The sun's brightness made it impossible for my eyes to stay closed. As my eyes peeled open to the surroundings, it seemed like I was back home on the island in winter.
The birds chirped the snow was disturbed, but in a forest sense, that is to be expected. As I raised my head from looking at my tunic and the ground, my neck felt shocked by the bad sleeping position, followed by the memory of hitting the tree I was leaning against.
To ensure I wasn't paralyzed, I wiggled my fingers and toes to ensure I could feel them and if I could still move them. Feeling them move both from their place and seeing them move made me feel relieved that I could still move, but I still worried about my spine and back. When I could, I plan on getting my back looked at to see how badly bruised it is.
With the realization that I could still move, I proceeded to move to stand up slowly. The process was slow, with the occasional shocks of pain causing me to stop for a moment to try to avoid it. Once I had finally stood up, I checked to see what supplies I had nearby. Luckily the blast hadn't disturbed anything on my person, or at least anything I could tell.
The next issue was that I had no clue where I was, even though the mage battle had been so bright I could see almost clear as day the area we arrived in the dead and dark of night, meaning I didn't know what the surrounding leading to there and worse is that this is a forest, so everything is confusing.
In contrast, I could see the sun but could never remember which way it rose and fell. On the Rhine front, things were a bit simpler. The trenches were so close that you could always see one, and then it was looking for the side that didn't shoot at you.
Here I could walk in a direction and accidentally end up in the other side's capital if I had good enough luck since no one could cover the entirety of the eastern front. I tried to see if I could find the crater left by the shell that pushed me around, but I couldn't find it, or at least the one I was looking for.
Not like I could tell since there were holes all around. I decided to pick a direction and hope for the best. Once I started walking, I slung my rifle over my shoulder and took a swig of the rum from my flask. Rum is one of the many benefits of being a medic is getting some rum to give to soldiers to ease them.
Normally I don't drink more than my daily ration, but I didn't have many things to ease the pain, and I'd prefer to save the morphine for more serious cases. Walking through the forest, I noticed an area that seemed to have some tree damage.
Still, unlike the other trees I'd seen, these seemed to have branches broken, yet the trunks remained untouched, with the damage being from the top down, which was even odder since shells did blow parts of trees it would be in on an area or from the bottom up.
As I kept walking, I heard what sounded like a stressed groan, hardly noticeable, but after being a medic for a while, you learn to hear sounds of pain since patients are never honest. I decided to walk towards the groan since it could be a soldier in need, and I swore to, at the very least, delay death.
I then thought it best to get my rifle at the ready just in case of a trap though I highly doubted it would be I got a sore arm that things happen. Raising the rifle to my shoulder and opening the bolt to see if it was loaded, seeing it wasn't, I pulled the bolt back to let the round go into the chamber and closed the bolt.
I straightened my trigger finger to keep trigger discipline and started approaching the source of the groan. I saw a boot and got to cover behind a good-sized tree taking a breath before leaving cover on the other side, where I saw a soldier on the ground laid out in a star form. Keeping my rifle trained on the soldier, I glanced around to see if any others were nearby.
Seeing the forest, I turned back to the soldier and began slowly approaching. I scanned the soldier's hands to see any weapons near them. There was an odd-looking submachine gun near her left. I then began side-stepping to the left side as I was closer to the soldier's right leg.
I kept my rifle trained on the soldier in case of any attempt. When I got to where the gun was, I nudged the gun out of their hands before just kicking it a few feet away. It was only then that I carefully put my rifle back over my shoulder and began to pat down the soldier to disarm them fully.
They had a pistol and a knife on them, both of which I threw away. After disarming the soldier, I decided to finally do a check on their health now that my safety had been secured.
The soldier was of small stature, only a bit taller than a meter, maybe a meter and a half. I began doing the care checks I began by measuring conciseness.
"Soldier, Soldier, wake up, hello, Hello, can you Hear me" there was no response as I checked for breathing by watching the chest rise and fall, be it briefly.
I moved the chinstrap and carefully removed the helmet, revealing a head of bright golden hair that seemed almost heavenly. I then removed the tinted goggles. The scarf, while keeping her warm, was denying me access to her neck, nose, and mouth, which would be needed to check her breathing and circulation, so I carefully unwrapped it to slide from behind her neck.
