Medical Centre

By the time Nathan and Alexis made it to the infirmary, she was more than half supporting him. She got him through the main wing and into a semi-private room, just before he collapsed onto the formerly empty bed. Alexis sent a bustling EmDee for a Healer who was skilled in the Force and had experience with trauma and amnesia. In the meanwhile she made him as comfortable as she could.

When she looked up briefly, her eyes met those of Adria Doran, the Dragon pilot she'd found outside the hangar buried in rubble. At least she looked to be in better condition than Nathan.

"Adria. You feeling better?" she inquired across the room of the other girl, before returning the majority of her attention to Nathan. The fingers of her left hand were laced so tightly through his own that it almost hurt. He was holding onto her like he was drowning and she was a life-buoy of some sort.

"Nathan?" she whispered, "It's going to be ok..."

"How's that thing doing? Sticking on?"

The Nautilan padawan - Foeshus - gave Levi a thumbs up from within the Bacta tank, bobbing up and down in the clear liquid while his head-tail continued to heal in the liquid. Surgery was out of the question for Foeshus, as the tentacle-like appendage had been separated for too long to naturally heal itself. Within no time flat, the kid would've had a necrotic tentacle on his hands and all the infections that would bring. Given enough bacta gel he could theoretically have gotten the appendage to take without the tank, but why use a scalpel when you had a perfectly good and new sledgehammer on hand? The old bacta stock needed to be flushed by tomorrow as part of med regulations so why not put it to use breaking in one of the Republic's fine investments in this order? Taxpayer dollars at work!

"Good. Next time check that you stole a real training saber before you do after hours sparring. You know the ones- big and bright green hilt, covered in youngling crayon marks. Unless you want to lose more of those, then by all means. Go for it. I've got nothing better to do around here."

Foeshus gave Levi a universal one-fingered salute.

"Same to you, fish boy. You're out in five." He gave the glass a solid pounding before his pager began to vibrate. One of the medical droids had a new arrival to report and was sending out an APB for Force healers and trauma specialists. As Levi hadn't yet seen any Force healers, he had to assume that he was on deck for this one.

On to number two...

Emerging from the small cluster of bacta tanks, Levi made his way across the clinic to greet the new arrivals in one of the private rooms. He gave a solid knock on the wall before stepping into the alcove, datapad in hand.

Young woman and older man. Humanoid if not human. Master and padawan. Master on the bed, looking kind of spaced out. Shock, definitely. Shock over physical or mental trauma? No visible external trauma. Internal exam is next step.

"Good evening sir and ma'am. My name is Leviathan Rosenfield and I'll be your doctor for the moment," he said keying in a command code on his 'pad for Kay-Tee. "Just going to take a few vitals. What brings you in here today?" While the droid buzzed him back in acknowledgement, Levi retrieved a blood pressure cuff from a side drawer, hooking the Master up by the arm. A pulse oximeter went on the left index finger, and finally a soundscope over his chest for heartbeat and breathing. All three fed into the datapad and would give him a baseline to proceed with treatment. The master was definitely in shock over something, so that'd be first on the list to work on.

"Any chest pains, difficulty breathing, swallowing? Any medical allergies? Do you take martinis shaken or stirred?"

"Hopeless case? No such thing unless you're terminally ill. And I've attempted to work the odd miracle from time to time for good measure."

Retrograde Amnesia. That could be anything or nothing. More likely it had to do with the Jedi's oh-so-precious Force powers, but that wasn't his realm. He was the man of the physical, not so much the metaphysical.

"I never met your wife so I can't say much more than 'I'm sorry for your loss.'" He removed a folded blanket from Kay-Tee's tray and draped it over the Jedi- er, ex-Jedi Master. Dude was already laying back and first step to treat shock was to get him comfortable. Second was to keep his thoughts in check. Anti-anxiety medications could help Nathan at least stabilize his thinking, slow down his brain a bit, but since the cause of amnesia was as yet undetermined Levi decided to go with a more mild treatment.

