Chapter Twelve: Stop and Start
Silence settled throughout the phantom. Melody, wishing for a break from the harsh reality of the situation but needing to do something, helped aid Michelle and an ODST named Romeo. Romeo's lungs had been punctured in a fight with a Brute; and Michelle was in obvious pain as she worked. Her skin had gone flush and she was beginning to sweat profusely, large drops of perspiration dripping from her forehead onto the phantom floor.
The only background noise was the hum the phantom's engine as it kicked into full flight. The female finished their tending and Romeo grunted as he shifted to find a comfortable position before relaxing against the deck. Shi'rune watched, sitting alone as he leaned against the cool metallic wall opposite the group. His head had grown light and he touched his palm to his lower right side, slipping a hand in the gap under the lower section of his chest plate. His vision blurred and he felt a burning pressure deep in his chest as his fingers grazed a painful lump of tightly knotted flesh beneath. Sticky, half-congealed liquid oozed from a tiny tear in his bodysuit. The Sangheili withdrew his hand, casually wiping the blood from his fingers.
With Romeo stabilized, Melody set to work getting Michelle situated as best she could given the situation. Her friend was tired and didn't put up too much of a fight, though she winced and squeaked and squirmed as Michelle set her in a jump seat.
"Can you still feel your toes?" Melody asked.
Michelle nodded vigorously. Despite the distorted angle of the woman's foot, Melody hesitated to tab the emergency release on the side of her boot. So long as Michelle could feel her foot and toes the wound was best left alone until they got wherever they were going. Even with her abilities, there wasn't much to be done for what both medics knew to be a likely badly damaged ankle with their current supplies.
With a sigh, Melody eased herself into a jump seat and forced herself to relax. She felt a trickle relief at the thought that this was almost over. Every fiber of her body was exhausted, and her mind was too numb to try to sort out what she and her companions had been through. So many people had died, soldiers and civilians; and who knew what would happen now that…
A coughing noise brought her out of the fog of tangled thoughts. Melody opened her eyes and stared for a moment at the hull overhead then turned her face to see an ODST next to Sergeant Buck staring at her. The man was wearing standard-issue ODST armor but there was a mango colored stipe running down the helmet clipped to his side.
She peered at him questioningly as he continued to give her a hard look. After a few moments he wagged his head and cleared his throat, "What brings youngens' like you into war?" He asked as he cast his grizzled yet friendly glance from Melody to Michelle then back.
Melody felt herself smile wearily as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She shrugged, "Well, I wanted to go to medical school," she twiddled with her fingers for a moment, "My grades were good but it turns out that takes more money than I had. After college I couldn't get the loans I needed so decided to join up; do something worthwhile and save my credits, have a career and get training and experience." She looked down at her hands in the silence which followed. Looking back at the decisions she had made she knew if she had chosen a different path to her dream job Shi'rune may have been dead. Although she didn't regret deciding to join the military she probably wouldn't have seen a lot of the awful things she had even if she wasn't a doctor; if she had never joined the military she never would have met Michelle…
Melody wondered and gave her friend a look. She saw that the other woman fitfully resting and unconcerned with or unaware of the conversation, "I don't know what brought Michelle here," Melody said honestly, realizing the subject had never come up or, more truthfully, had always been carefully avoided.
"Well, Miss," the ODST chuckled, pulling Melody from her musing, "it's good to have dreams and ambition." He nudged Buck hard with his elbow, "Something Buck here needs to learn."
Buck turned and gave the other man a wan look, not at all amused.
The ODST chuckled again as he scooched down in his jump seat and laced his fingers behind his head, snuggling in and propping himself back casually. Melody smiled and finally felt as if the worst of what she had been through was beginning to fall away.
Shi'rune shifted against the deck and struggled to keep his breathing natural. He felt cold and his vision wavered at the periphery. He knew he was injured and he knew Melody would want to help, but she looked so happy…
The Sangheili let his gaze crawl across the deck and eventually lifted his eyes to see Siv watching him intently. The Kig Yar cocked his head to one side, the feathers on his crown raising in interest then dropping flat against his skull, round bird eyes going wide and darting nervously in realization. He looked from Shi'rune's face to the cracked chest plate to the Elite's blood tinged hand to Melody several times. The Sangheili almost imperceptibly shook his head and Siv swallowed hard. He reached for Melody's arm even as Shi'rune narrowed his eyes and silently snarled.
Glaring his hardest at the insolent Kig Yar, Shi'rune barely heard Melody's voice trickle into his fading perception, "Shi'rune, what's wrong?"
