This one shot is part of the Seeking Souls series of stories. In terms of the time sequence of the story, it takes place between the first and second chapters of Light through Darkness. However, to avoid spoilers, it ought to be read after Messages in the Grass.
Healer Falling Smoke holds his Host's memories as his own; his hopes, his loves, his heartache. A chance meeting in the ER brings him a second chance.
***
"Adult female MVA, found unconscious at the scene, massive crush injuries to just above everything, emergency deinsertion, 100% O2, Inside Clean everywhere, bp 90/50, temp not registering, good night and good luck"
I had heard them bring her in and met them half way, parting the sea of Healers around the speeding gurney.
"She's had four units on the way here."
"Jesus Christ," I whispered. She looked like a horror movie corpse; mangled flesh, broken bones freely visible, soaking in blood.
"Any other vics?"
"No, the other driver was DOA. This is it."
"Getting Falling Smoke onto this now!" the triage healer called, running over to us.
"I'm on it!" I called back to her, as the gurney shoved into a trauma room, "Get four more units up, order another eight. Let's get on top of this bleeding, people." I clamped the femoral arteries and removed the tourniquets from her thighs.
"Ice bath for the legs and let's forget about them, this belly's going to blow."
I slipped the scalpel down the skin of her abdomen and dark blood flooded over the table.
"There goes your four units."
"Suction! And more suction! Get that straight back into her."
"Bp's crashing, o sat's falling-"
Her diaphragam was busted, what a surprise.
"We're losing her, people!"
"Get her on a respirator, squeeze that blood into her, watch her heart-"
The orders came automatically as my hands worked. My eyes swiftly assessed the damage as the suction emptied the abdominal cavity of blood and organs surfaced like drowned bodies. I fitted the retractor and ratcheted her belly wide open, letting light and vision flood the murk.
The liver was lacerated, broken ribs shredding its surface, the spleen looked like it had popped. I pulled aside the dark serpentine mass of the intestine, cradled in their own curtains of connective tissue sheeting, and exposed the back of the body wall, right then left.
"Aorta severely bruised but intact, kidneys ok, no major spinal damage visible…"
I let the intestines fall back, lying bathed in dark fluid, and got to work. I was ligating vessels everywhere, shutting off the flow of blood to stabilize her before I could begin to think about Healing.
"Smoke, her intestinal O sats are critical-"
"We have to maintain blood flow to the brain. The rest is secondary at this point."
Time was measured not in hours but in organs saved, blood flow reestablished, bags of blood used, improvements in blood pressure. The floor was littered in bottles of Heal when finally the last clamps could be removed and only a tiny ooze came from the bruised tissues, the vessels quietly pulsating and the organs reperfusing to a healthier pink.
"Alright, we're holding here, let's see if we can't save these legs…"
***
When they finally wheeled her out to ICU, I followed behind, peeling off the gloves, letting the adrenaline fall away and my heart start to relax, fatigue creeping in around the edges.
The nurses set her up in the ICU, plugging in her monitors and starting to clean her up. I listened to the blissful ping of her steady heartbeat as I watched her face appear beneath the half dried blood and sponges.
That face… that face…!
Memories assaulted me. Framed in the golden grasses of autumn, smiling. Sitting on the porch of her house, listening for me, waiting. Sleeping on my arm in the firelight, my fingers softly tracing her naked silhouette. The smell of her skin, the sound of her voice, whispering to me in the forest… It was over a decade ago, and it felt like it was yesterday.
"Falling Smoke? Her post-op charts?" the surgical nurse handed me the screen pointedly.
"Thanks. And, uh, could you get me her, uh, her full medical history?"
"Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing's wrong. I just want to check something."
Waking up in this body, she had been my main preoccupation for years. Those first few years, memories of the Fire World still burning through my mind, I had clung to these other memories, clung to this other person, this other life. Even now, with the Fire World tightly locked away in the deepest recesses of my brain, my host long faded, she was like a beacon. My body responded instantly, heart galloping, breath shallow, fingertips tingling…
"Here you are Falling Smoke," she turned the screen to me, open at Hungry Flame's history.
"Thanks," I said distractedly, running through the file.
"Might I suggest you go clean up? The nurses will be sick of wiping up your footprints."
I glanced at my feet: a trail of bloody footsteps led back to the OR.
"Sorry, I just want to…"
She was a Seeker… she'd had a son but he had died… our son… she was otherwise healthy… they had found her in the snow; she had come after me…. she had no memories…
No memories.
None at all?
"Falling Smoke! I will not allow dripping in the ICU! Not even you!" the ICU Healer advanced on me belligerently.
"I'm gone, I'm gone…"
***
I was covered in blood, my scrubs plastered to me, sticking at the edges where the blood had already dried into a thin brown crust. I turned on the shower head full force and crouched beneath the spray on the floor without bothering to try and take my scrubs off. I resting my back on the wall, my forehead on my interlocked fingers, welcoming the punishment of the drumming fingers of water, the way they curtained away the pressure of the ER and let me sink exhausted into my own little world.
My mind spun as I watched her blood leach and leach from my scrubs, my body, swirl down the drain.
She had come back to me.
Not the way I would have chosen perhaps, but she was here. Burning Lights… Hungry Flame… But no memories. Surely she would remember me? Maybe she was just saying she had no memories; she was a Seeker after all. Maybe Burning Lights hadn't faded either, and she was protecting her, she was afraid… I could not know until she woke up.
All that mattered was she was back. And she was alive.