#9 It's a Jungle Out There

It was even more chaotic than she'd expected. Disorder and confusion were everywhere.

From what Goose could tell, there were no established frontlines, and fighting took place anywhere Republic and enemy troops happened to meet. She tried to listen in on the comm chatter, but couldn't make heads or tails of all the military lingo. After wandering a few blocks and finding not a living soul around, Goose began to despair of ever helping anyone. If she could not find the wounded, she most definitely had no way of helping them.

It was only after a rather painful bit of grit got in her eye that she remembered the contact lens Jules and Coric had given her. With the HUD, she should be able to find some of the wounded. She blinked twice, and once again she could see a bright map littered with colored dots. Much to her dismay, there were very few soldiers left fighting. A tally on the left edge of her vision showed the extent of the situation. Only about 240 able-bodied troopers were available. The rest were either dead or dying. Even as she watched, a green dot signifying a healthy soldier flashed red before disappearing altogether. He was dead, whoever he was.

Goose tried to force that thought out of her mind, and instead focused on going toward the area with the highest concentration of wounded, which she saw as yellow dots. She soon realized that where she was going was very, very close to the actual fighting. As she carefully made her way down the eerily deserted streets, the sounds of blasterfire and a myriad of explosions became more distinct. She had to walk past dozens of dead bodies, many of them civilians, who had probably been killed during the bombing. The cloying scent of death surrounded each of the bodies, and Goose dared not get too close.

She almost started to lose her concept of time as she trudged down that gallery of horrors, the horrors of war. Goose was only shaken out of her stupor when the whole street shook as enemy artillery erupted only a block away. She dove to the ground without even bothering to take the time to scream, though she certainly felt the need to. A long time ago, when she was still new to all of this, she'd descend into hysteria every time she heard an explosion. The very first bombardment she went through had left her a panicked and useless mess. By now, she had learned not to do that. Screaming would not save her, but getting to cover would.

Goose quickly curled up defensively against a mostly intact wall and tried to cover her ears. The blast was near enough she could feel the heat of it, but far enough away that the flying debris might give her some bruises but not kill her. She could feel the shock wave punch her in the chest and tingle all the way down to her toes, and the sound was almost deafening. Goose was absolutely terrified, but to her credit she managed to fight the urge to hyperventilate, though her breath still came in short, forced gasps.

When she was sure it was over, Goose cautiously unrolled herself and coughed out the dust she'd inhaled. She stood up on unsteady legs, her whole body visibly shuddering, her pulse still pounding in her ears. She took a deep, shaky breath to steady herself, and clenched her hands into fists so they'd stop trembling. Then Goose brushed the dirt and rubble off of herself, grimacing when she felt the welt forming where a particularly large chunk of masonry had connected squarely with her shoulder. She rubbed it gently as she tried to get her bearings again, which was made difficult by the fact that the newly demolished street was a challenge to navigate.

No more than a hundred feet from where she'd taken cover, the street had been turned into a twisted, blackened mess. Goose had seen no-man's land before, back on Virgillia when she'd been sent to help with the casualties in a mission very similar to this one. She had been appalled to see the devastation and utter destruction there, just as she was right then. The only difference between then and on Virgillia was that she'd had a team of medics working beside her there, and a few soldiers to protect them.

Here, on Christophsis, she was totally, completely alone. She had no backup, no help, and nobody to banter with. Never before had Goose been put in a situation like this, and it scared her silly. There was no one to give her instructions, and there wasn't anyone to ask for help from. She squared her shoulders, wincing a bit as it agitated the new contusion she'd forgotten about, and set her mind on figuring out how to proceed. Things would be different now, working right on the frontlines, and she would have to change. Becoming more independent would be a good start, because she had an important job to do.

Eventually, Goose managed to reorient herself, and doubled her speed toward the wounded.


As she drew closer to her destination, Goose began to see more and more clone troopers, all of them dead. There must be a lot of streetfighting, a thought that made her nervous. Then, as she turned a corner, she heard the noise that she could recognize anywhere, and dreamed about in her worst nightmares. The moans of a dying man.

