“Guilt weighs heavy on the heart. But considering how little we give it, forgiveness must be even heavier.”
- Reverend Devin Malone, The Union of Light (163 PA)
Maeve twisted her hair into a coiled black rope between her fingers. It was well into the night, cold and dark outside the Blue Phoenix. By the time the ship had been thoroughly searched for any nasty surprises Coldhand might have left behind—there didn’t seem to be any—it was too late to attend the speech on the steps of the black cathedral that Anthem had told Xia about.
“How did he get out?” Tiberius demanded.
He was pacing back and forth across the medical bay, limping heavily on his injured knee. Xia grabbed him firmly and pulled the agitated captain back down. There was a small operating table and the bare rudiments of surgical instruments were laid out. They lay still against their tray, fixed magnetically to keep them in place even during bumpy atmospheric flying. Since most injuries were sustained in the air, it was best to be ready to operate even under the most turbulent conditions.
The Blue Phoenix was barren of any other more modern medical facilities. No nano-reconstruction chamber or cloning tank. Xia was a skilled medic, but even she could only stitch up so many cuts and bandage so many laser burns before even an Ixthian’s skill was not enough and she needed a real hospital.
“Sit down, Tiberius! Those pain chems I gave you aren’t helping you if you just make the injuries worse. Do you want to be laid up for the next month?”
Xia tipped sharp-smelling antiseptic onto a cotton pad and resumed cleaning the burn in Tiberius’ shoulder. His shirt and gun rig were in a pile on the counter. The old Prian’s chest was a rug of gray hair laced by a network of thick scars that mapped out fifty years of service to the Prian police. Maeve could not help thinking of the white knot of a scar over Coldhand’s heart. Gripper held out a scuffed datadex to Tiberius.
“It looks like he used this to pry up the access panel and then rewired the door. It must have taken him days. You can’t just rip out a handful wires like in the shows,” he said, then sighed. “It’s going to take twice as long to fix. Freezer didn’t really know what he was doing. It’s a mess.”
Tiberius growled and lifted the datadex to fling it angrily across the bay, but Xia gave him a long, stern look. He rested it in his lap instead. The Ixthian put aside the bloodstained pad and began taping a clean white bandage over the burn.
“Damned lasers,” she complained. “They cauterize the shot.”
“Doesn’t that make them easier?” Duaal asked. “They don’t bleed too much.”
“No, they don’t. But they get infected. Antibodies are carried in the blood and if blood can’t reach the burn, it gets infected,” she said and looked pointedly at Tiberius. “Especially if the patient keeps pulling off the bandages. Keep the burn covered. It has to stay clean.”
“But laser burns itch,” he grumbled.
“They itch because they’re healing,” Xia told him.
Tiberius looked down at the datadex in his hands rather than meeting the medic’s irritated maternal gaze. Idly, he flipped the pad on. The screen was cracked, but it was built to be resilient and was still readable.
“I wonder if he ever even read this thing. I’d like to think it might have taught him a thing or two about loyalty. But if he didn’t learn it as a police officer, I doubt a book would have a prayer,” Tiberius grunted.
Maeve knew perfectly well that Coldhand hadn’t read a single word from the datadex, but said nothing. Tiberius felt betrayed enough. He would never understand.
“Damned lasers,” she complained. “They cauterize the shot.”
“Doesn’t that make them easier?” Duaal asked. “They don’t bleed too much.”
“No, they don’t. But they get infected. Antibodies are carried in the blood and if blood can’t reach the burn, it gets infected,”
This part annoys me slightly. Cauterization is actually used to stop bleeding and clean out infections when no antibiotics are present.
Of course, one shouldn’t trust everything written on wikipedia, but have a look at this article if you like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauterization. Also, lasers are used in place of scalpels in some surgery.
On the other hand, a bullet *crushes* meat when entering a body, and crushed meat rots if not removed. The degree of damage of course depends on the make, caliber and velocity of the bullet, but if I had to choose, I think I’d prefer laser wounds to bullet wounds any day
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I’ll see what I can do about a preview function for the comments.
As to your actual comment! Wow, you even did research; I’m thrilled beyond measure. Okay, let’s talk blood and lasers! Lasers are great medical tools and I know they’re used in a great number of procedures. Think in terms of burns, though. What the weaponized laser guns do, like Coldhand’s Talon-9, is burn.
Burns are very prone to infection (read here). Our skin is an important barrier to bacteria. However, once through the skin (easy enough when the area is burned), blood carried the anitbodies we need.
Arg, I’m not making my point very well. Let me try again! Anything living on Tiberius skin when Logan shot him in certainly dead, burned away. However, the shot’s over and done with. It’s cleansing effects are no longer… er… in effect. Now it’s a weeping environment with no skin and no blood flow. Bingo, infection!
Hmm, well, I’m not saying that being shot by a laser is *good* for you. Rather, I’m saying that it’s probably preferable to a bullet hole of similar size, since at least you avoid the crushed meat around the “hole”. Probably hurts horribly though…
However, I’m no expert. I’ve seen what a bullet does to a moose, but I’ve never really experienced burn wounds made by a laser (not any major burns, actually).
What mostly annoyed me (I think) was the mention of a medical technique (cauterization) which can be used to combat infection, but now was inferred to increase the risk for infection. However, english is not my first language, so you are probably a better judge of reasonable uses of the word “cauterize”
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Oh, and thanks for the “Preview”-function! It makes it quite a lot easier to write a good comment
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I have submitted the question to my doctor in hopes of a definitive answer one way or the other.
The word from an actual medical doctor: It depends and is impossible to say if the wound would require antibiotics without seeing it.
Stalemate, I suppose…
My previous post looks strange since my attempt at qouting failed ( )… A preview-function would be useful
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Added. Still trying to figure out the stylesheeting, but the basic function is there.
Jeez, that was quick
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LLS is build with Wordpress and everything is modular. It’s pretty easy to add new functions.