by Rudy Josephs
“In a way you have,” Griffin said as he moved over to the biobed. “Every autopsy is a mystery. The body has a wealth of clues to reveal to those who are paying attention.”
Dr. Griffin conducted a mental inventory of the instruments on the table beside the biobed. It was the exact same thing McCoy did when he entered any exam room. When that was done, the doctor turned to face his student. “Sorry to be so secretive, but you’ll understand why in a moment. What I’m about to reveal must remain between us. I didn’t want a student in on this autopsy, but the administration insisted. They see it as an important learning opportunity.”
McCoy joined him at the exam table. “You’ve got my attention.”
“Our findings today are going straight to the top at Starfleet Command,” Griffin added, “so we must be precise.”
Dr. Griffin placed the PADD he’d carried in with him on the table beside the body. He then carefully pulled down the top of the sheet, draping it at the waist. The deceased was a human male. Little older than a boy. McCoy understood at once why the autopsy was so important. “A cadet?”
Griffin nodded gravely. “First year.”
McCoy had seen death before. He’d worked part-time at a retirement home when he was a teen. Back when he was still thinking about going into medicine. He’d gotten to know many of the residents. He became friends with them and lost more than a few of those friends. It was part of the reason he’d ultimately chosen the medical field.
This was different. This was a child lying naked and vulnerable on an exam table. McCoy knew that when he joined Starfleet, life wasn’t going to be all sunshine and lollipops, but this was school. They were supposed to wash out before things got dangerous.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Dr. Griffin warned.
McCoy often wore his emotions on his face. This time was no different. His anger was clearly evident. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re here to determine,” Dr. Griffin said as he prepped the body for autopsy scans, making sure there were no foreign objects present that could inhibit the scanners. “Cadet Jackson missed his first class this morning. When his roommate returned to their quarters, he was unable to wake the cadet. Emergency medical staff were called. They couldn’t revive him. Must’ve died in his sleep.”
“They couldn’t determine the cause?” McCoy asked.
“Standard medical tricorders aren’t always accurate on dead bodies,” Griffin said. “You should know that.”
Of course McCoy knew that. He was letting the shock of the deceased cadet get to him.
“The senior medical officer on duty stopped any further examination once mortem was determined,” Dr. Griffin explained. “Standard operating procedure in any cadet death.”
“Any cadet death?”
“It’s rare,” Dr. Griffin assured him, “but it does happen. And when it does, we take it seriously. Now, tell me your initial observations of the body.”
McCoy’s eyes met with Dr. Griffin’s. His instructor betrayed no emotion about the situation. McCoy tried to mirror that in his own expression. How he behaved during this autopsy probably wouldn’t be filed away in any official report, but Dr. Griffin would remember it.
McCoy moved toward the control module for the exam table. A series of monitoring devices were built into the wall to which the biobed was attached. He reached for the power switch to activate the unit.
Dr. Griffin held up a hand to stop him. “I’d like a visual inspection of the body first.”
“Fine with me,” McCoy said. He preferred to rely on his own skills to diagnose patients before trusting technology, anyway. Starfleet may have the most advanced medical equipment in the universe, but it seemed like nothing compared to good old horse sense.
“Go ahead,” Griffin said. “Dazzle me.”
McCoy stepped up to the body, conducting a visual inspection of the bare torso. “Patient is a human male, mid- to late teens—”
“You can skip the preliminaries,” Griffin interrupted. “In the interest of expediency. The administration is waiting for our report.”
McCoy moved on, citing the most noticeable piece of information. “Bruising along the obliquus externus. Looks mostly healed. Could have been in a fight, but it wasn’t recent.”
“No conclusions,” Griffin warned. “Just observations.”
“No other skin discoloration or visible abrasions on the torso.” McCoy moved to raise the arm.
“Don’t touch the body, please. Just observe.”
“Sir?”
“We should assume investigative protocols,” Dr. Griffin explained. “If the cause of death does prove intentional, I do not want the administration questioning our procedures. I know you are an accomplished doctor, McCoy. But you are also a first-year cadet. We need to proceed carefully.”
“Understood,” McCoy said. It was a lie. The officers at the Academy sometimes treated McCoy as if he were no older than the boy on the slab. It was one of the downsides to his new career choice; starting over as if he was a freshman in med school.
“There appears to be some damage to the wrist,” McCoy said. “Looks a few weeks old. Possibly broken and reset by an amateur, if it was reset at all.”
Griffin nodded, moving in beside McCoy.
“A good start,” Dr. Griffin said. “But we should get down to business. Please activate the medical scanners.”
McCoy moved to the head of the table once again and turned on the power. The lights on-screen flashed in succession as the machine warmed up. The biobed was lined with scanners that would examine all points on the cadet’s body, providing X-rays, ultrasound, chemical analysis, and a host of other exams. It allowed doctors to perform a complete autopsy without having to desecrate the remains by cutting into the deceased.