"You're in shock right now," he said. "Obviously all that information being dumped on you at once would be a bit traumatic. So sit back, breathe deep, and just do some Jedi voodoo. First thing I need to do is rule out brain injury as the cause of the amnesia itself. Any head trauma within the last two cycles? Aches or pains up there? Throwdowns and showdowns with Sith?" The question was as much directed at the padawan as the Master. If Nathan was suffering from amnesia he might not even remember the answers to these questions. "I'm going to refrain from medicating you until I can rule out the head trauma. I'd recommend an immediate MRI just to be on the safe side, make sure we're clear on that front. In the meantime I can, er, self-medicate him." Levi waved at his pink-ish skin. "Half Zeltron with all the benefits. I can at least put some pheromones in the air, stimulate his dopamine receptors without putting artificial meds into his blood stream. With both of your permission of course. And I can provide a mask for you, padawan.

"After all that, if there's nothing on the MRI... well, we're looking at either you tripping out from an extra dose of something - psychotropic drug or bad narcotics- or outright Force manipulation. And I'm not equipped to handle Force manipulation. I am very equipped with Tihaar after hours, however."

"Whether I can help him remains to be seen," Levi said. "But I can promise you this: I won't hurt him." The word 'Intentionally' was left unspoken from that sentence. There was always room for accidents of fate and unforeseen consequences. Nathan could be allergic to Zeltron pheromones for all he knew, but the incidence of that in medical journals was much lower than reported incidents from even basic medicine.

Levi nodded to the droid, sending Kay-Tee speeding off out of the room. He thumbed a pair of buttons on his datapad to prep the MRI machine. Looked at his shoes. Damn! When did they get that scuffed? That was the finest fake leather he could find! He could really use a new pair- oh. Nope. Better stop that thought right there. The nearest shoe store was probably in the next planetary system.

"If this is the first time you've seen him in a while and he's got retrograde amnesia, I'm going to have to ask where you even found him. How long ago? In what circumstances? We can- ah! There we are!"

Kay-Tee reappeared in the opening to their alcove, towing what looked like a hovering gurney- except for the cage-like helmet at the top. The wonders of medicine, when the old MRI machine had taken up an entire room- thing must've been a hundred years old. The Refuge had brought in a few upgrades and this one would be a lot quieter, more portable in an emergency, and claustrophobia- yeah no. Even he got the shakes looking at the opening where Nathan's head would go. Still, better than his whole body feeling like it was trapped in a coffin. And situated on the gurney was a small rebreather mask for the nose and mouth. He nodded to the mask, speaking to Alexis. "For you madam. Unless you'd like to feel the buzz when I open the tap, so to speak."

Turning toward Nathan, he reached into his coat pocket and produced a plastic cup and a needle. "Alright my main man, I'm gonna need to have a sample, one way or the other, to rule out any sort of drugs as well. Pick your poison, then we'll get started. I'll have the droids run it while you're getting scanned and we'll have everything at once."

"Three years?" Levi asked. "And, I'm not judging or anything-" Which meant he was so judging - "but we're just investigating this now? How did you spend the past three years? Nice bauble, by the way." Damn, that'd look great with my Friday night getup- oh. Yeah. No clubs here. Goddess-kriffing-dammit!

The droid, Kay-Tee, took the blood sample in its retractable pincers and wheeled itself off to the lab to begin running the blood tests. It'd probably take the better part of an hour just to screen through half the known substances in the galaxy that could affect memory, but once the MRI started, they'd all be going nowhere quick. The humanoid brain was the most complex organism known to the entire galaxy. Maybe even the entire universe. You couldn't rush that kind of complexity.

"If you've had functioning memory for that long, then we're going to be looking for signs of aneurysm or stroke. Concussion would've either healed on its own or killed you by now. Timetable is important here, folks."

At least he didn't have to worry about bleeding in the brain. That operation would've been... unpleasant. And had equal chances of leaving Nathan a vegetable breathing through a machine as it did of healing him.

After giving a moment for Alexis to affix the mask (if she so chose) he opened the floodgates on the pheromone production. Standard radius of effect was about 6 feet in diameter but Levi turned the ceiling fan on just to be safe- not that anyone would be harmed by the substance. Quite the contrary. Nathan and anyone else in the room should be feeling like they had a mild buzz after a minute or two. Still, much safer than any drugs at this point.

