Chapter 9: Reflections on Field Medicine
She woke with a sneeze.
Cold. Freezing cold. Why was she cold?
"Wet," she realized. "Water?" She convulsed in a fit of coughing. "Inside and out," she noted, spitting up a few litres of it. "Dirt. Face. Dirt in face. Get up. Get…up!"
She flopped over. Her shoulder was killing her. Probably from the fall, she guessed. Wait…what fall? Oh, right. That one. "Who in their right mind would build a warehouse next to a cliff?" she wondered (1).
Chloe started a damage assessment. Cuts? Check. Bruises? Check. Concussion? "Whoa, pretty trails," she thought. "Check, I guess. How's the shoulder?" She used the ancient medical technique of 'poking it to see what happens' to find out.
"Huh," she thought, when she regained consciousness. "That hurt." Whatever it was, it felt big. She pulled out a knife to get a better look at the wound. "Yep, that's pretty big," she noted, looking at the reflection. It was a ragged, oozing tunnel through her shoulder, from some sort of magnum round, by the looks of it. "Funny, didn't even feel it. And why do I feel so light-headed?"
Something dripped on her cheek. Water? No, it was warm. Her fingers were wet with it, whatever it was. She sniffed it. Coppery. "Ah," she thought. "Must be blood then." She felt around the wound, carefully. Yes, that was blood all right. "Awful lot of it, though," she thought. "Guess I'm bleeding, then. Huh."
The clouds scudded by. A few frogs, after getting over their initial shock, resumed their nocturnal serenade (2).
Bleeding…blood loss…that was important, wasn't it? It was hard to think, for some reason. "Let's see," she thought, "the blood is the life, right? So I, being of life, would have blood. So, if this is blood, and it is going out of my body, this means that life, best kept in, is going out. Hence the terms, 'haemorrhage,' and 'bleeding to death.' Ah, that explains things." She smiled, pleased with herself.
Then she screamed.
One hand clamped down on the wound and hauled her upright. "Med-kit!" she panicked. "Where's the med-kit! Wait…sandwich! Damn you, Altena! Damn! No kit, no suture, no chance! Damn, damn, damn! Augh, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die! No, no time for that! Think! Improvise, damn it!"
"Okay, um, um, needle, need a needle…throwing pins! Of course! Wait, is this one of the poisoned ones?" She eyed it, and gave it a lick. "Lemon-flavoured, good. Okay, next: thread. Got it!" She half-choked herself with her cloak's drawstring before she remembered to untie it first. "Good thinking, great! Okay, now to sew. Just close it up. Like patching a quilt. Yeah. Simple."
Her hands trembled too much to thread the pin.
"Yeah. Simple."
She got it eventually. "Okay," she thought, "you've done this before. The rest is easy." She picked up a stout branch and bit down. "Just over, under, repeat…"
It hurt. A lot.
The stick plopped into the mud, cleaved nearly in three. Chloe followed, mostly intact.
"Good girl," she thought. "Now, that wasn't so bad, now was it?"
"Shut up," she mumbled. "And stop talking to yourself."
A flash of a knife, a few knots, and a lot of grunts later, and she had a respectable field dressing in place. "Good," she thought. "Now, get up, and get out of here."
She managed to get about a foot off the ground before her arm gave out.
"Okay," she thought, "little exhausted. That's okay. Everything's cool. Try it again, with both arms."
"Mrph," she mumbled into the mud.
"Excuse me?"
"Mm," she repeated.
"Fine, if you think it does so much for your complexion, do that. Just don't come crying to me when you run out of oxygen."
"Mffich."
"Yes. Yes I am."
It wasn't that hard, actually, once she shut out the nest of flaming razor worms in her shoulder (and that gristle-grind noise in her ribs). "Good, good," said that irritating voice in her head, "now the legs. Start with the knees… searchlight!"
Lamps zigzagged overhead. Thick-booted men with skulls to match crashed through the bush with the grace of Boris Yeltsin at Oktoberfest.
"Still think Greaser's lost it," one said.
"You weren't there, man," said another. "That kid, she's some sort of ninja or something. Cyborg-ninja. Cyborg-zombie-demon ninja from hell, even. Like somethin' outta that show, what's the name, Mad-Fax?"
"Whatever she is, she ain't gettin' past me. Gotta eye of a hawk. Yeah. Nose of a wolf. Guts of a…a…a homin' pigeon!"
"A what?"
"Vicious bastards. I remember back in 'Nam…"
"See?" said the voice in Chloe's head. "Nothing to worry about, if they're all that dumb."
She peeked above the grass.
"Okay," said the voice, as she slid against a trunk, "I admit, there are a lot of them. Still, '37' is just a number, right? And you can dodge bullets. All you have to do is stand up, lose the goons, fight through 20 blocks of hostile territory with one working arm, and walk 30 kilometres over rough terrain in pitch blackness before you die of exhaustion, blood-loss, hypothermia, infection and/or (damned) ninjas, and you're home free. Oh, and don't forget the milk. Okay, snap to it!"