Goose picked up her pace and ran over to him. He was an ordinary clone, just like all the others she'd seen, except for the long shard of shrapnel protruding from his side. The crater nearby and the blackened remains of his squad scattered about told his story instantly. The point man had triggered a landmine, most likely planted by Separatist forces as they retreated. Evidently, this man was the lucky one.

He was barely conscious, but his cries of agony were all too clear. Goose pulled off his helmet and tried to give him a hypo of morphine, but he reared up and started thrashing the moment he saw her. She had dealt with these reactions before, from soldiers too hurt, scared, and confused to tell what was happening to them anymore. His eyes were glazed over, and it was obvious he was in a great deal of pain. She doubted he was actually aware of what was going on, and was only acting on some sort of primal instinct. He continued to yell hoarsely and lash out at Goose as she tried to hold him down so he wouldn't twist the shrapnel even deeper into his body.

"Hey, pal, you've gotta calm down," she soothed him as she grappled with his arms. "I'm a doctor, I can help you."

Goose couldn't be sure if he had understood her or had simply used up the last of his waning energy, but he stopped moving long enough for her to give him a sedative and a shot of morphine. Then she set to work on his wound, thankful that it was only the one.

His plastoid armor did not seem to have protected him at all, having shattered on impact, and was a nuisance to get off. Once she'd figured out how to undo the clasps, Goose gently lifted it off, careful not to jar the shrapnel. The black body glove peeled off easily enough, and in a moment she was confronted with a horrid, oozing wound. The blood was already clotted, so he must have been laying here a long while. She was disgusted that nobody had been by to help him, even though he certainly would have been conscious enough to call for help when he was first injured.

However, troops must be stretched incredibly thinly if only a little over two hundred troopers were holding the city. She could be miffed later, because right then he was fading fast and she had to work quickly. Goose pulled on some gloves, even though it wouldn't make much of a difference to the patient. If his injuries didn't kill him, the resulting infection would if he didn't receive antibiotics.

The dried blood held the shard of metal firmly in place, and there was no way to remove it besides cutting it out. Using a vibroscalpel, Goose made an incision all the way around the shrapnel, careful not to make the wound larger than necessary. Now it was only a matter of removing it without killing the patient. This part was always the trickiest, and it was made more difficult by the fact that she didn't have a bioscanner to check if it had punctured any organs.

Fortunately, the metal was not very jagged and she gently pulled it out with little resistance. There was fresh bleeding, as was to be expected, but it was light enough that Goose was reassured his spleen had not been injured. However, it was soon apparent there was a tear in his colon, and fecal matter was seeping out of the wound. The colon, of course, is the most germ-infested organ of the body, and if he didn't receive antibiotics soon he'd go septic.

"This is just fripping fantastic," she groused. "There's nothing like a leaky colon to brighten up your day."

It was easy enough to seal up the hole with a few well-placed glue-stats, but the stench was awful. The smell of feces mixing with blood took her back to her worst on Virgillia. It really wasn't his fault, but the odor was more than a little overpowering at such close proximity. It only encouraged her to work faster, and soon she had closed him up with a bacta patch and given him a strong antibiotic. In any ordinary hospital, or even back on Virgillia, this would have been seen as sloppy. She should have used sutures or at least staples to close up properly, maybe spend a bit more time reconnecting muscle tissue. But she wasn't in a hospital, and she really didn't have the time to do more than a slap-and-dash job.

No matter how rushed it seemed, she had done well on this patient, and his odds of surviving were very high as long as he made it to a proper medical facility within a few hours. Goose would have been happier if she could've given him a blood transfusion, or even some plasma, but she had none. He was stable for now, and that was all she could hope for. However, she would have to keep a close eye on him later. Sepsis could always set in later, during recovery. Goose didn't just perform surgery, she felt responsible for her patients up until the moment they were discharged from the medbay.

Now that he was out of immediate danger, Goose needed to figure out what to do with him. They were still in a relatively exposed position, and she couldn't just leave him there, but at the same time she had to go help other people. Years of helping to carry stretchers and long hours of surgery had made her relatively strong, but an unconscious man in full armor was more than she was sure she could handle. Also, she was afraid his wound may open up again if he was moved.

Fear gives people strength sometimes, and it was fear that motivated Goose to forget her apprehension and start dragging his deadweight once the artillery started up again.


