Captain’s Log: Jean-Luc Picard, U.S.S. Enterprise
We are travailing to the far region of the Tsepesh System, a region of space that is populated by two Federation colonies. We are to deliver medical supplies to the colony on Tsepesh II, which is suffering from a bizarre plague that the doctors have not yet been able to properly diagnose. Doctor Crusher is hopeful that with extended study and collusion with the Tsepian Doctors, she and her medical team might be able to find some way of helping the afflicted. I, of course, share her hope for alleviating this plague, but retain my judgment until further study can be made, especially after reading the medical report obtained on the disease so far. Doctor Selar shares my skepticism, but in traditional Vulcan sensibility, insists that it is logical to assume that any disease can be helped or cured in some way. Whether she and Doctor Crusher are correct remains to be seen, but my thoughts keep wandering to that report and the grotesque descriptions within it.
Medical Log: Jac Se’wal, Tsepesh II
This new disease is of a kind I have never encountered before. Over the last four months, it has spread slowly but methodically throughout nearly one-fourth of the colony. It was first brought to my attention nearly six months ago, when one of my colleagues came to me with news of a patient in the outer regions of the colony suffering from a mysterious blood disease. Since we knew nothing of this ailment, it was deemed wise to not risk transporting the patient directly to my hospital. Instead, three members of my team and I packed medical supplies we thought might be needed and went to the small clinic operated by my colleague.
The patient in question was restrained to his bed, and when I questioned this, my colleague told me that he had been prone to short fits of violence and had injured two nurses before being restrained. The patient was unconscious, but his color was very light, and his breathing was shallow. He had an abnormally high temperature, which to me denoted some strange type of fever. There was heavy swelling around his neck, and the only cause I could find for this was in two small puncture wounds just below the jugular vein. I closed the wounds and checked his vital signs, and his heart rate was slow but steady. His blood pressure, however, was dangerously low. He seemed to be in no immediate danger, but his blood pressure had to be raised immediately or death would be unavoidable. We tried several doses of a blood pressure medication, but to no avail. I was beginning to give up hope when a strange reading came up on the tricorder. This man was missing nearly four full pints of blood!
I immediately called for a transfusion to be made, but there were only three donors that were available, and replicating the blood would have been too time-consuming. The man needed help immediately. We transfused three pints as quickly as we could, and the patient’s blood pressure improved immensely. He very quickly recovered to what I would term almost normal health. His neck, however, continued to swell and worsen despite my best efforts otherwise. My team and I were finally able to reduce the swelling, and the man’s temperature dropped to within safe levels. He had dropped out of critical condition, and so we immediately beamed him to the main hospital. Everything seemed to go well, and the man, still unconscious, rested peacefully in the urgent care section.
As we relaxed in the idea that he was, for the moment, safe, I began to consider theories for how the patient’s blood could have been lost. My colleague’s report had not listed an injury of any kind, nor was there mention of a great deal of blood at the site where he had first been found. My only hypothesis was in the wounds on the neck that I had closed. They had been almost directly over a major vein, but in order for a man to lose that much blood, the wounds must have either been there undisturbed for several hours or there was some very powerful suction at work.
I worked off the idea that the man had been bitten by a vanhelsh, a mid-sized rodent native to this planet that feeds on blood and tree sap. I’d treated patients bitten by such creatures before, but had never found a case where so much blood had been lost, or where the bite had been so clean. These creatures are also very small compared to the size of a human, and they do not have the ability to jump, so how was one able to bite a fully-grown man on the neck? It made very little sense.
I did not have long to dwell on it, however. My patient became wakeful, and before I could ask him any questions or explain where he was, he grew violent. He fought the restraints we had put on him ferociously, becoming so enraged that froth began to form around his mouth. Quickly, one of my nurses prepared a sedative, but before it could be administered, the patient howled at such a high pitch that it shattered most of the glass in the room! He continued his efforts to free himself; though it was obvious he could never break through the restraints. His eyes were open and laced with fury, and I almost fancied they were burning.
Throughout this fight, his vital signs were erratic, rising and falling with every exhalation, until finally the patient underwent a terrible spasm and fell to the bed in a sweat. He slipped back into unconsciousness before anything could be done.
Nothing of interest happened for the rest of the evening, though I slept in my office to be sure of it. Oh, how I regret not ensuring the patient was firmly secure! I awoke in the morning to a terrifying screech. I ran into the urgent care room and found my patient out of the bed and panting with the effort. I stared on in shock at the scene of horror that lay strewn about before me.
In the arms of my patient was one of my nurses, whose screams had awoken me. The screams had long since ceased, as the patient was tearing into her neck with his teeth. Blood was splattered over the entire room, and another of my nurses lay crumpled on the floor, his throat torn completely from his body. Red blood dribbled down the chest and neck of my patient, who tore into my nurse’s neck as if it were a hunk of meat, much of her blood being swallowed with grotesque slurping noises. But worst were his eyes! His face was streaked with blood and various tissues of the now-deceased nurse, and these tissues dribbled into the man’s eyes, but he didn’t seem to care. He was staring straight ahead, but his eyes burned with a blinding intensity that seemed to scorch the very wall.
