4
Focus.
Ianto moved forward, towards those that showed movement and knelt as he examined their injuries.
He stated triaging as best he could, helping those at the scene as his sparse medical knowledge came into play, his edidic memory allowing him to function automatically as he knelt by a child with a horrible leg injury.
Ianto had studied medicine for two years in his late teens, wanting to please his fathers before realizing he would always be too committed to the patient and unable to remove himself from their pain. He had moved to architecture in an effort to cleanse his mind of the horrors he had seen. Mathematics, angles. Order. Much better.
A girl lay in front of him, her left leg almost torn completely off and the hunk of metal still lodged in the bone. Ianto could see that she was still alive from the way the blood was pumping onto the ground in large fountain-like bursts.
She looked to be no more than six or seven.
He was now grateful for the training he had received as he calmly slid his hand up her thigh to the pulse point in her groin and squeezed down on the main artery.
The gush of blood all but stopped and Ianto was still trying to breathe as he looked up, over the devastation around him.
Is this what a war zone looks like?
He could hear people giving orders, pounding feet as people ran and it was calming to hear life.
Ianto then noticed the bright red blazer on the child he was trying to save, many more scattered amongst the wreckage and he realized a school class had been on board the bus.
Ianto closed his eyes.
It's OK. Cry later. Focus.
Ianto opened his eyes and looked up as a passing paramedic stopped and knelt on the other side of the child.
"Fuck!"
"Penetrating lower extremity arterial trauma" Ianto said automatically, "Partial amputation of limb and severe blood loss. I need a tourniquet immediately followed by IV."
The paramedic nodded and motioned to a colleague as he opened his kit.
"What the fuck happened" the new one asked as he dropped beside Ianto.
"Don't know" Ianto replied, finally able to release the leg as the tourniquet engaged. "We were walking and next thing I know, I was flying."
He groaned softly and flexed his hands, cramping from the pressure he had been applying.
"Fucking terrorists!" one spat, as he shook his head and Ianto looked around the scene again.
A bomb.
Oh god.
Ianto wanted Jack, but he rose and staggered to the next victim, another child.
Oh Cariad, it's horrible.
As Ianto knelt beside a sobbing man and checked the child he was cradling he tried to remember what had been happening. We had been walking. We?
Ianto softly told the man that the child was dead, the head trauma extreme and death had been immediate.
The man nodded and continued to rock the small body.
Ianto wanted Jack.