Medical science had advanced to the point where surgery could be performed, even broken bones set, without having to resort to the barbaric practice of slicing open the body. Some surgeons still liked to cut into their patients. McCoy never understood why. They likened it to an engineer pulling apart an engine to see how it worked. As far as he was concerned, that was not just unnecessary, but totally barbaric.
The diagnostic report came up on the monitor. Dr. Griffin was in front of McCoy before he had a chance to see the machine. “That can’t be right.” The senior officer started to punch commands onto the touch screen.
For a brief moment McCoy was offended by the implication he’d done something wrong. All he did was turn on the machine. But when the new readings came up, Griffin’s reaction was the same. “That’s impossible.”
The doctor pushed past McCoy, laying his hands on the cadet’s torso, making a tactile examination. “His insides are a mess,” Griffin reported. “And don’t think Starfleet will ever let you get away with a diagnosis like that yourself.”
What McCoy saw on the monitor was unlike any diagnosis he’d seen in his limited years as a medical professional. Griffin was right. The cadet’s internal organs were a mess; battered and bruised, swollen and torn. This couldn’t have been the result of a single event. This damage was sustained over a period of weeks. Maybe more. Definitely since the start of the semester, if not before.
“There are wounds compounded on top of wounds,” McCoy noted. “All of it went untreated. Why didn’t anyone repair the damage?”
Griffin pounded his fist on the table. “Damned Starfleet.”
McCoy understood the sentiment. He’d cursed Starfleet several times since he enlisted. He just didn’t understand why Griffin was cursing them in this instance. “You’re not suggesting that the med students ignored him, are you?”
“He wouldn’t have been ignored if he didn’t seek out treatment,” Griffin said tersely as he completed his physical examination of the body. “You know how it is for cadets. No one wants to admit weakness. Why go to the doctor to ask for help? Especially if it’s going to go on your record.”
“He would have been in agony.”
Grif
fin’s eyes went wide. “Yes, he would have.” He readjusted the scanners while mumbling words McCoy couldn’t make out. A new set of readings came up on the screen. “And there’s the answer.”
McCoy did not understand what he was reading. “What is it?”
“The cadet had a congenital insensitivity to pain,” Dr. Griffin said, pointing to the last line of the diagnosis.
McCoy searched his memory for the affliction. It seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “I don’t know that one.”
“Why would you?” Griffin asked. “It was cured more than a century ago. The Vulcans actually gave us the information that led us to permanently eradicate it. Even before that, it was incredibly rare. I doubt one doctor in a hundred had even heard of it.”
Just because this affliction hadn’t been seen on Earth in a century was no excuse for McCoy to be unfamiliar with it. He promised himself that he would look up everything about it once they were done. No chance he was going to be caught unprepared again.
“A person who is born with the affliction suffers from a severe loss of sensory perception. The nerve fibers of the body malfunction. The cadet was physically incapable of feeling pain.”
McCoy easily made the connection. “So if he was injured in training, he wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong. Wouldn’t have known that he had to get treatment.”
“He would have thought he was invincible,” Griffin said. “Like all the other cadets.”
“But how would something like this go untreated for so long?” McCoy asked. “How did they miss it in the Starfleet physical?”
Dr. Griffin fell into an uncomfortable silence. Most likely deciding whether or not to continue the examination with a cadet in the room. If the conclusion reflected poorly on Starfleet, it would probably be best for Griffin to keep it to himself.
He let out a sigh. “They missed it because they wanted to. Half the doctors that perform the physical only see what they want to. Have to get those recruiting numbers up. The other half sees everything that could possibly be wrong with you. Make note of the tiniest flaw.”
McCoy must have gotten one of the more serious physicians. His exam upon acceptance was one of the most thoroughly invasive procedures he’d ever undergone. They checked back to his great-grandfather’s records for any genetic conditions. As far as he knew from what he’d heard from the other cadets, they’d experienced the same thing. He guessed it made sense that medical officers would be more thorough with medical cadets. The lazier doctors probably got the cadets who didn’t notice they were cutting corners.
McCoy moved closer to the monitor, wanting to take in every salient detail. Even though the odds were against him ever coming across this affliction again, it wouldn’t hurt to commit the signs to memory. It was only through his thorough examination of the scans that he caught something he hadn’t noticed the first time.
“Sir,” McCoy said, “I think you should see this.”
“What now?”
McCoy didn’t want to say what he was thinking. It was too horrible to suggest out loud. “Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think this was a natural occurrence.”
“What are you talking about?”
McCoy raised a finger to one of the scans of the body, enlarging it to a magnitude of ten. “See here? There’s evidence of microsurgery on the nerve fibers. Which means it was done intentionally. Within the past few months. Maybe the past few weeks.”
The blood drained from Dr. Griffin’s face. He looked physically ill. McCoy couldn’t blame him for the reaction. The implications were sickening.
“Someone did this to him. Someone operated on his nerve fibers,” McCoy repeated. “But why?”
Dr. Griffin grabbed a chair to steady himself. He took a deep breath before he said, “If he didn’t feel the pain, he didn’t stand out from his peers. Didn’t risk washing out.”
