Wherever he was taken to, it smelt horrible.
He was still blindfolded, alright. And tied up. And probably sitting in the same place for hours now. He dared not to sleep, lest his captors came back and he died while dreaming. That would not do, that would not do!
Time – he had lost track of that already. So much for treating the injured, eh?
Briefly he wondered if Sylvia or any of the other medical staff managed to escape the siege. Were they all dead or had they run off to another camp? Did the rebels go after the other refugee camps to? If so then who were still left? How many casualties? Who were said casualties?
The metal door of the room slammed open. Heavy footsteps echoed along the stone walls, growing louder and closer with each passing second. Adel brought up an imaginary hand in his mind and began to count, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop.
There was a low 'shlick' sound, and the force binding his arms and legs suddenly loosened. He sighed, wringing his hands together, slightly glad that the blood circulation had resumed. The pins in his hands were beginning to irritate him.
A rough hand grabbed at his blindfold, ripping it off and exposing his eyes to the dim light that hung in the middle of his cell. Momentarily dazed, he rubbed his forehead with a hand, swallowing any cough that was about to choke itself up his neck.
The guerrilla's hand shot out and snapped around his shoulder in a crippling grip, and he was hoisted up into a standing position. Adel wriggled nervously, relaxing only when the response he got was the barrel of an assault rifle pointed directly at his face.
"You gonna give me trouble, doctor?"
"N-No," Adel replied, shrinking away under the withering gaze of the soldier
"Then you have work to do."
He was pushed out into a corridor, no better lit than the cell he was just in. Taking the pressure of the cold metal barrel pressed into the small of his back as his map, he walked on, taking note of the directions. Pass two doors forward, where the sounds of gunshots and laughter can be heard. Turn the corner, ignore the fact that there are quite obvious puddles of some unknown (and possibly not wanting to be known) liquid scattered among the numerous shells of discarded ammunition. The temperature lowers, ignore the chills, for the gun behind you does not like it when you stop to shiver for any reason. And then, then came the 'operating theater'.
Why would Adel drop it between two quotation marks? For the room he was led to have not the smell of antibiotic gel like he was used to, it was replaced with something that was probably a mixture of sweat, blood and infection. Oh, and add death to the list as well, when he noted a small pile of bodies lumped together in a box near the entrance, as if it was just another pile of trash to take out.
He noticed that the bodies all had skinny arms and legs, quite unlike the rebel soldiers he saw before him.
Ignorance seemed to be the motif for the day. The doctor was pushed along to one of the tables, on it laid a soldier that was clearly injured and in pain. Shock had already worn off. The injury was from quite some time ago. The attack on the refugee camp, probably.
"You're a doctor, right? Treat him. And don't worry, you've got more to do after that."
Adel gulped down whatever answer he had to that, and picked the crude bandages off the patient's bloodied leg. A large gash stared back at him, its bleeding slowed considerably, to the point that he could see blobs of brown and black ringing the wound.
"I… I need light."
He got handed a cigarette lighter.
"Don't you have anything better?"
"You giving me lip, coward?"
Adel clamped down on his answer. Trouble was only a statement away.
"V-Very well. But you would have to hold it over the wound while I operate."
The soldier was at least willing to cooperate on that. By the orange glow of the lighter's flame, Adel could pick out the glints of four shotgun bullets lodged deep into the flesh. Close enough.
A few quick plucks of the forceps later, he had all four bullets sitting on the table beside him.
"Sutures."
A roll of thread bonked the side of his head, and it took all the self-control he had not to yell about it. The wound would not stitch itself up, however, he turned his attention back to that.
Once he was done, he heard a little click from behind him. Instantly, whatever blood he had rushed down to his feet.
"Half an hour. No good, doctor, that's too slow! People get hurt faster than that out on the field!"
He was being timed?!
"You can't rush a procedure! If I were to do anything wrong, your friend there would get injured more!"
And he regretted his outburst, just as soon as that gorilla hand seized his collar and dangled him only inches from the soldier's face.
"I said, you are too slow."
He was swung away, tumbling into a pile of boxes in the corner of the operating theater, which splintered apart under the force and his weight, spilling more corpses and ammo everywhere. Disgusted, Adel crawled out of the wreckage, only to get stomped on the head by the laughing soldier.
"When I say you're slow, doc. I mean it. Don't worry, though. Boss gave me something that'll make you a whole lot faster."
The possible things the soldier was referring to flipped themselves around in his mind like the pages of an open book: A non-lethal gun wound, torture, poison, a bomb strapped to his back, getting beaten up if he could not finish a procedure, starvation – the book was not going to end any time soon, was it?
He felt the raspy breath of the soldier down his neck, looks like he had decided to bend down. In doing so, he tried struggling, but the leg was sturdy and kept his head pinned against the ground.
"Struggle some more and I'll really make sure that it hurts."
Adel complied silently, only to feel the sharp tip of a needle pierce the skin on his neck.
That was it. Needles, the speed at which one can operate, it made more sense. But no! He did not want this! Not again!
But struggling was futile, for as Sige shot down the needle and into his bloodstream Adel just had no choice but to comply.