He could not breathe, it hurt…everything hurt. "I am…" he tried to find the right words but his brain felt slow and his mouth refused to work properly. He reflexively coughed, his body's need for oxygen overriding the pain which puddled low in his chest. This was all wrong. He was not that badly injured, his body should be able to…
Melody slid from the troop seat and felt her newly found calm transition into a sense of dread. Her heart rate picked up as she made her way to Shi'rune's side. Even as he lifted one hand to ward her off he clutched at his abdomen with the other. A trickle of blood seeped from beneath the armor of his chest plate and Melody dropped to her knees beside him. As she drew close she could hear the ever constricting wheeze of his breathing.
Shi'rune wanted to speak, to tell her he was fine and not to worry; but he was suddenly too exhausted to speak. It felt strange: this being too tired to make his mouth work. Strange. Peaceful. The chill he had felt before receded and calming numbness draped over him like a warm blanket. His mind whispered that sleep was somehow the answer to the current problem but…he could not recall the problem was. Vaguely, Shi'rune became aware that Melody was pulling at the catches on his chest rig and he watched with increasingly detached interest as her mouth moved but no sound seemed to come out. She was gesturing and pointing and he knew she had to be speaking but he heard nothing, save a faint ringing in his ears. Everything had become so distant and it felt as if the connections to his own senses were ebbing to almost nothing. He thought he should be concerned about that last fact for a reason which eluded him. He was so tired…
Shi'rune's eyelids drooped lower and the weight of his chest and shoulders began to pull his torso to one side as consciousness slipped away. Melody tried to prop up the heavily listing alien, to break his fall. She settled for cradling his head as his body dropped to the deck with a heavy thud.
Melody barely realized Buck was there helping her roll Shi'rune over. She popped one more catch on the Elite's chest plate and the armor covering came free enough to move it out of the way. The wound was a pool of blood which had caused a darkened, slightly distended lump just beneath the curve of his rib cage. It leaked old, partially coagulated and tar colored blood ever slowly and there was little doubt as to what was wrong.
Buck had popped free a personal can of bio foam but slipped it unused back into an armor pouch as he surveyed the wound. Melody was frozen in a state of panic as she assessed and reassessed and assessed again the injury, desperate not to see what she was seeing.
"That bleeding's internal," Buck said grimly.
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Michelle woke to a fog. Sounds filtered in, distorted as if she was hearing them from underwater. She opened her eyes and saw a smiling, unfamiliar face looking down at her as others hovered and bustled in the background. It was so bright and she was so tired. The gentle motion of the gurney being wheeled down the hall lulled her back to sleep. It felt as if she had only just closed her eyes when she woke again, her rolling bed jostling as her escorts loaded her up into an oversized elevator. Nurses. Techs. An armed soldier. Sounds. Shuffles. A chime sounded. People exited the brushed steel box and the bed began rolling again, carrying her down another wide, brightly lit hall. A few nurses flanked the gurney. Michelle lolled her head from side to side trying to find the comfort of a familiar face. Through the wall of bodies clad in white coats and pale blue scrubs the drab green-gray of a Marine's battle dress and field armor caught her eye. He watched her from the corner of his eye, easily keeping pace as he gripped his rifle like a man charging into battle.
"Wait, where are you taking me?" Michelle asked painfully, fright suddenly welling up to break through the haze of waning anesthesia.
"It's alright," the nurse nearest her head cooed, "We'll have you to your room very soon."
Michelle closed her eyes and opened them to find another chunk of time gone. The gurney was sidled up next to a hospital bed.
"Okay, you're going to have to help us," the smiling nurse said. Michelle scooted and pulled herself as many hands gently assisted in getting her over onto the bed. A tech adjusted her IV line and a pair of assistants worked to get her leg in a sling. A thick nylon and plaster cast covered her lower right leg leaving her swollen and bruised toes peeking out. Steel rods protruded from the off-white material in twos. Each set was joined by tiny a series of steel bands for adjusting tension and manipulating angle. Michelle knew how badly she must have broken her ankle to warrant all of that, but the information didn't manage to poke past the fuzz in her brain.
"Where am I?" Michelle asked to no one in particular; to anyone who would answer.
"You're…" the head nurse began.
"That's classified," the Marine barked in gruff interruption.
The woman gave him a look and an uncomfortable silence slipped by unnoticed by the confused patient.
"But," Michelle protested weakly. Waking up and moving had really worn her out. "I…I'm..." she stuttered almost pleadingly, unable to make it make any sense.
Voices floated around in the fog.
Someone was reading off her vitals. Someone else was giving another a tutorial on what leads were hooked up to where in the machine regulating her fluids.
"How long until she's with it enough to talk?" That was the Marine.
"She just woke up from major surgery, Sergeant." The head nurse sounded angry. "I know it doesn't look like much from here but that was an extremely intensive and rather long procedure. It will take her time to recover. So, don't get in a hurt and feel free to make yourself comfortable."
"Look, lady," the Marine sounded like he was losing his temper, "I have orders from Lord Hood to notify him as soon as she can talk. I don't care if she just had brain surgery if she can talk she's gonna' talk."
