Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - Maelstrooooooooom!
Carter Schimpff
(( Radiation Treatment Ward, Deck 7 – USS Artemis-A ))
Bancroft: If it’s something new, then we follow the chain of events methodically. We figure out what changed between then and now – between when this was under control and when it wasn’t. Once we find the hinge point, we’ll know where to start.
Ollie pushed himself upright with the careful, economical effort of someone trying not to negotiate too openly with his own body. He slid his feet to the deck, steadied, and made his way toward the console with a limp that was subtle only in the sense that it was clearly no longer worth pretending otherwise.
Bergmen: So, where do we start, doctor? Bloodwork? Scans? Autopsy?
The corners of Roy’s eyes creased.
Bancroft: No autopsies today, Ollie. Plenty of bloodwork and scans, though, I can absolutely promise you those.
His tone shifted only slightly as he glanced sidelong at the Gideon, some softer register of physician and friend aligning in the moment.
Bancroft: And while I do enjoy standing shoulder to shoulder with you under medically inadvisable circumstances… would you do me a favor and get back on the bed?
Ollie didn’t argue. He simply turned and made his way back to the biobed, easing himself onto it with the same quiet care he seemed to be applying to everything tonight.
Bergmen: I'm ready. Let's start.
Roy gave a small nod and turned back to the console.
Bancroft: Good. Then let’s start by being annoyingly thorough.
His fingers moved quickly over the interface, calling up fresh scans beside the sealed Vancouver record and the Gideon treatment notes. The display reorganized itself into layered bands of information – metabolic trends, cellular turnover markers, inflammatory activity, autonomic fluctuations, tissue progression – until the whole ugly story sat before him in color-coded obedience.
For a moment, Roy said nothing.
He leaned in slightly, one hand braced against the edge of the console, his eyes moving across the data in quick, disciplined passes. There was a particular kind of silence that settled over a room when a good physician was thinking hard inside it, and Sickbay—already quiet—seemed to draw inward around him.
At first glance, the shape of it looked straightforward enough to be irritating.
Breakthrough progression. Incomplete prophylaxis coverage. Recurrence.
Then he looked again, his hand pausing over the display.
Bancroft: Hm.
He enlarged one trend line, then another, then dragged scans both ancient and proximate together until they all sat side by side in uneasy conversation.
Bergmen: Response
Roy’s expression did not change, but something in his posture stilled.
Bancroft: Your numbers started drifting before your remaining prophylaxis should have stopped protecting you.
His voice remained calm – almost conversational – but the words landed with unmistakable weight.
Bancroft: Increased unstable cellular turnover. Mild inflammatory rise. Subtle neurological noise. ::beat:: All of it starting post-Karnack but before I’d have expected your medicine to have stopped protecting you.
Bergmen: Response
Roy shifted the timeline again, this time overlaying the environmental exposure windows from the Callis mission against the progression curve. For a few seconds, he said nothing at all.
Bancroft: ::matter-of-factly:: Hinge point. Here’s a baseline scan from when you transported aboard the Karnack ::overlaying another timeline:: And here’s where the protection from your last dose should have ended. There’s considerable overlap – that puts us firmly in Callis territory.
He straightened slightly, not dramatically, but with the quiet energy of a man whose theory had just become a great deal less theoretical.
Bergmen: Response
Roy turned the display just enough to make the visual correlation easier to follow without expecting Ollie to decipher the medicine from raw telemetry.
Bancroft: This isn’t random, and it isn’t your fault. ::frowning:: It was the Maelstrom. In a healthy person, I’d expect some fatigue, headaches… maybe some transient neurological irritation. But in you? Your tissue was already living on borrowed tolerance.
Bergmen: Response
TAG/TBC!
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Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1