“But just because he didn’t feel the pain, doesn’t mean that his body wasn’t hurting,” McCoy said. This revelation caused Griffin to collapse into the chair as McCoy paced the room, unable to contain his anger. “Whoever performed this surgery would have been an idiot!”
“That he would. He’d also be a criminal,” Dr. Griffin said with a nod.
Uhura let out a frustrated yell. She could do that since she was by herself. Blissfully alone. Finding the observation deck was the best thing she’d done in her first months at Starfleet Academy. It was the one spot where she didn’t have to contend with a partying roommate or an Andorian who wouldn’t leave her alone.
Unfortunately, the solitude wasn’t helping her find the right answers for her assignment for Interspecies Protocol.
Alien languages had never been a problem for her. She’d always had a natural inclination toward the different ways the races of the Federation communicated. As a child, her parents used to bring her out at dinner parties to impress their friends with her knowledge of different alien languages. She could silence a room with an obscure Tellarite dialect, but learning proper protocol for interacting with alien races was proving to be a surprising challenge.
It was weird. She was usually so good at reading people when they were in front of her. The seemingly endless minutiae of alien customs and practices she had to memorize was mind-boggling.
Uhura had always been confident that she’d never offended anyone with her words. Her actions were another matter entirely. There were so many ways a Starfleet officer could start an intergalactic incident just by reaching out to shake an alien hand.
Something I should never do on the planet Glakota. Or was it Narudian IV?
She scanned down the page on her PADD and confirmed that it was Narudian IV where an outstretched hand was perceived as an act of war. On Glakota it was an invitation to a private rendezvous.
Also something I might want to avoid.
She placed the PADD on the ground. It was time for a break. Pulling up her legs in front of her, she rested her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands. She could’ve spent the rest of the afternoon curled up in a ball on the floor of the observation deck. No one would notice. No one would miss her, either. Her classmates were all so wrapped up in their own lives that it could take days to report her disappearance.
That would be nice. To disappear for days.
It would be so much easier to learn these things through practical methods, to interact with the alien races in question. Sure, she had many classmates from different worlds in the Federation, but most of them were impossible to study with. She might get through one full page of reading before they wanted to gossip about the latest rumors overheard on campus.
Or there were the others. The cadets who considered the Academy a battleground. Their peers were enemies, fighting to graduate at the top of the class. They refused to study together, not wanting to give their competition any advantage over them.
That was why it was easier to study in the privacy of the observation desk. Easier, but not more helpful.
She closed her eyes to rest for a moment. She’d stayed up late studying for a Xenolinguistics exam, and didn’t want to tax her mind too much. She could already feel the stress settling in. Starfleet Academy was exactly as difficult as she’d expected it to be, which was a shame. She’d really hoped that she’d been psyching herself up with images of the worst-case scenario.
Uhura hadn’t meant to doze off, but she woke with a start when the door to the observation deck opened. She looked up to see a tall Vulcan male in a dark uniform standing over her.
She jumped to her feet before the sleep had even cleared from her eyes. “Commander Spock!”
“Cadet Uhura,” Spock said, greeting her with a nod. “I apologize for disturbing you . . .”
“No,” she said quickly. “Not disturbing at all. I was just studying. Studying for your class.” She was usually much better with her words than that. Especially when speaking in her native language. She was just awfully embarrassed that an instructor had caught her napping in public, such as
it were.
They both looked down at the PADD on the ground. It was in sleep mode. The screen was blank. Great. Just what she needed. One of her instructors thinking she was goofing off.
There’s always a chance he thought she was going over her studies in her head.
“I understand,” he said. “When I was a cadet, I found the lack of distractions in the observation deck to be beneficial in my studies. I often came here seeking solitude.”
“Exactly,” she said, glad that he understood why she was randomly there on the floor.
“And on several occasions fell asleep here as well,” he added.
She should have known there was no fooling a Vulcan. “It was just for a few minutes,” she said.
“Perfectly understandable,” Spock said. “Cadets often find the first year at the Academy to be an exhausting experience. The curriculum is designed that way to weed out the less committed students.”
She’d suspected as much, but it was still odd to hear a member of the faculty admit it. Then again, he’d just graduated, so it made sense that he’d understand what she was feeling.
Odd that she’d think that about a Vulcan. Their race was known for the suppression of emotions. She’d heard that he was half-human, but she’d never seen that side of him in class. Yet he’d cut right to the heart of her issue.
She wondered what else was going on beneath that surface. Had he come to the observation deck for solitude, like he had when he was a cadet. Or was he there to enjoy the view. The latter seemed unlikely.
“I guess I should get going,” she said. She had a free period after lunch, so she didn’t need to leave, but she felt like she was intruding on his time—even though she was the one who’d gotten there first.
“That is not necessary,” Spock said. “I clearly have interrupted . . . your studies.”
“The impromptu nap interrupted that,” she said. “But I should get back to your assignment.”
“Yes,” he said. “I have heard that I am quite the taskmaster.”
Was he making a joke? A Vulcan who understood humor? Maybe there was more to that human side of him.