Fragile Stabilization — Tricordrazine Injection
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Pulaski reads the wall panel while RIKER’s body locks rigid, confirming the organism’s advance hasn’t shifted even as she reports the growth rate has dropped to seven percent. Partial progress lands without relief.
She checks the monitor and delivers a grim status: neural functions remain impaired; respiration erratic, pulse grossly irregular, blood pressure nearly gone.
Pulaski commits to a pharmacologic push, orders Tricordrazine, and drives the hypospray into RIKER. The monitors tick up but still warn of danger, yielding only partial relief.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Focused, urgent, and professionally impatient — calm surface driven by anxiety about time and the patient's deteriorating condition.
Dr. Pulaski reads the wall display and bedside monitors, announces diagnostics, issues the order for Tricordrazine, accepts the hypospray from the crewman, injects Riker, then physically adjusts the stimulation device to intensify the pattern.
- • Arrest further neural invasion or deterioration in Riker's condition.
- • Buy immediate, measurable time for the crew to plan a more definitive intervention.
- • Medical intervention cannot wait for perfect data when vitals are collapsing.
- • Pharmacological and electrical measures can at least temporarily stabilize neural compromise.
Professional and composed — focused on following orders and facilitating rapid treatment.
The medical crewman obeys Pulaski's order, retrieves and hands the hypospray to her and stands ready to assist; functions as the procedural hands enabling the injection under Pulaski's direction.
- • Provide instruments and physical assistance so Pulaski can deliver care quickly.
- • Maintain sterile, controlled procedure under emergent conditions.
- • Compliance with senior medical direction is the fastest path to patient stability.
- • Procedural competence reduces further risk during emergency interventions.
Agonized and physically distressed, likely semi-conscious; terror and helplessness implied beneath trained restraint.
Riker lies tense and sweating; his muscles are taut while monitors display erratic neural and cardiovascular readings. He is the recipient of Pulaski's injection and the focus of intensified stimulation.
- • Survive the immediate physiological crisis.
- • Allow treatment that will keep him alive long enough for further solutions.
- • He must endure whatever is necessary so command can continue (professional duty still implicit).
- • Medical staff will choose the most direct route to stabilize him.
Concerned and urgently invested — calm authority with emotional urgency supporting Pulaski's clinical choices.
Troi stands at Riker's bedside, listening to Pulaski's reading and the monitors, then voices a specific therapeutic suggestion to tighten the neural stimulation pattern in order to better pattern Riker's neural rhythms.
- • Promote a stimulation pattern that the organism will respond to predictably and slow progression.
- • Reduce Riker's neural chaos to preserve higher brain function and consciousness.
- • Psychic/empathic input and precise neural patterning can meaningfully alter pathogen behavior here.
- • Aggressive patterning adjustments are justified given the immediate risk to the patient.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Tricordrazine is the named emergency pharmaceutical Pulaski orders and injects; narratively it represents a stopgap pharmacological measure that slows the organism's activity enough to produce measurable, but incomplete, clinical improvement.
Pulaski's handheld hypospray is handed to her by the crewman and is used to deliver a microdose of Tricordrazine transdermally into Riker. It functions as the immediate medical instrument that translates decision into action.
The wall-mounted neural-invasion display provides the decisive data point — highlighting and reporting that the alien growth rate has slowed to seven percent. Pulaski reads it to gauge progress and justify immediate pharmacological action; it anchors medical judgment.
The bedside vital signs monitor array broadcasts Riker's erratic respiration, pulse and blood pressure; after Pulaski injects Tricordrazine the monitor shows modest improvement, guiding the team to continue escalation rather than stand down.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Enterprise Sickbay functions as the pressured triage arena where technical diagnostics, pharmacology and neural stimulation converge. The bay compresses clinical authority and intimacy, forcing Pulaski to make urgent decisions while Troi provides empathic input and Riker bears the physical cost.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"After intensifying the pattern, Pulaski registers the growth rate drop to seven percent."
"Pulaski tightens the current to target pain memories, then escalates to even harsher stimulation."
"Pulaski tightens the current to target pain memories, then escalates to even harsher stimulation."
"After intensifying the pattern, Pulaski registers the growth rate drop to seven percent."
"Increasing intensity sets up the final, all‑in adjustment."
"Increasing intensity sets up the final, all‑in adjustment."
Key Dialogue
"PULASKI: The growth rate's down to seven percent."
"PULASKI: But the organisms are still impairing his neural functions. Respiration is erratic, pulse grossly irregular, blood pressure almost nil."
"TROI: Can we tighten the pattern further?"