"Alright my man," Levi said, maneuvering the hovering machine to Nathan's bedside. "Slide over about two feed and take the button in your right hand. The helmet's gonna go down for about 45 minutes and it'll stay down unless you start, y'know, freaking out. In which case, hit the button and I'll back up everything we've got. Cool beans?"

"Huh," Levi said, making a few quick adjustments to the MRI scanner. "You know, I get the feeling if I'd met you three months ago on Zeltron, we'd have torn the place apart and had a blast doing it." Levi grabbed the abdominal straps and fastened them over Nathan's stomach.

Would Nathan fall off the platform? Not in a thousand years.

Would the Jedi chew Levi out for not following safety protocol? Definitely. Absolutely. No mistaking it.

"And not to get into a whole 'My life sucks more than your life' thing, but could be worse. You could've found out your wife was living a complete lie the whole time. Maybe using you and your love to make ten-million credits off of selling secrets to the enemy. Implicating you in the whole thing and leading the manhunt to your front door hoping you'd take the fall. Just, you know, throwing that out there."

With no signs of an allergic reaction to his pheromone production, Levi made sure Nathan still had the emergency stop button firmly in hand. He'd had more than a few patients claim not to be claustrophobic only to flip out when the confinement of the scanner became all too real to them. There was maybe an inch of space between Nathan's nose and the cream-colored walls of the machine enveloping him from crown to collarbone. Maybe an inch. If he was very, very generous.

"We're going in three... two... one..."

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The machine was smaller than the old model the academy had. Quieter too. But Nathan would still be hard-pressed to hear any instructions spoken by voice while it ran. Too much noise bouncing off walls that were too close. Like fans blasting in his ears- not painful, but not good for conversation either. A good old-fashioned wireless com communicator would work just fine though, and Levi made sure Alexis had equal access to the microphone on Levi's datapad. Kay-Tee rolled in just as Levi activated the scanner, the astromech's projector kicking online as it worked.

The image that formed in the space between the Padawan, the doctor and Nathan, began to take shape as a smattering of lines and squiggles. A blue, mist-like substance that might have been a very basic starmap of some kind, from long ago when people didn't know the galaxy was a spiral. Slowly but surely though, it began to make a discernible shape.

"Cerebellum looks good at 85% done," Levi noted to himself as much as to Alexis, tracing the hologram through the air with a stylus. "As I expected. Doubted there'd be an issue there to begin with. He can still walk without balance issues- while sober, at least. Procedural memory is still in place as well- he hasn't lost his potty training and I assume he can still use the Force. Brain stem is coming along good. That's the medulla right there, there's his pons, pretty as a peach, aaaaaaand we have midbrain. Automatic processes are in place, breathing and heart rate and the like. Kay-Tee, this is worthless, we already know his heart's beating. Refocus the machine. We don't need this stuff. I want to get us into the cerebral cortex. One lobe at a time, focusing on the pre-frontal cortex and frontal cortex, moving from his front to his back. Oh, and Hippocampus can go last, we know he can retain long term memories now, we want three years ago."

The droid whistled, overriding the machine's programming quick as that. The formation of the different lobes in the cerebrum began as skeletons in empty space, rivers of neurons and gray matter being mapped by electrical and magnetic resonance. The clock on Levi's datapad hit fifteen minutes and Nathan's brain was roughly one-third of the way mapped, but the new and targeted instructions would shave down some of the more critical waiting time.

Leaning into the microphone, Levi said "We're looking good so far. Gonna get to the money shot soon- frontal cortex. You doing okay in there my man?"

Switching the microphone off briefly, Levi turned to Alexis. "So how did you find him anyway? Where at?"

As the pre-frontal and frontal cortices took shape, Levi stood in place, the universe of Nathan's mind forming all around him as he used a stylus to trace the neural and physical pathways of the wonder that was the humanoid brain. The development of the scan was completed in roughly twenty minutes, but as Levi stood in the center of the hologram, staring at the traces of light, pointing with his stylus and muttering a stream of medical jargon laced with obscenities, the machine powered down without his even noticing. The MRI helmet retracted back to allow the former Jedi Master to sit up and take stock of his surroundings if he so chose, but Levi was going down an ever shrinking list of potential causes.