Slowly, she oozed to the ground.
"Come on, Chloe," wheedled the voice, "you're not going to let this beat you, right? You? Beaten by a bottle of milk? You are stronger than this. Men cannot stop you. They flee before your sight, fall beneath your blade. Nature cannot stop you. She burns with her desert sands, cuts with her jungle grass, chokes with air like ice, and you live. You will survive: it is your fate. It is who you are: the flitting shadow, moonlight on steel, the last breath…Noir. Now, get up!"
"Tired," she mumbled. "Hurts."
"I know that," it said. "There's a good chance you're hallucinating as well. But the mission, Chloe, the mission! This task was entrusted to you, and you must not fail! So rise. Fight. Live. Now!"
She tried. She fell.
"I said, get up, you filth! Is this all you've got? After the years of training, the endless rounds of conditioning? After all Lady Altena has done for you? You think you know pain? That you have suffered? Think of the horrors she has endured, what thousands will know at the hands of man should you fail. Now, get up!"
"Nn."
"Fine! Then give up. Surrender. Die! Die, here in the cold damp dark of nowhere. Die, as you were for so many long years: nameless, weak, and afraid. Die: rid the world of your pain and despair." She sobbed, just once. "The world has no place for the likes of you."
Her hand, shaking, raised a keen edge on high. "Make it quick. Go with what little dignity you have left. Do it. Do it now. NOW!"
Thunk.
A frog blinked, bemused.
The voice, too, was perturbed. "Uh, I think you missed, girl. I mean, I can't be sure, but since we're still alive and all, it's a reasonable hypothesis to make."
She left the blade stuck in five inches of tree and yanked a second from the straps of her gauntlet. Its twin stiletto-thin tines sparkled with excessive polish. "Well, it's a bit small," said the voice, "but if you start at the eye and keep going…"
Chloe ignored it. "This was a gift," she remembered. "From a…friend." She turned the tiny thing, an ordinary, two-pronged fork, in her hand, watched it catch the light. "Small, strong, simple, beautiful, deadly. Two points of light defiant against the velvet night, destined to come together…as one."
She remembered the night she received it. She remembered the tea — its smooth taste and smell, snaking through the air to coil, warm, in your chest. There were voices, too, talking — just talking! — their words soft, gentle things cuddled by the tongue and pushed gently into the air, so unlike the commands of her countless instructors, or the choked cries of her opponents.
Two voices: so different, yet bound by the same thread of fate as she. The first, the exile's, was just as she'd expected: rich, cold, and dignified, like a fine wine whose taste stormed the mouth head-on, but hid subtleties in its rich bouquet (3). The other's…so quiet! Like a twilight breeze on the nape of your neck! To hear her voice after so many years apart was electrifying. She could see her now: the tousled hair, lunar face, teacup eyes…so like hers, long ago.
That night, the long night in Paris, just the three of them, together, not watched from afar as it had been for too long, but up close, personal, as friends. They talked, oh, how they had talked! How strange it had been to speak without fear! To feel, for the first time, that she could share her thoughts with someone who did not fear her, and would not harm her! (4) How long they had talked for, she couldn't remember. But she remembered the warmth, the soft fall of moonlight, the joy.
And the promise.
She clutched the fork so tight that it trembled. "I…will…see them again," she whispered. "I promised. She, me, and her friend…once more, before the end." She hauled herself up, hope, passion, and pure, stupid, bull-headed determination sent roaring down nerves ravaged by the pains of the flesh. "I…cannot…die here. I…will…not die here!" She pulled the soiled grocery bag out of the mud. "This…thing…will get home, and so will I!"
"You go, girl!" cheered the damned voice. "I knew you had it in you! Now, on yer feet, atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed, and set course for home, yo!"
"One word," she hissed, fork brandished at her temple, "just one more word and I'm coming in there after you, got it?"
The voice almost pointed out the philosophical and physiological impossibility of that threat, reconsidered, and decided to read a book (5).
"'Atomic batteries to speed?'" she thought. "Where did that come from?"(6)
(Footnotes)
1. The Acme Parachute Company, of course.
2. It was mostly about sex, of course, with the occasional beer commercial.
3. BWAH HA HA! Ha ha ha ha ha! Heeee, that's just baaaad…
4. Most readers are probably aware that Mireille Bouquet and Kirika Yuumura had a slightly different perception of the Curious Incident of the Tea In the Night-Time (best summarized by the chapter of Ms. Bouquet's autobiography (Why I Hate Grapes) dedicated to the subject, entitled, "Aaagh! Aaagh! Aaagh!"). These readers have been shot.
5. "Don't Stab the Small Stuff, and Its All Small Stuff."
6. Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis.
