elanna looked at him in alarm. "What is it?"
"Well she seems to have a type of stomach virus, but it's not any kind that I know of. Her red blood cell count is way too far down. That's why she fainted. Computer replicate a glucose trianaline hypospray compound." He took the small bottle from the medical replicator, clicked it into a hypospray needle, and began to inject it into his patient.
"If it's a virus, could it be contagious?" B'Elanna took a wary step back from the bio bed.
The doctor picked his tricorder up again and quickly passed it over B'Elanna's head and shoulders.
The doctor's brow furrowed. "There isn't any of this particular virus in your system right now, but it looks as though there might have been a form of this running through your system for the past five months. It seems to have gone dormant."
"What? I never got sick like this!" B'Elanna looked stunned as the doctor tried to push her towards one of the beds. The Klingon half of her just wanted to clock him. She forced her Human half to take precedence however, and laid down on the bed.
"Is the baby okay?" Concern filled her voice.
He ran the tricorder the full length of her body and took more readings of her biochemistry and blood counts. "As I said. You have a dormant form of this virus. In Ensign Powell the virus mutated and began to expand through her system rather quickly, killing off her red blood cells. Your body has developed an immunity to it. The natural protective shielding your body has built to adapt to childbearing has convinced the virus that it should mutate to a different form than Ensign Powell, and now it's beginning to die out. In other words, your baby has saved your health, and quite possibly your life." He clicked the tricorder shut and allowed the stunned engineer to sit up. "I see no reason for you to be worried lieutenant. Over the last four months since you became pregnant, it lay in remission. It has not harmed your child"
At that, Swinn Powell began to stir once again.
"Ah Ensign!" the doctor called " I see you've decided to join the land of the living.!"
"I feel like I'm going to throw up." The room was still spinning, but the haze that had been her mind was slowly clearing. She realized the doctor was injecting a hypospray into her neck, and lifted her chin slightly to give him better access to it. She closed her eyes tightly as the room heaved once again.
"This is just something to settle your stomach."
B'Elanna pushed herself off the bio bed. "If you don't need to do any more scans, I'll be in engineering." She began to step away from the bed just as Ensign Harry Kim and Crewman Jenny Delaney appeared before her in a Blue fog. Jenny was lying on the floor unconscious, and Harry was kneeling beside her in starship pajama bottoms with a concerned look on his face. B'Elanna remembered that he had been on the night shift, and this was the time he normally had allocated for sleep.
"Doc you gotta help me here. She just passed out! I don't know what I did!"
B'Elanna, who had a feeling she knew what was coming next, decided to take advantage of Harry's frightened disposition.
"Maybe she couldn't stand the sight of you in those pants." She grinned.
"This is no time to joke!" he whined and lifted Jenny up on to the bio bed which B'Elanna had just vacated. He gently cleared her sweat soaked hair away from her face, and took hold of her hand.
The Doctor ran his tricorder over Jenny and frowned. "It's the same thing as Ensign Powell. She has a reduced red blood cell count. It's the same virus. We should inform the Captain. We could have an epidemic on our hands." He injected the necessary compounds into his new patient's neck
"Torres to the Captain, We need you to come down to sickbay immediately."
Silence echoed over the comm link.
"Captain please respond." B'Elanna said desperately.
Nothing.
Harry's eyes widened in concern and B'Elanna grabbed his hand.
"Computer, give me Captain Janeway's location!" B'Elanna frantically called out.
"Captain Janeway is in the ready room." The computer droned.
The doctor quickly added, "What is Captain Janeway's current status?"
"Captain Janeway is unconscious."
Harry practically screamed to the poor crewman in transporter room one to beam the Captain directly to sick bay. And B'Elanna pulled away from him in shock and surprise.
The Captain appeared lying on the floor, and Harry ran to her and lifted her to the bed. And as he did so, B'Elanna called over the comm.
"B'Elanna to Chakotay" and then she silently mouthed the words "Please let him be okay! Please let him be okay! Please-please-please."