With all of his armor, the trooper could easily have weighed close to two hundred pounds. Needless to say, Goose was not thrilled to have to drag him more than a block. But she did, because she had to, and after several minutes of exertion she made it to where the other wounded were gathered. She had hoped to find some sort of first aid station there, or at least somebody who knew what was going on, but she was not so lucky.

It was a small courtyard that sat in the shadow of a bombed-out skyscraper, which actually afforded a lot of cover from enemy fire. The situation was probably more dire than she had first thought, because no one had stayed behind to care for the wounded. Goose counted eleven injured men loosely grouped together, and it appeared that whoever had carried them to safety had left in a hurry to get back to the battle because none of them had been given more than rudimentary care. There was not even a clone medic to help them, though she assumed that they all had to be busy doing the actual fighting.

Goose gratefully deposited her unwelcome burden (whose vitals had in fact improved somewhat) in a relatively safe place, then started to triage her new responsibilities. There was a wide range of injuries from blaster burns to blunt force trauma, and most were unconscious. She dragged them into a rough line from the most urgent to the ones that could wait, then started to operate. No more than a block or two distant, the sporadic sound of blasterfire betrayed just how close to her the shooting was. If the enemy managed to push the Republic troops back, which was probable, there would be no way to move all of these wounded, or for her to escape. Instead of thinking of all the unsavory possibilities, Goose decided to focus on her work

And work she did, because there was a lot to do. At first, she was dismayed by what she saw. Just like the first trooper, all of the others had obviously been hurt and waiting for a long time because in all cases their blood had clotted and dried already. Goose was even surprised that some of them were still alive, given all the blood they'd lost. From what she saw, she knew that the Republic was going to have a tough time taking care of their casualties for the rest of the war. There was clearly no infrastructure in place to care for wounded men, because these troopers had been left to die, and they would've died if she hadn't come along. It was absolutely barbaric, and she had to put an end to it.

Years of experience had made this part of her job easier for her, and she soon fell into a working rhythm.

Shrapnel in the chest.

Extract. Stop the bleeding. Repair the lungs. Seal the wounds. Bacta. Synthflesh.

Next.

Blaster bolt to the gut.

Make an incision. Stop the bleeding. Resect the bowel. Seal the wound. Bacta. Synthflesh.

Next.

For the following few hours, that was how her mind functioned, almost droidlike in its efficiency. Goose hardly felt the passage of time. The less she focused on the pain, death, and horror around her, the more bearable it was. All other stimuli were ignored as she worked at a frenzied pace trying to ensure the survival of the troopers whose very lives were now entrusted to her.

Every once in a while, a clone trooper would run in and drop off a wounded comrade, then race back to the battle. She was so busy she never had a chance to speak to any of these men, but it must have spread by word of mouth that there was a surgeon taking care of the wounded because soon she was swamped by the sheer number of casualties.

Goose had to work like a woman possessed to keep up, but somehow she managed. The worst part of all of it was that she ran out of gloves after about the twentieth patient, and was low on just about everything else, too. In the end, she had to resort to using antiseptic alcohol to sterilize her hands and worked with the supplies from her patients' own medpacks. As she operated, enemy artillery volleyed and thundered overhead. More often than not, it would overshoot its target and explode too close for comfort. When this happened, Goose would throw herself over her patient to keep dirt and rubble out of his wounds, and could only pray to gods she didn't believe in that the other patients in the courtyard were not hurt even more.

As the day wore on, she had discarded the button-up shirt of her fatigues, preferring to work in her short-sleeved undershirt. It was only when evening began, around six o'clock, that the constant artillery fire finally ended. Goose could not believe it at first, assuming at first that it was just a lull, but was overjoyed when she realized it was really over. Then she grimly set back to work, because she still had several patients to take care of. It was dangerous to keep working in the dim twilight, but they were dead anyway if she did nothing at all.

The rest of the fighting seemed to have ended as well, because no more casualties arrived after that. In the darkening evening sky, Goose looked up and saw several enormous explosions in space. She could only hope that it was the Separatist blockade being destroyed and help would arrive soon. True to her wish, she saw Republic gunships flying down with reinforcements no more than a half hour later. By then, Goose had done all she could her patients, and was utterly worn out.