I then placed it into her helmet along with the goggles. I used my first and middle fingers to check her pulse on her neck, looking at my watch on my other hand to see 30 seconds pass. She has a heartbeat of 56, low but not unexpected for someone unconscious.
I'll check in a little bit, but first, I checked the back of their neck to see if she had broken something there. With luck, it didn't seem like she did, so I moved to the next issue, the chest, and it was difficult to tell with her flight suit. I unzipped it. Seeing she had her other uniform on underneath was good since it meant that the cold shouldn't have affected her too much.
Around her neck looked to be two computation orbs. One was rectangular, while the other was an orb. There was also a rosary with a cross, it seemed God was with her today, but jewelry could become an issue, so I broke the chains and placed them into her helmet. I continued to unzip her flight suit looking for any signs of injury.
I palpated her sides and abdomen to see if there were any differences. Upon seeing no issues, I unbuttoned her tunic, revealing her undershirt. I lifted the tunic flaps, where I saw the first blood spot on her left upper quadrant.
Unbuttoning the undershirt, I moved it to see the wound better. I took a gauze, placed it on the wound, and began applying pressure.
While I had one hand on the gauze, I checked the other part of her torso seeing she had remained untouched beside the wound.
Once the bleeding had stopped, I used medical tape to keep the gauze in place. After finishing my check of the torso, I buttoned the undershirt and the tunic and zipped up the flight suit since she needed to stay warm. I then began checking her right arm for any injuries.
From what I could tell, it was fine, but I do plan on checking it later to make sure then I began checking her left. Upon closer inspection, the left radical had been hit through. A quick guess led me to believe that the bullet in the abdomen was the cause of this wound as well.
This led to a conundrum. I could very easily cut the sleeves and fix it, but since I had no clue where we were. We could be here for a few days, I didn't want to have her freeze possibly, so I decided to delay until she could wake to move her arm. While I could do it easily, it was best not to move her.
I still needed to finish examining her, so I put a tourniquet on her left humorous then put her arm in a sling on her chest for when she woke. The legs were last. First, the left one seemed to be okay.
The right, on the other hand, was not. The tibia was broken, the same as the fibula caused by what I assumed to be the landing. For now, I built a splint to keep the leg straight. I then began dealing with smaller issues and checking things I had forgotten to check.
A closer inspection of the scalp revealed blood, most likely a cut caused by the helmet. I wrapped the head in bandages and hoped for the best. Now that the Patient was stable, I decided to begin building a shelter for her, nothing that great, but enough to shield her from some of the outdoors.
I then began to build a fire to heat some water, hopefully. Hours passed as I checked on her and set up a camp. During a check, I decided to do a more thorough disarming after releasing she could have more under the flight suit and didn't find any other weapons, just letters, and notes. I just added it to the stuff in the helmet. I wrapped the scarf around her to keep her warm.
She'd occasionally make a grunt or groan, a few winces, nothing out of the ordinary of an injured girl. I did have some coffee I could make, and seeing that it was just me, I decided I might as well make a cup, so I got to work heating the water and then put the grounds in.
while I preferred tea, having some coffee was good to trade or keep you up, plus I was out of tea. As I was getting ready to drink my cup, the girl stirred more, mumbling something under her breath and then groaning in pain when she moved.
This was good since I now knew she was waking up and that her spine seemed to be okay, so I would take the tourniquet off and do a proper treatment for the wound.
She then opened her eyes. They were an icy blue, closer to silver than to blue. I had checked them earlier to see if they still reacted to light, but seeing them moving beside the PEARL test was nice.
I then realized that I had moved her weapons and mine over to help hold the structure, causing me to swear under my breath. I set the coffee down and moved cautiously to remove the weapons from the structure without alerting her.
She began looking around and, unfortunately, spotted me reaching for a gun. There was a moment where our eyes met, then we both looked at the rifles, then back to each other's eyes. Her eyes showed fear and confusion.
Knowing that a frightened animal feeling backed into a corner would act irrationally, I lunged for the guns, not even to aim at her but just to get them away. Still, she was closer, grabbing her sub-machine gun, and quickly tried pulling the trigger only to realize I had emptied it, which was I was going for my gun that had ammo.
Still, she was able to adapt quickly. Just as I had gotten the gun, she hit me in the face with her gun giving me just enough to allow her to grab my rifle. I stopped and lifted my hands as she kept the rifle pointed at me though it was clear that it was awkward for her.
"Wer Bist Du?" she shouted at me.
"What!" I had no clue what she was saying to me
"Wer bist du sag es mir jetzt?" she shouted. I figured she wanted something, so I decided to try to calm her.
"Medic, I am a medic," I said while pointing to my armband with the cross. This seemed to calm her some. Seeing the red cross, she relaxed and lowered the rifle for a second before raising it again.
"Wo bin ich," she said, seeming to look around.
"You were injured from the battle last night. You crashed," I said as I tried to charade her crashing.
"Ich weiß, dass ich derjenige war, der es getan hat. Ich bin verletzt, nicht vergesslich" she said it in a tone that said annoyance.
"Well, you're upset, but if I was so bad, what about your bandages I had to put them on, so clearly, I could be trusted," I announced to her, pointing at her bandages.
"Now, could you lower my rifle, little girl," I said, signaling to lower the rifle.
"Sie haben Recht. Wenn du gewollt hättest, hättest du mich für tot zurücklassen können und wärest kein Problem gewesen. Die Struktur. Sie haben gezeigt, dass Sie vorhatten, sich sehr gut um mich zu kümmern, aber ich werde daran festhalten." she then lowered the rifle but kept her hand on it.
"Well, since your up now, I'd like to get that tourniquet off and give better treatment now that I can confirm your spine is fine," I said, pointing to my armband, followed by her arm with the tourniquet on her arm while holding some gauze.
"Na ja, ich schätze, du musst mir immer noch sehr gut helfen, aber wenn du irgendetwas versuchst, werde ich dich töten." she said nodding before she gave a glare of some sort but the fact I had no clue she said made it lest threatening.
I then gave her the cup of coffee I had just finished making before I began loosening the tourniquet. She thanked me, or at least it's what I assumed she did, before taking a sip and seemed to become happy about the beverage. I signaled to her she needed to unzip her flight suit.
She looked confused before I patted her arm to bring attention to her arm that had been shot. It seemed the adrenaline from waking up had delayed the response to her injuries.
She was hesitant before she unzipped her flight suit and removed her arm from the sleeve after doing some quick checks and cleaning the wound since my refusal to cut her flight suit had left a mess. Still, a few snips of the rest of her underclothes around the forearm showed it wasn't too bad.
A few bits of gauze wrapped tightly made it better. I gave her arm back and let her slide it in before putting a sling back on since she had slid it out after waking up. Once her arm was back in the sling, her other hand holding the cup, I took the chance to take back the rifle when she took a sip.
She noticed a few seconds later and, based on her tone, something snarky. I sat down with my rifle, opened the bolt, and emptied the gun. The girl looked surprised but seemed happy. After she finished her cup, she set it down and held out her hand.
"Oberstleutnant Tanya Von Degurechaff" I took her hand and replied with my own rank and name.
"Oh, ein Gefreiter, das wird großartig für Ihre Karriere sein, wenn Sie in der kaiserlichen Armee wären. Jetzt auf mich zu schießen, das würde Ihnen mehr als alles andere helfen, oder mich gefangen halten." she said with a joking tone followed by a laugh at her own joke.
I just laid back and had my cup of coffee. Not only was I saving an enemy soldier's life, but I was also saving an important one since she had a rank that sounded important, along with having a Von in her name.
This then asked the question, what now? I was so focused on saving her life and stabilizing it that I hadn't thought of what to do next. On the one hand, I could kill her quickly now that I had my rifle and ammo, and she was still in a good mood.
I could easily kill her and bring back some things from her uniform to prove I killed some high-ranking Imperial officer and a mage. That wouldn't even have to do anything violent.
Just give her an overdose of morphine painlessly, and she wouldn't know since a medic to give morphine to ease the pain just do it a few times and done. I wouldn't do that since it would make all the work I did previously for naught, and one thing medics hate is trying to save someone only for them to die, and here I would be doing it after I succeeded.
That left either letting her go or keeping her prisoner, which caused many issues. If I kept her prisoner and brought her back, I would have to make sure she would be a prisoner of the commonwealth since I couldn't let her go to the communist. They may be an ally of ours, but how they treated their people, how could I trust them with someone they hate?
The commonwealth would at least treat her justly, but could I send what looked to be a girl who was at the very oldest, six years younger than I, to a POW camp? Was it better for her to continue in the war?