"Chakotay here."
"Oh good! Commander, I think you should come down to sickbay, We have a problem."
"I'm on my way! Chakotay out."
* * *
"Tuvok. You have the bridge." Commander Chakotay jogged past the Vulcan's security post, and into the turbolift. He was uncertain as to the reason for his summons, but only slightly wary. He'd been called to sickbay many times before in less than emergency situations. This time would be no different.
When he walked into sickbay, the scene that greeted him was more frightening than any he had ever imagined. B'Elanna Harry and the Doctor were running from person to person, administering hyposprays, and trying to explain the situation to no fewer than eight patients. Each looking pale and dizzy, and lying on their backs in what looked like an effort to keep down their lunches. Some were on the bio-beds, and a few lay on the pull out cots. He did no more than briefly scan the room, before frantically searching out the doctor.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen Commander. The virus has been dormant for as long as six months in some of these cases. It seems that when we passed that protostar yesterday, the mild radiation we picked up from it triggered the dormant virus to mutate and drastically reduce the number of red blood cells in their systems. The red blood cells are the ones that carry nutrients to the different systems of the body. No one could survive for long in this condition. Not only that, but conventional methods of treatment are no more than prolonging the inevitable."
"The inevitable Doctor? What would that be?" Chakotay looked around him, and noticed that the Captain was one of the ones carrying the virus. He was somewhat surprised and alarmed to see her there, as he had, only minutes before, seen her walk into her ready room looking fit and healthy. He smiled worriedly at her and nodded. She met his gaze and very slowly pushed herself up off the bed. He noticed that her complexion was paler than usual, sweat drenched her forehead, and she winced at any sudden movements.
"I will have to administer doses of glucose trianaline compounds at regular intervals to prevent them from losing consciousness. If I were to stop these treatments, they would all collapse and eventually their systems would fail. For the moment, the dose is acting like a steroid. Giving their bodies just enough energy to survive, but not enough to function."
The Commander looked alarmed. "Is there anything else we might do? -And why hasn't it affected any male crewmembers?" He said, abruptly noticing the strange inequality in gender.
"You're right commander, that is something I'd noticed and I have a theory about it."
"Well? What is it?"
"There's something about the female human genome that this virus is attracted to. None of the other species and none of the males on the ship seem to be affected. Another suspicious circumstance is that B'Elanna seems to be immune to this virus, even though she has enough of the appropriate DNA. Her scans show that she actually was infected with the virus, but it lay dormant the same as all the other patients. Since the others have fallen ill, the virus in her bloodstream is dying off instead. The virus in her body reacted differently to the ambient radiation off the protostar."
"Really? Do you have any indication why this is the case?" Chakotay was staring at the Captain again. She looked desperate to try to get over to them. Chakotay gave her a look that clearly said "you shouldn't do that," but she stubbornly shook her head at him, and kept going. He was tempted to run to her side in aid, but he forced himself to concentrate on what the doctor was saying.
"Yes. It's simple. When she became pregnant her body started producing a fluid which counteracts the effect of the virus. In essence she is not ill because she is pregnant."
"Are you saying that every human woman on this ship is about to become ill except B'Elanna?" The Commander nervously ran his fingers through his hair.
"Well, so far, these are the only ones who have come down with an active strain, but I get the feeling that this is not the last of them. I've set the computer up to monitor the human female crewmembers and beam them directly here at the first sign of distress."
"Doctor." Wheezed a voice from behind Chakotay. The Captain stepped over to the Commander's side, and leaned on his arm for support. Obviously the dizziness was becoming harder to control. He circled a protective arm around her to keep her from falling. "Doctor…. Did you say that B'Elanna's body was… producing a chemical… to counteract the effect of the virus?
"Yes. It's a slow acting chemical that has managed to not only suppress the infection from mutating, but it has also killed off a small proportion of the virus."
