✅ Project SETI 3: Eve's Advent

Part V: Saving Gabriel

          "Let's take him to OR #1," Dr. Wessex ordered as the team rushed into the hallway where the operating rooms were. He was a tall slim man with peppered grey hair that he wore slicked back, and one of the most talented surgeons employed by the facility. "We need to get him scanned by the probe as quickly as possible."

          Just outside the decontamination chamber, the mobile defibrillator unit attached to the gurney stopped chirping and suddenly gave out into the shrill alarm of atrial fibrillation.

          "C'mon, Gabe... hang in there," Julia cooed as she reached over and brought the device to a 250J charge. "Clear."

          The rest of his attendants echoed her, and Gabriel spasmed sharply on the bed with the electrical current. One of the nurses kept bagging him as soon as the shock was delivered, and sinus appeared on the trace once more.

          "We've got it from here," Dr. Wessex said to the paramedics.

          Gabriel's surgical team consisted of Dr. Wessex, the neurosurgeon; Julia, acting as the anesthesiologist; and Seth, a surgical nurse. During the fumigation process, Julia and Seth began to fish Gabriel's legs and arms out of his suit, and once they were inside, they transferred him to the soft, white surface of the advanced sonic probe. The sweatpants he wore beneath his suit were urgently cut away and thrown aside, and the monitoring implements were quickly switched over to that of the operating room. When they were done, he was hooked up to a 12-lead ECG, an automatic blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, ventilator, and defibrillator; as well as intravenous drips providing him with packed red blood cells, saline, and general anesthesia. The apex pad was placed on his back rather than on the side of his chest for a more effective shock delivery. The team surveyed his vital signs while Dr. Wessex took the control pad from the advanced operating table:

          HR: 133 BPM
          SP02: 86%
          SYS: 100
          DIA: 61
          TEMP: 36.5C / 97.7F
          RR: 0 (17)

          The neurosurgeon adjusted the table's settings so that it was heated in an attempt to combat the patient's low core body temperature. Shortly after, a shimmering translucent substance extended from the edges of the probe on all sides and completely covered Gabriel's broken and battered body. His image became distorted through the strange liquid-adjacent substance, as if he were beneath a choppy body of water. It reabsorbed into the table after a few moments, flowing through Gabriel as it did, and a large monitor hanging from the ceiling nearby began to give a detailed report on the condition of his body as a whole.

          It started with his head and worked its way down from there. Damage from his prolonged and forced seizures was apparent, along with extensive internal burns from the electrical currents that had caused them. Most importantly, it revealed there was a pool of blood between his brain and skull, but thankfully, the bleed had stopped by the time the scan was performed.

          "Jesus," Julia quietly cursed just from the information on his head alone. She felt intensely sad for Gabriel and wondered what could have caused such substantial injuries.

          "Get him on his side," Dr. Wessex commanded before the report had fully finished. He began to prepare for the procedure to come. "We're going to drill through and drain the hematoma."

          The rest of the scan results appeared on the screen as the doctor finished speaking. The exact extent of his blood loss was revealed, and Julia immediately moved to adjust the rate of the transfusion accordingly. The same internal burns in his brain and surrounding structures were actually all over his body, and he had several fractures in his chest. It also reported on the crude removal of his fat tissues from his thighs and belly and the accompanying scars.