When a gunship landed on the street adjacent to her courtyard, Goose was sitting in the middle of all the troopers in her care, keeping an eye on them. They were lined up in neat rows, thirty-seven in total, all ready to be taken to the medbays of the ships in the Republic fleet. She had done her job so well, in fact, that only one trooper had died under her attention. He'd had a piece of shrapnel go right through his helmet and into his brain. One look had told her he wasn't going to make it. He'd survived about an hour, but the damage had been so severe Goose couldn't spare the time to do more than give him an analgesic.

There really was nothing she could have done for him, even if she'd had the most advanced surgical equipment in the galaxy. Still, she felt responsible for it. It was not her fault he died, and she didn't even know who he was, yet she could not help but feel outraged. It was her job, her one purpose in being there, to keep him alive. To keep all of them alive. But he was dead, and there hadn't been anything in the universe besides divine intervention which could have saved his life.

The gunship's doors opened as soon as it touched down, and clone troopers with hover stretchers poured out. Obviously, they'd managed to find out through the grapevine that she'd set up an impromptu aid station there. Goose was pleased to see Jules was among them, and she stood to greet him. Her legs shook with exhaustion, and her mouth was so dry she could hardly form words. She'd barely had anything to drink all day, she belatedly remembered.

"Hi, Jules." she said thickly, "Long time no see."

Jules had in fact seen her that morning, and was shocked at how she looked now. Even in the insufficient light shining out from the gunship into the darkness of the night, he could see what a sorry state she was in. Her hair was disheveled, her face was grimy, and she was covered in dust. Her hands were red all the way up to her wrists, and there were smears of blood on her face and arms. None of it was her own blood, but he didn't know that. To Jules, she looked like the last survivor of a massacre.

"What happened to you?" he asked anxiously, "Are you all right?"

Goose almost laughed at his distress, but didn't because it would've made her sound insane, even though that was how she felt at the moment. It was almost absurd that she was the only one unhurt, yet she was the first person he was worried about. She probably looked a whole lot worse than she felt, and it was nothing a shower, a meal, and a good night's sleep couldn't fix. Her shoulder still ached, but that wasn't very high on her list of immediate worries.

"No, no I'm fine," she mumbled and waved him away when he tried to check her for injuries. "Those guys are a lot worse off than I am."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Jules continued to radiate concern for her, but she was too numb from all the stress of the day to notice it. Her head buzzed with fatigue, and she was unable to fully process the events of the past few hours. While they started to ferry the wounded to the medbay with the gunship, Goose listlessly washed off the blood on her hands as best she could in the broken fountain in the center of the courtyard. Much of it had dried into a rusty red sludge that smelled coppery and was nearly impossible to scrub off.

For now, she moved stiffly, mechanically, staring vacantly as the patients who had become the very reason for her existence for the past eight hours were carried away to safety. The emotional toll would hit her later, but for now she was so deep in shock that she didn't feel much of anything. She picked up her shirt from where she had cast it off hours earlier, but did not bother to put it on. Her undershirt was enough, for all she cared.

Goose went back with the next shipload of wounded. Most of the clones on board watched her apprehensively, as if she might have a nervous breakdown any moment, but it hardly mattered to her now. She looked like she was on the verge of tears, and in fact she really did want to cry, but nothing would come out. It was as if she'd fallen into some sort autopilot, and it was the only thing keeping from falling apart then and there. Never before had anything she'd experienced left her in such inner turmoil, yet there she was.

The trip was a short one because the Resolute had made planetfall on the outskirts of the city. Goose went with the wounded to the medbay, to help out, but the med droids were already in control of the situation. They didn't even need to do any secondary surgeries because she'd repaired the wounds so well already. They went straight to recovery in the post-op wards where they were hooked up to IV drips and life sign monitors. All of them were stable, at least for the time being.

In the end, Goose wouldn't have been of much use at that point anyway, so she went back to her quarters to sleep it off.

Once in her room, she flung herself on her bunk and immediately sank into a deep and exhausted sleep, one she hoped where none of the day's demons could disturb her.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case.