Kathryn wheezed again then leaned further into Chakotay's shoulder to regain her equilibrium. He took hold of her hands and half walked, half carried her slowly back to the bed.
"Doctor … is there any way to… to replicate this chemical?
"I'm afraid that if I were to administer the chemical to someone other than B'Elanna, the virus would simply ignore it and keep going. The chemical her body is producing is unique to her, and would have no effect on any of the others nor yourself." He paused as if realization might be dawning. "Unless…. Captain this may be a bit extreme… And I'm not entirely certain it would work… But I have a hunch that we won't be seeing any other alternatives."
She nodded, but winced at the movement, so she just said, "Go ahead doctor."
"I think that the only way to combat this virus is to force your body to create the needed shielding chemical."
She still didn't understand his meaning and gave him a pained but puzzled look.
"Captain… Your body would produce the necessary chemicals if you were pregnant."
* * *
Disclaimer: It's all mine, and I'm getting paid millions to write it! mouah ha ha ha ha! And I seem to remember some pigs flying back there. (That was supposed to be sarcasm, for those who think too literally)
Note: This was the first trek story I ever wrote. I began to write this before the end of the show even came on the air. I was an untrained trekkie, and so a lot of the things were wrong in terms of the facts. I have since edited this and deleted most of the problems. But a lot of the time, the facts I invented were integral to the plot. It was sort of like trying to completely wipe out the ground floor of a tall building, while leaving the rest intact. I hope you aren't too confused. I certainly was, but I think the end result is reasonable. Just don't measure this one against my other stories please. – Kat Calls (Beth)
Chapter 1 – Illness
* * *
Ensign Swinn Powell was helping Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres realign the forward sensor relay when suddenly the floor began to pitch and sway. She smelled a sickly odour and she leaned on the side of the engineering console to try to catch her breath. She sucked in the air slowly and evenly to keep herself from throwing up the lunch Neelix had prepared for her. It was definitely not any kind of meal she wanted to revisit.
"Ensign Powell could you please hand me the coil spanner on your left… Ensign?"
Swinn stammered, "Just wait…I…I…need to just…I can't…" The whole ship was spinning around her and she found herself listing dangerously to the right to compensate.
B'Elanna poked her head out from behind the console just in time to see Swinn lose her desperate fight to remain upright and conscious.
Swinn collapsed, and the coil spanner she held rolled out of her hand.
"Swinn!" She called "Engineering to transporter room two! I have an emergency here! Beam Ensign Powell and I to sick bay! Lieutenant Carey take over!" The two disappeared in a blue haze and reappeared moments later in sickbay.
"Activate the Emergency Medical Hologram!" B'Elanna picked up Swinn's unconscious form, and deposited her on one of the bio beds.
The doctor appeared beside her. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Hey! You shouldn't be lifting heavy objects!" He pointed accusingly at B'Elanna's slightly rounded belly.
She narrowed her eyes at him, and then quickly went back to Swinn. "I'm not entirely sure what happened here. One second she was fine, helping me with the relays and the next, she just passed out!"
The doctor took out his tricorder and started humming it above Swinn's body. "Hmm… Well this is strange."
B'Elanna looked at him in alarm. "What is it?"
"Well she seems to have a type of stomach virus, but it's not any kind that I know of. Her red blood cell count is way too far down. That's why she fainted. Computer replicate a glucose trianaline hypospray compound." He took the small bottle from the medical replicator, clicked it into a hypospray needle, and began to inject it into his patient.
"If it's a virus, could it be contagious?" B'Elanna took a wary step back from the bio bed.
The doctor picked his tricorder up again and quickly passed it over B'Elanna's head and shoulders.
The doctor's brow furrowed. "There isn't any of this particular virus in your system right now, but it looks as though there might have been a form of this running through your system for the past five months. It seems to have gone dormant."
"What? I never got sick like this!" B'Elanna looked stunned as the doctor tried to push her towards one of the beds. The Klingon half of her just wanted to clock him. She forced her Human half to take precedence however, and laid down on the bed.
