They awakened in an ICU drawer after a major accident required surgical intervention. However, they suffered claustrophobia. Their panicked, albeit weak, cries immediately alerted the medics. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Setting this in the early days of the ICU drawers, because systems are in place to detect distress before full consciousness is established]
For every problem, there is not a solution until it very much becomes a problem. Some solutions contain problems that can't be detected until somebody starts having one. Starting with the ironic statement that "space is valuable in space".
Every environment to sustain life has to be built. Everything else is called "planetside" where most of the luxuries of space are more humdrum.
People have had medical emergencies in space since the first species started traveling through it. They have needed medical intervention in the middle of nowhere, with only the tools available on board to work with. They have also needed somewhere safe to recover.
For the really big interventions, the patient needs somewhere they can also take advantage of necessary medical tools. Monitors, medication delivery systems, and assorted items to keep parts of the patient still so they can heal.
It didn't take long for space-based medicine to invent the ICU drawer. It was all perfectly logical. A patient that needed intensive care should not be moving around. Most of them would be unconscious at best and comatose at worst. Therefore, all the equipment could be part of a container designed to keep the patient in a comfortable state.
This ideal did not survive long past the first patient with claustrophobia. As one might imagine, it's a rare condition amongst spacers. Or at least, full claustrophobia is rare.
Dain didn't know she had claustrophobia until she woke up in a glorified coffin. It only got worse when her attempts to scream and pummel at the too-close roof resulted in weak squeaks and feeble taps.
Fortunately for Dain, there was a Medik nearby, who opened the drawer and slid her head out into more open air. Not that there was very much more out of the drawer. At least it was a volume that Dain was familiar with. More comfortable with.
She breathed a lot easier.
"Please remain calm," said Medik Skurj. "A peaceful attitude will assist your healing."
Dain struggled to maintain a voice. "Can't... be calm... inna coffin."
"Ah, I see," said Medik Skurj. She now had to improvise. "I shall keep you company, yes?"
"Please?"
Skurj downloaded a large literary work. Found somewhere to rest her body, and began to read out loud.
It didn't matter if Dane fell asleep while the chapters wound on. Sleep was what she needed most, right now.
Three weeks later, the boffins behind the ICU drawer added screens and interfaces for the conscious, yet incapacitated patients.
[Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash]
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