Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Characters: John, Gordon. Rating: T. Warnings: None
Drabble challenge from melmac78: "Field Medicine and Hospital/Infirmary" with John and Gordon.
His comms were down, and by itself that was enough to panic him because it always meant he didn't know what was going on, what was happening to his brothers, sometimes if his brothers were even still alive, but that had nothing on the semi-conscious little brother draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
John didn't have much grace down on Earth - too much gravity, too many things to trip over when he was busy looking to the sky, the stars - and that extended to the ungainly carrying of brothers on the thankfully rare occasions that he had to do it. Normally, there would be snark about the way he was stumbling through the barren wasteland, too close to the border of Bereznik for them to even think about calling Scott for help even if they had working comms (he'd come, but he'd go quiet and a little off and it would take days for their big brother to go back to normal again), but Gordon was too busy trying to somehow keep his blood inside his body to pay any attention to his mode of transport.
Comms were down, someone had shot at them, somehow hitting the smaller target who actually knew what to do when there were guns firing in his direction, and John was completely lost. On the plus side, he thought he might have lost their assailants.
On the down side, Gordon needed help, comms were down, and even though EOS had no doubt screamed at Virgil the moment she lost them, rescue was not going to come fast enough for Gordon.
He staggered again, earning a quiet groan of protest from Gordon as the jostle dislodged him slightly. John clung on tightly with both hands, determined not to drop him, as he looked around for somewhere to stop. Somewhere with shelter, somewhere to hide in case their assailants weren't done yet. Somewhere he could use what basic first aid supplies they had between them to stop his brother bleeding to death.
There was a ruined building, overgrown with moss and climbing, strangling plants that were looking to tear the place down but in the meantime giving it a small bit of camouflage. Nothing large, and certainly not fancy, but nothing in this area was.
It had been the site of several battles in the Bereznik uprising, after all.
The door didn't qualify as a door any longer. Rotting timber barely held together by memories of stronger wood less ravaged by time, nature and war gave way easily as he approached, a whisper of a touch all it needed to cave with a quiet keen.
Inside was no cleaner than outside, nature reclaiming the building for its own with ruthless efficiency. Greens and browns and yellows, and the scent of grasses and mosses, assaulted his nose but he ignored them, finding a place that looked the least unsanitary and gently setting Gordon down.
His brother groaned again, amber eyes fluttering somewhere between open and closed as his ongoing battle for consciousness wore on. John wasn't sure which side was winning, but for the moment, Gordon was more or less unresponsive to outside stimuli.
That didn't last as John tugged at the damaged neoprene, prying it away from the wound to see the glistening sheen of blood-drenched bullet buried in muscle below the skin. It didn't look like it had hit anything fatal, momentum mostly killed by the uniform, but it was bad enough and he dug around in their shared supplies to find tweezers to extract it.
Gordon let out a hoarse noise somewhere between a groan and a scream. John told himself he'd heard worse from Thunderbird Five and pushed through the horror that came from seeing the cause first hand, feeling shuddering muscles beneath his hands as he dredged up first aid training he'd rarely had to use - people didn't use bullets in space - to treat the wound.
At some point, not that John could pinpoint when, the battle for Gordon's consciousness was decided, with unconsciousness the victor. It helped only because it meant the noises of pain stopped, but there was very little John would not have given to hear his brother cracking inappropriately-timed quips in a doomed attempt to lighten the mood.
Anything except the harshness of his breathing, too loud in the otherwise silence. What little treatment he could offer finished, he balled his hands into a fist - in theory to stop his fingers trembling, but instead his whole hands started quivering instead - and tried to distract himself by looking around the little building they were sheltering inside.
Now that he was looking properly, it was obvious. Metal frames, rusted with age, and outdated machinery poking out from behind the reclamation of foliage, told him all he needed to know and the temptation was there to bark out a laugh at the irony.
Long since fallen into disuse after Bereznik's surrender and the end of the skirmishes, once upon a time this little building had been a small hospital - if it even qualified for the term. A building that sheltered the wounded as they cowered from the front lines scant kilometres away while nurses and doctors bustled around doing what they could to get the patients fit enough to be thrown back into the fight.
Many years later, when it was abandoned, forgotten and all but reclaimed by nature, John had brought it one more patient.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari