Sickbay Triage — The Last Attempt
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Picard strides into Sickbay as Beverly’s team rushes Tasha onto the table. He demands a status and Beverly answers “Unchanged,” locking the room into emergency triage.
Beverly and the Nurse clamp the life-support clamshell over Tasha and a few indicators edge toward normal. Riker grabs for hope, but Beverly cuts him down—Tasha is on total support with no independent brain activity.
Beverly hammers the neural stimulator and orders norep as the Nurse reports synaptic breakdown. Nothing takes hold; the body gives no response.
Beverly pivots to risky direct reticular stimulation and drives the attempt despite the Nurse’s alarm. Tasha twitches, neurons begin to depolarize, and the team pushes to seventy microvolts.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Professionally anxious: calm procedural competence overlaying concern for the patient and deference to Beverly's decisions.
The Sickbay medical team (nurse and attendants) execute Beverly's orders: attaching the clamshell and stimulator, administering norepinephrine, punching in stimulator parameters, monitoring vitals, and reacting to transient depolarizations.
- • Implement medical orders quickly and accurately to maximize chance of revival.
- • Keep the patient stable and maintain accurate monitoring data for the chief medical officer.
- • Support Beverly and maintain the technical integrity of life‑support systems.
- • Following established medical protocols offers the best chance of a positive outcome.
- • Clear chain of command in Sickbay is essential during high‑stress procedures.
- • Rapid, precise adjustments to equipment can create marginal gains in critical cases.
Unresponsive (medically); her condition functions as an emotional fulcrum for others rather than having an internal emotional arc within the scene.
Tasha Yar is the patient: placed on the operating table, attached to support devices and stimulator leads, she initially shows no independent brain activity, twitches faintly under stimulation, then becomes motionless and is declared gone.
- • (As patient) None consciously due to unconscious state; narratively, to serve as the focus for the crew's medical and emotional action.
- • Her condition propels decisions by medical and command staff.
- • Unavailable — patient has no expressed beliefs; the crew assumes standard medical protocols should be applied.
- • Her presence embodies the belief that personnel are the heart of the ship and must be saved if possible.
Anxious restraint: he is outwardly composed but visibly hopeful then numbed when confronted with the finality of loss.
Captain Picard enters and stands to the side, asks for status, watches the procedures intently, and reacts with escalating anxiety and stunned disbelief when Beverly pronounces death.
- • Obtain an accurate medical assessment to understand the situation.
- • Support the medical team and the crew emotionally and procedurally.
- • Ensure the ship responds appropriately to the casualty (logistics, morale).
- • Trusts the chief medical officer's judgement and expects transparent reporting.
- • Believes duty requires understanding facts before acting emotionally.
- • Accepts command responsibility for crew welfare even in moments of personal grief.
Calmly observant: externally emotionless but internally registering the clinical facts and their implications for the crew.
Data stands observing diagnostics and the procedure with clinical detachment, checking readouts and exchanging a worried look with Riker when responses fail; he offers no overt emotion but provides analytical presence.
- • Monitor diagnostic data to determine the effectiveness of stimulation protocols.
- • Provide precise observational feedback to command and medical staff.
- • Be present as an officer to witness and record the procedural outcome.
- • Empirical observation is paramount when life‑and‑death decisions are being made.
- • Accurate, unemotional data will best inform subsequent command actions.
- • Presence of senior officers at critical moments supports procedural legitimacy.
Hopeful then distraught: Riker searches for reassurance and reacts viscerally to the loss, his optimism collapsing into shock and sorrow.
Commander Riker stands beside Picard and Data, voices encouragement to Beverly, monitors tiny signs of recovery, and is visibly more emotionally open — hope sharpening into alarm and then grief as efforts fail.
- • See Tasha restored so the crew doesn't lose a comrade.
- • Provide emotional and vocal support to the medical team to press for every option.
- • Hold the line as a senior officer present, both for Picard and for the crew's morale.
- • Believes in the competence and resourcefulness of the medical team.
- • Holds that vocal encouragement can spur decisive action and perhaps avert disaster.
- • Resists accepting premature defeat; assumes more can be done until medically told otherwise.
Desperate professionalism: outwardly calm and procedural while carrying a grim internal dread and urgency to do whatever might save the patient.
Dr. Beverly Crusher leads the emergency response: directing injections, frantically programming the stimulator keys, commanding the nurse to escalate to direct reticular stimulation and ultimately entering the death code on life‑support.
- • Restore independent brain activity in Tasha Yar by any available medical means.
- • Stabilize the patient long enough for further intervention or transport.
- • Make a clear clinical determination of viability to inform the captain and crew.
- • Medical intervention can sometimes reverse even catastrophic neural damage if applied aggressively and precisely.
- • Removing guesswork and following escalating protocols is the only ethical course even when hope is slim.
- • Clear, authoritative declarations (like pronouncing death) are necessary to close the clinical loop for the crew.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Pulaski's experimental neural stimulator is central to the attempted rescue: clipped over Tasha's head, reprogrammed mid‑procedure, and used to escalate through surface stimulation to direct reticular stimulation in hopes of reawakening neural networks. It physically mediates the crew's last attempts to reverse synaptic collapse.
The Sickbay neurostimulation start button is depressed to initiate programmed stimulation sequences; it signals the commencement of each attempt and its muted click marks the transition from hope to clinical intervention.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Enterprise Sickbay functions as the enclosed arena for this medical tragedy: a clinical chamber where technical procedure, moral decision and emotional reckoning converge. The room frames the crew's procedural escalation and the eventual pronouncement of death, turning equipment and monitors into witnesses.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
No narrative connections mapped yet
This event is currently isolated in the narrative graph
Themes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning
Key Dialogue
"PICARD: "Status, Doctor?""
"BEVERLY: "Unchanged.""
"BEVERLY: "No! Inject norep.""
"BEVERLY: "She's gone.""
"PICARD: "Gone?""