Tancred Medical
Overview
Tancred Medical is the primary emergency medical facility serving Tancred’s Landing, a minor agricultural and mining colony on the Outer Verge of Sector 11-F. Officially designated the Tancred Landing Colonial Medical Centre, the hospital was built to serve a population of eight thousand or fewer. It currently operates as the most functional medical facility within sublight range of three colony worlds and two orbital waystations, absorbing casualties from across the sector in the wake of widespread infrastructure failures.
The facility is critically over capacity, understaffed, and operating on severely depleted pharmaceutical and material reserves. Its continued function depends almost entirely on the endurance and improvisation of its Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sefina Okonkwo, and a skeleton staff of eleven, the majority of whom lack formal medical training beyond emergency certification.
Description
Tancred Medical occupies a low, two-storey prefabricated building on the eastern edge of the colony’s primary settlement grid, positioned between the small spaceport and the administration centre. The exterior composite panels, once painted a hopeful blue, have faded to a sickly grey-blue that reads as purely institutional. The automatic front doors failed years ago and are permanently braced open with a corroded deuterium canister, allowing the colony’s thin, cold air to move freely through the entrance.
Inside, the ground-level corridor runs the length of the building, designed for orderly patient flow but now packed with cots along both walls. The central lane is barely wide enough for a single gurney. Overhead lighting panels buzz at inconsistent frequencies and cast a jaundiced amber glow where their phosphor coatings have degraded; three have been replaced with portable work lights clipped to exposed conduit, their cables snaking across the floor. The air carries a sharp antiseptic smell layered over deeper notes of infection, sweat, and the metallic tang of overtaxed atmospheric processors.
The two surgical bays at the rear of the corridor are maintained with obsessive care, their white polymer walls still sterilised and their overhead lamps functional due to Dr. Okonkwo’s personal repair work. The pharmacy is a converted storage closet, its inventory reduced to veterinary-grade antibiotics, a single sealed case of paediatric analgesics, and a handwritten list of improvised treatments taped to the wall. Upstairs, the recovery ward holds twenty-four beds in two rows beneath high, narrow windows that admit only thin grey light. The ceiling is low, the ventilation noticeably worse than the ground level, and the air feels dense with the warmth and humidity of too many bodies in too small a space.
Society
Authority at Tancred Medical rests with Dr. Sefina Okonkwo, a veteran colonial physician who has served in postings of increasing isolation across three decades. The colony’s governing council has formally delegated emergency medical authority to her, a gesture that grants her absolute clinical decision-making power while offering no material support. She commands a staff of eleven, only five of whom have formal medical training; the rest have assumed specialised roles out of necessity, their skills recognised and deployed by Dr. Okonkwo as the crisis has deepened.
Formal roles and hierarchies have collapsed under operational pressure. The administrative clerk manages the pharmacy inventory. One of the orderlies has become the de facto respiratory therapist because he can hear subtle changes in a patient’s breathing before the monitors trigger. Decisions are made in brief, specific conversations, and the atmosphere among the staff is one of exhausted competence rather than panic. Dr. Okonkwo remains the only person with a coherent picture of the facility’s entire situation, and her staff follow her directives without question.
Relations with the colony’s civilian population are intimate and strained. The waiting area is perpetually occupied by relatives of patients, some bringing food for the staff, others seeking answers Dr. Okonkwo cannot provide. She addresses them directly, describing the situation in unsparing terms, and asks whether they have medical training she can use. The hospital’s isolation has become acute as casualties from across the sector continue to arrive, and the recent appearance of a private supply vessel represents the first tangible external support the facility has received in months.
Notable Features
The Diagnostic Wall: A two-metre stretch of corridor wall beside the triage area covered in patient names, vitals, and clinical notes written in grease pencil. The whiteboards are full and paper tags fall off, so the wall has become the hospital’s working patient log, wiped and rewritten with each shift change.
The Pharmacy List: A three-page handwritten document taped to the pharmacy wall titled THINGS WE HAVE TRIED AND THINGS WE ARE FAIRLY SURE WON’T KILL ANYONE. It documents the staff’s ongoing improvisation of treatments using substitute medications, including the widespread use of veterinary doxycycline sourced from colony livestock stores.
The Anaesthesia Machine: A refurbished military field unit, approximately two generations old, with brass-and-glass pressure gauges and a manual bellows system. It is one of the few pieces of equipment still functioning at near-spec, maintained through cannibalised parts from less-critical systems.
The Permanent Doorstop: The front entrance’s sliding doors have not functioned in six years. They are braced open with a corroded deuterium canister labelled DOORSTOP — DO NOT RECYCLE, allowing the colony’s 8°C ambient air to flow continuously into the triage area.
Upstairs Recovery Ward: A low-ceilinged space where taller patients risk brushing the ceiling when sitting up. The ventilation is inadequate for the patient load, creating a noticeably warmer, more humid atmosphere than the ground level. The windows are too high and too dirty to provide meaningful natural light, and the exterior cleaning drone failed eighteen months ago with no replacement available.