Due to the unusually severe effects of the Arena, I decided to add this chapter. I have work early tomorrow but I can still do a little chapter.


Lyte Anderson- Medic

"I need an intubator, STAT!"

As soon as Loki's body breached the ship, half a dozen medics were all over him. We threw him onto the examination table in the center of the holocraft bay and got to work. Dr. Aziz hurriedly strapped Loki into the CPR apparatus.

"There's a heartbeat," Dr. Janus said, holding up her hand to halt Dr. Aziz. The CPR vest could perform chest compressions indefinitely, but it could also crush the patient's sternum, and if a heartbeat was already present, it could easily damage it. With Loki's already dessicated skin, it would probably deglove his entire torso.

A robot arm plucked an intubator off the surgical table, following my voice to hand it to me. I tore Loki's broken rebreather from his mouth and jammed the flexible tube down his throat. The vacuum-sealed bladder on my end started siphoning the water from his lungs. Sirens and alarms from a dozen machines screamed about Loki's condition, filling the air with noise and blinking red lights.

"How's the drip?" I asked N.P. Robe.

"It's set," she said. Liquid oxygen was flowing into Loki's antecubital vein. That had been our prime priority. After clinical drowning, a patient has approximately fifteen for forty-five minutes to be revived. However, every instant after oxygen stops flowing increases the risk of brain damage. Loki still wasn't breathing on his own, but the intravenous oxygen would sustain him.

Stable.

The worst was over. I monitored the intubator and the displays showing Loki's vitals, but we were out of the woods. The EKGs were indicative of an unconscious but undamaged brain. His heart rate was normal and his blood oxygen levels were steadily rising.

"We got him," I said, and quiet cheers broke out from some of the more energetic medics. One by one, the alarms went silent. Dr. Aziz took a seat, fluffing at his hair in relief.

Trauma care was always a gray zone. I'd had days where hours went by, and when I looked at the clock in exhaustion, it wasn't five minutes after I'd last looked. Later, when I reviewed the tapes with Loki's physical therapist to start making a care plan, I saw that the time from Loki reaching the hovercraft to stabilization was less than a minute.

N.P. Robe started cutting off Loki's wetsuit so he could get at the fragile skin underneath. The rest of us pitched in as he started to abrade the waterlogged tissue away and apply mineral baths in preparation for the new skin. We were glad to see the thick skin on the soles of his feet was undamaged. If he needed skin grafts… when he needed skin grafts, that would be what we used.

A few minutes later, Loki's EKG started wavering. He coughed, then stirred, feeling at the tube in his mouth.

"Don't worry, it's just to get the water out," I said, leaning closer to Loki could see me.

Loki opened his eyes and gave a wheezing groan. I observed his pupils and was glad to see they quickly dilated and focused on me.

"Good news!" I said. "You won!"


I would have guessed the Capitol has cloning technology based on muttations, but they didn't clone Peeta's leg, so skin grafts it is.