"Is the baby okay?" Concern filled her voice.
He ran the tricorder the full length of her body and took more readings of her biochemistry and blood counts. "As I said. You have a dormant form of this virus. In Ensign Powell the virus mutated and began to expand through her system rather quickly, killing off her red blood cells. Your body has developed an immunity to it. The natural protective shielding your body has built to adapt to childbearing has convinced the virus that it should mutate to a different form than Ensign Powell, and now it's beginning to die out. In other words, your baby has saved your health, and quite possibly your life." He clicked the tricorder shut and allowed the stunned engineer to sit up. "I see no reason for you to be worried lieutenant. Over the last four months since you became pregnant, it lay in remission. It has not harmed your child"
At that, Swinn Powell began to stir once again.
"Ah Ensign!" the doctor called " I see you've decided to join the land of the living.!"
"I feel like I'm going to throw up." The room was still spinning, but the haze that had been her mind was slowly clearing. She realized the doctor was injecting a hypospray into her neck, and lifted her chin slightly to give him better access to it. She closed her eyes tightly as the room heaved once again.
"This is just something to settle your stomach."
B'Elanna pushed herself off the bio bed. "If you don't need to do any more scans, I'll be in engineering." She began to step away from the bed just as Ensign Harry Kim and Crewman Jenny Delaney appeared before her in a Blue fog. Jenny was lying on the floor unconscious, and Harry was kneeling beside her in starship pajama bottoms with a concerned look on his face. B'Elanna remembered that he had been on the night shift, and this was the time he normally had allocated for sleep.
"Doc you gotta help me here. She just passed out! I don't know what I did!"
B'Elanna, who had a feeling she knew what was coming next, decided to take advantage of Harry's frightened disposition.
"Maybe she couldn't stand the sight of you in those pants." She grinned.
"This is no time to joke!" he whined and lifted Jenny up on to the bio bed which B'Elanna had just vacated. He gently cleared her sweat soaked hair away from her face, and took hold of her hand.
The Doctor ran his tricorder over Jenny and frowned. "It's the same thing as Ensign Powell. She has a reduced red blood cell count. It's the same virus. We should inform the Captain. We could have an epidemic on our hands." He injected the necessary compounds into his new patient's neck
"Torres to the Captain, We need you to come down to sickbay immediately."
Silence echoed over the comm link.
"Captain please respond." B'Elanna said desperately.
Nothing.
Harry's eyes widened in concern and B'Elanna grabbed his hand.
"Computer, give me Captain Janeway's location!" B'Elanna frantically called out.
"Captain Janeway is in the ready room." The computer droned.
The doctor quickly added, "What is Captain Janeway's current status?"
"Captain Janeway is unconscious."
Harry practically screamed to the poor crewman in transporter room one to beam the Captain directly to sick bay. And B'Elanna pulled away from him in shock and surprise.
The Captain appeared lying on the floor, and Harry ran to her and lifted her to the bed. And as he did so, B'Elanna called over the comm.
"B'Elanna to Chakotay" and then she silently mouthed the words "Please let him be okay! Please let him be okay! Please-please-please."
"Chakotay here."
"Oh good! Commander, I think you should come down to sickbay, We have a problem."
"I'm on my way! Chakotay out."
* * *
"Tuvok. You have the bridge." Commander Chakotay jogged past the Vulcan's security post, and into the turbolift. He was uncertain as to the reason for his summons, but only slightly wary. He'd been called to sickbay many times before in less than emergency situations. This time would be no different.