Maybe thinking of the other option was a good way to distract me from the conundrum. What about letting her go this option was almost worse than killing her because I don't know what would happen if she went back.
Sure, If I ever saw her again, then I would no doubt be thanked, but knowing she was a high-ranking member of the military meant that she could cause the deaths of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands deaths of my countrymen her own was her issue but mine was a different issue since they could be friends or even family members that could die because of her actions who knew how many she was responsible.
This was not like helping a fellow private or other enlisted. This was an officer with the command to do as they saw fit. Taking her as a prisoner for the commonwealth was the best option. This was assuming, of course, that my allies find us. She might know how to return to our respective lines, but could I do that, and what if her allies found us first?
Well, then I would be taken prisoner and had to hope that saving some high-ranking officer would be rewarded nicely, but when they lose, how would my side see it?
While they would be glad to have me back, I could be ridiculed for accepting better conditions while my fellow countrymen suffered. While the best option is clearly to take her prisoner, I don't know where we are for now.
I'll just focus on waiting until I figure out where we are, or someone finds us. It may be a while because even if the Russy federation is making probing attacks, the ones near here are international cooperation, and it's Christmas, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are no attacks in the name of the Christmas spirit.
Wait, it's Christmas eve. I had forgotten about that entirely. We could be out here til past New Year's day, depending on if they decided to do anything during this time. The communist might want to make some attacks, but with the international unit, the commonwealth and Unfied states could just refuse to make any attacks.
Since we would more than likely be here for a few days, I would try to relax some. Though now that she was awake, I might as well give some of her stuff back that I had previously removed. I grabbed her helmet, which got her attention. I pulled out her rosary and threw it to her, which she caught with her free hand.
She stared at it with hatred for a few moments before tossing it into the fire. I was not expecting that reaction when I usually returned religious jewelry to its owners after saving them.
They're usually immensely grateful, so this was a surprise. After watching it burn for a moment, she picked up the cup she'd been drinking out of and shook it toward me.
"Yeah yeah, I get. Give me a sec," I said, standing back up, taking the cup, and refilling it.
"Merry Christmas, I guess," I said after giving her the cup holding mine to clink ours.
"Merry Christmas," she responded with a clinking of my cup before we both took a sip.
"So she can speak English," I said, chuckling. Afterward, she seemed to remember something and did a writing sign after putting her cup down.
Realizing what she wanted, I took out a notepad for information on injured soldiers and handed it to her with a pencil.
She set it on her leg and began writing. She stopped several times, thinking hard before continuing, occasionally flipping through the notebook before she tossed it back to me.
It didn't say much; all it said was, "I Cant speak English, but I can read and write some." After reading that, I smiled and wrote back, "good to know. Is there anywhere I need to look at?" I tossed it back, and after reading it, she chuckled.
"Not, Unless you can check my mind." she wrote when I read it. It made me a bit worried.
"Can't help you there, but since we're here till you're better, mind telling me what someone as young as you are is doing in this war?" as I wrote this, I worried she might get upset at me and seeing her read the note confirmed my thoughts when she took a deep sigh before writing her response.
"I'll tell you, if you tell me why you saved me, I get the oath, but you could have assumed I was dead and moved on or patched me up and left or transported me to a medical hospital and whatnot, but you have set up a camp, Why?" I knew she was gonna ask me this. I really didn't want to answer this. Luckily it was getting dark, so I could delay answering it.
"Not today, It's getting late, and you need your sleep doctor's orders. I'll take watch. You are in no condition to do so. We'll talk more tomorrow." she seemed to be a bit upset at this, but a stern look from me, along with a point to my armband, got her to accept.
I grabbed my blanket roll and laid it out, it was small for me, but for her, it was good enough to roll her into a baby blanket roll. She seemed against the idea since it would be embarrassing for her, which was fair, but it was good because she didn't need to be rolling around, it would keep her warm, and it was funny to do.
When she protested, I just wrote down why it was good to be wrapped like that, and she gave up seeing the reasons along with a written statement saying that no one else would see her like that.
Though I knew she was young, this reminded me of life before the war with her little protest. Once that was settled, I sat back down and reloaded my rifle for the coming night.
Let's hope tomorrow will lead to an answer for how to deal with this girl.