"Slug trauma's a no- the skull would have had to be re-knit and even if the mind compensated for the loss of gray matter he'd be much more handicapped. Tissue is alive and well so no necrosis or disease. And still he remembers up to a point. Up to a point... Drugs then?"

Levi's datapad pinged, a Pavlovian reaction wherein the good doctor broke off his chain of thought and returned to the desk where he'd left it. The blood results were in and...

"Drugs? Yeah, drugs. Oh hells yeah. Lots of drugs. And booze. My goddess, how does he even have a functioning liver? And yet he still remembers. To a point. To a point. Which leaves..."

Kay-Tee cut the holographic feed, wheeling up to Nathan's side to unstrap him from the bed, whistling a command at Levi as the ceiling fans kicked on.

"What? Oh, yeah. Sure. Cutting them off now. Padawan, ex-Master Jedi, the air will take a good three-to-five to clear. You'll be back on your feet in ten. And I now pronounce you healthy and fit, without fear of brain damage or tumors- though probably in need of a liver transplant in the next decade if you keep your habits up. Like, seriously. I may want to put in for cloning request now. You want me to?

"As for the medical cause of the amnesia, I've run down everything I've got. And I'll run this scan and the blood test through the droid databanks. But right now, my diagnosis is on the lines of Force manipulation to your frontal and pre-frontal cortices. You've got not physical damage from injury or illness, no chemical damage- though your dopamine receptors are mildly aggravated. And before you say anything, it looks like extensive use of spice, not my magical armpit scent. No tumors and no signs of previous concussions that could cause this- but again, if the concussion did cause the amnesia it'd either have healed or killed you at this point.

"Questions?"

"The alcohol is a little on the high side, yeah. Spice use was killing him more than anything. And a number of other substances. Cut those out and cut back on the drinking, and I see no reason for him not to be perfectly healthy."

Levi fiddled with his datapad some more, filing the blood test and brain scan away into the academy archives under Nathan's file. " When it comes to the Force block," he said, updating his notes, "even that situation isn't entirely hopeless. I'm a doctor, not a metaphysical warrior, but Coruscant U had files on hand relating to that condition. It's only been done a few times in recorded medical texts, but the essence of it is, somebody went into your brain and said 'Everything from this date back, you cannot consciously recall.' Same thing if someone were to hack my speeder's positioning system. If I tell it I want to go to the club, it can say the address I've entered is not valid, or that all routes have been blocked, or even take me to a different club entirely. That club is still there, however. I know it because I see it advertised everywhere."

Levi inclined his head at Nathan, tapping his own forehead.

"It's all there. All of it. They didn't swap his brain out for another one, and no one is powerful enough to remove individual electrical impulses that refer back to specific memories. Some patients were noted to remember memories while in REM sleep and others found a crack in the block and broke through the whole thing. It comes down to finding a chink in the block to exploit, or subconsciously remembering it all."

"Somebody went into his brain? So, you are saying he couldn't have done this to himself?" Alexis inquired of Levi Rose. She moved closer to Nathan as he slumped into a chair, and placed her right hand on his shoulder protectively. "Who would have---" she broke off, thinking to herself. She had been operating under the belief that this was a result of choices he had consciously made. But if it wasn't?! What then?

She squeezed his shoulder harder than she'd meant to, desperately hoping that that wasn't the case. Because if it was, then it meant she had a much more serious problem on her hands.

Alexis looked down at Nathan and attempted a comforting smile, but she knew it only looked forced. Pain swam through her deep brown eyes. She gulped as she looked down at him, refusing to hide from his gaze.

"Give or take a week or two. I'm...I am so sorry, Nathan. Truly."

The pale padawan looked even more translucent than normal in contrast with her dark hair due to the sterile lighting of the medical center. But her hand did not falter or tremble on Nathan's shoulder. She didn't offer any further explanations. Not right now. She didn't know how much he could take. And he'd already taken quite a lot for one day.