When he walked into sickbay, the scene that greeted him was more frightening than any he had ever imagined. B'Elanna Harry and the Doctor were running from person to person, administering hyposprays, and trying to explain the situation to no fewer than eight patients. Each looking pale and dizzy, and lying on their backs in what looked like an effort to keep down their lunches. Some were on the bio-beds, and a few lay on the pull out cots. He did no more than briefly scan the room, before frantically searching out the doctor.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen Commander. The virus has been dormant for as long as six months in some of these cases. It seems that when we passed that protostar yesterday, the mild radiation we picked up from it triggered the dormant virus to mutate and drastically reduce the number of red blood cells in their systems. The red blood cells are the ones that carry nutrients to the different systems of the body. No one could survive for long in this condition. Not only that, but conventional methods of treatment are no more than prolonging the inevitable."
"The inevitable Doctor? What would that be?" Chakotay looked around him, and noticed that the Captain was one of the ones carrying the virus. He was somewhat surprised and alarmed to see her there, as he had, only minutes before, seen her walk into her ready room looking fit and healthy. He smiled worriedly at her and nodded. She met his gaze and very slowly pushed herself up off the bed. He noticed that her complexion was paler than usual, sweat drenched her forehead, and she winced at any sudden movements.
"I will have to administer doses of glucose trianaline compounds at regular intervals to prevent them from losing consciousness. If I were to stop these treatments, they would all collapse and eventually their systems would fail. For the moment, the dose is acting like a steroid. Giving their bodies just enough energy to survive, but not enough to function."
The Commander looked alarmed. "Is there anything else we might do? -And why hasn't it affected any male crewmembers?" He said, abruptly noticing the strange inequality in gender.
"You're right commander, that is something I'd noticed and I have a theory about it."
"Well? What is it?"
"There's something about the female human genome that this virus is attracted to. None of the other species and none of the males on the ship seem to be affected. Another suspicious circumstance is that B'Elanna seems to be immune to this virus, even though she has enough of the appropriate DNA. Her scans show that she actually was infected with the virus, but it lay dormant the same as all the other patients. Since the others have fallen ill, the virus in her bloodstream is dying off instead. The virus in her body reacted differently to the ambient radiation off the protostar."
"Really? Do you have any indication why this is the case?" Chakotay was staring at the Captain again. She looked desperate to try to get over to them. Chakotay gave her a look that clearly said "you shouldn't do that," but she stubbornly shook her head at him, and kept going. He was tempted to run to her side in aid, but he forced himself to concentrate on what the doctor was saying.
"Yes. It's simple. When she became pregnant her body started producing a fluid which counteracts the effect of the virus. In essence she is not ill because she is pregnant."
"Are you saying that every human woman on this ship is about to become ill except B'Elanna?" The Commander nervously ran his fingers through his hair.
"Well, so far, these are the only ones who have come down with an active strain, but I get the feeling that this is not the last of them. I've set the computer up to monitor the human female crewmembers and beam them directly here at the first sign of distress."
"Doctor." Wheezed a voice from behind Chakotay. The Captain stepped over to the Commander's side, and leaned on his arm for support. Obviously the dizziness was becoming harder to control. He circled a protective arm around her to keep her from falling. "Doctor…. Did you say that B'Elanna's body was… producing a chemical… to counteract the effect of the virus?
"Yes. It's a slow acting chemical that has managed to not only suppress the infection from mutating, but it has also killed off a small proportion of the virus."
Kathryn wheezed again then leaned further into Chakotay's shoulder to regain her equilibrium. He took hold of her hands and half walked, half carried her slowly back to the bed.
"Doctor … is there any way to… to replicate this chemical?
"I'm afraid that if I were to administer the chemical to someone other than B'Elanna, the virus would simply ignore it and keep going. The chemical her body is producing is unique to her, and would have no effect on any of the others nor yourself." He paused as if realization might be dawning. "Unless…. Captain this may be a bit extreme… And I'm not entirely certain it would work… But I have a hunch that we won't be seeing any other alternatives."
She nodded, but winced at the movement, so she just said, "Go ahead doctor."
"I think that the only way to combat this virus is to force your body to create the needed shielding chemical."
She still didn't understand his meaning and gave him a pained but puzzled look.
"Captain… Your body would produce the necessary chemicals if you were pregnant."