I stood still, unable to move of even think at this bloody rampage. I simply stared, horrified, as my nurse was hurled from his arms and fell to the ground like a discarded rag doll. Her bones made a sickening crunch, but thankfully, she was long deceased and unable to feel it. My patient turned then towards me, his eyes fixed on my throat with a hungry look. I was unable to breathe, much less run away, staring agape at him like some sort of idiotic fish! He continued towards me, his eyes burning into mine with hypnotic intent, until I could not look away, the same ghastly horror that had initially frozen me now took control of me, blocking out all clear thought and reason. I could only watch as this monster approached closer to me. I felt my terror fall in a stream down the front of my pants, but could do nothing but stare. He was almost upon me, his hands reaching out to grasp the shoulders of my coat….
And then the merciless beam of a phaser crackled through the air and hit him square in the chest. He blinked quickly, and for the briefest of moments, a look of horror at what he had done crossed over his features, or maybe that is only my imagination. He disintegrated into not even a pile of ash on the floor. I turned my head slowly, still finding it hard to move, and saw my remaining nurse standing at the door with an upraised phaser, set at level 16.
****
We have since had several other patients with this same condition come to us, and we make sure to thoroughly restrain each of them, though none have even approached the same level of violence as that first. Still, despite endless hours of research, all we have been able to discover is that this condition does not seem to be the result of a bite, although every patient that comes still has those marks. Sometimes they are on the neck, but they have also been found at the wrist and even the inner thigh. We still do not know what is causing these wounds, but our best guess is still the vanhelsh. Always, the patients are missing large quantities of blood, which we’ve now taken to replicating, but even this is sometimes not enough. In the blood they do have, however, we have discovered a strange type of virus, which mutates the blood cells, altering the DNA into something that we cannot define. Every patient thus far, despite our best efforts, has died within three weeks of infection.
We do not know how this virus spreads or is transferred, but the number of cases increases every day. We have discovered, however, that this virus cannot live long in open air, and so it cannot be an airborne disease. It also does to appear to be able to be transferred through skin contact, although we have yet to prove this completely. The most reasonable hypothesis is that the virus is transferred directly through the bloodstream, but as to how this is done we have no idea. For the time being, we are calling this Human-Hemio-VanHelshic Virus, or HHVV.
Medical log: Beverly Crusher, U.S.S Enterprise
We’ve been collaborating with Doctor Se’wal for several days, and we still have no answers to this mysterious ailment. I have been down to the surface of the planet with Doctor Selar, and even she looked grim. The bloodstains mentioned in Se’wal’s medical report are still visible despite his efforts at heavy cleaning.
We have been doing extreme experimentation, and have gathered blood samples from every afflicted patient in the hospital, as well as several family members and neighbors of the victims to use as comparisons. So far nothing we are doing is having any effect. We have brought several of the blood samples back to the Enterprise under quarantine, and are hopeful that with our better lab equipment, something may prove useful. We aren’t even beginning to look for a vaccine yet, just something to alleviate the patient’s pain.
The attacks are always heralded with a screeching howl, and then the patient’s bodies are wracked with what I can only imagine is unbearable pain. As Se’wal mentioned in his report, this causes the patient’s vital signs to rapidly fluctuate, increasing exponentially until the patients simply lose consciousness. I only wish I knew what to do to help them.
Se’wall is not very optimistic. We’re doing the best we can to ease the pain for now, but it isn’t easy with every patient being held under heavy restraints. Not that I blame Se’wal for those, but he takes it to an extreme level. How am I supposed to ease peoples’ pain if they can’t even move? It’s very frustrating, but I’ll make do somehow.
Personal Log: Deanna Troi, U.S.S. Enterprise
I’m very worried about Beverly. She’s barely slept or eaten in the past three days. She thinks I’m not paying attention, but even after seven years, I still notice these things. If I confront her about it off duty, she changes the subject. And the off-duty times are getting shorter and shorter. She barely comes home at all anymore.
If I stop by the sick bay lab to talk to her, she just says that she’s concentrating so hard on this disease that she doesn’t have time to rest. While I understand her desire to help with the situation, it will do no one good if she takes ill from lack of rest or food. I tell her this, too, and she shrugs it off and then goes back to work. I wonder if she truly thinks I can’t sense how utterly exhausted she is, how terribly she needs to stop and breathe before she burns out. If she goes on like this, she’ll collapse in her office and be of no help to anyone. If it comes to it, I may have to ask Captain Picard to force her to eat and rest.
…It bothers me that I can’t force my wife to sleep.
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