Ick, it's finals season. My very first in college. And bahbahbah-bah-bah, I'm (not) lovin' it!
Anyways, sorry this has taken so long. I actually had it finished a few weeks ago, but I've been so freaking busy with all the end-of-semester obligations that I haven't had time to edit and post it until now.
So here you go, to everyone else who is currently suffering through finals, or will be sometime soon, this chapter is dedicated especially to you. Together we can get through this!
Thank you to everyone who followed/favorited/reviewed the last chapter! You guys rock!
I hope you enjoy!
The sound of the first bullet was always unexpected to Sam. Perhaps it shouldn't have been, considering she knew beforehand that this particular mission was going to be a violent one. Nevertheless, she couldn't stop herself from being startled when the shooting started.
It was a nasty adrenaline rush, especially when a shot hit home and she had to watch yet another of her friends crumple to the ground.
As she ran up the hill, bullets flying past her, rifle gripped tightly in her hands, gasping half-formed prayers Hail Mary full of grace let me live please God let me live, she wondered absently what would happen if she were to be injured. Sometimes she almost wished that it would happen sometimes, so she could get out of the field, away from the battles and the death, and end up in a place where the doctors were funny and the nurses kind and the company clerk was a good friend of hers with glasses and a sweet smile.
Up ahead, Sam saw Randy trip and fall. Red paint was splattered across his uniform. A brilliant poppy stain was spreading across the green fabric. Like his little sister's fingerpaintings, shown proudly around camp.
Not paint. Blood. Spreading and gushing and soaking. Not clotting. Major vessel probably, possibly more than one.
Sam skidded to a stop next to him, dropping to her knees then down to her belly to try to provide as small a target as possible. This close, she could hear the boy's moans. Grabbed his shoulder. Flipped him over. Big gaping hole. Squishy flesh poking out. Dear God, were those . . . leaned back, turned away, gagging. Yep. Intestines. Bit of something else, maybe stomach or pancreas.
Opened her mouth to scream. Big explosion. Hot and loud. Shit. Artillery. Shitshitshit. Sharp debris flying. Dust stinging her eyes. Scorching and choking. Flung herself down over a body. Body writhing, moaning, screaming. Begging pleading crying. Please God. Please God, please please please I don't even know what I'm asking for but pleasepleaseplease . . .
Tried to scream again. Scream for help. Must have worked. Red lines on white on green sleeve and metal helmet. Metal like the metal in her mouth and on the ground and covering her hands where they pressed on the belly underneath and in front of her. Bag offered. Rip it open. Bandages. Sulfa. Hands trembling. Scrambling. Clumsy. Hurry up, damn you! Gasped apology. Move faster. Surer. You can do this.
More explosions. More screams. You've got this here? Nod yes. Steady hands. Clear mind. No sound no noises no danger just helphelphelp.
Working. Mindless. Stop the bleeding, clean the wound, bandage. Call for stretcher. Help carry. Chopper or jeep? Chopper. Looks bad. Where to? 4077th. Sounds familiar. Can't remember. More screams. Back to work.
Countless bodies. Cases patients friends. Trip over bodies. Check them over. No hope. Move on. More bodies friends patients. More wounded.
CO comes up. Starts yelling. The fuck do you think you're doing? Get up there with the rest of the men! Anger. Who made you a medic? You're a soldier, soldier. Do your fucking job!
Running back. With others. Rifle slick. Blood on hands. Can't keep. A good grip.
See a face. Up ahead. Slanted eyes. Dark hair. Shiny like gunmetal. Pointed this way. Draw up gun. Point and shoot. Crumpling, spitting blood. Move along, move along. Never stop, never think. Never grieve. Just movemovemove always forward.
Hit by something. Doesn't hurt. Grabbed arm. Lost balance. Trip, fall backward. Face up. Sky is beautiful. Water on face. Hard to breathe. Don't cry, don't let them see you cry . . .
Hear sobbing. Not own. Look to side. What's his name? Trevor. Sixteen. Reeks of charred flesh. Bloody charcoal. Neck and face. Spreading over arms and chest.
Still smoldering. Pull off jacket. Gasp. Sudden white hot ouch goddamn motherfucker what the hell. Racing up arm.
Not lightheaded. No dizziness. Still moving. Ignore it.
Jacket. Over Trevor. Press down. Screaming. Sorry. Smother flame. Choking. Smoke and dust. Try to speak. Throat too dry. Like sandpaper. Try again. Help! Medic! Help!
What's his name? Howard? Sweet guy. Mid-twenties. Runs up. Grabs shoulder. Looks at arm. Not me. Look at him. Eyes widen. Swears. Yells for stretchers. Stretchers? I can walk. Looks doubtful. Really.
Finally nods. Fine. Wraps bandage around arm. Keep pressure on it.
Stretcher there. Help move Trevor. Lift his body. Whimpers. Too weak to scream.
Bend low. Run to chopper. Alongside stretcher. Climb into cabin. With pilot. Belt up. Lift off. Belly drops. See too much. Too high.
Pray for a long time.
(line break)
Tents in a horseshoe. Olive green against muddy ground. People scrambling around, small like ants. She looks down. Reminds herself to breathe deep breaths. Relax. You're safe now.
Arm started to hurt a while back. She grabs it, putting pressure on. Bites her lip against the pain. It's nothing compared to Trevor's. She can see him, head lolling limply from side to side. Doesn't know who's on the other side. Hope he's alright.
Takes a moment to observe pilot as he lands. Obviously skilled, especially with no one shooting. She feels a bit safer.
People run towards the chopper, hunched over. Some look familiar. Curly hair, brown eyes. Another, black and blue. Should be smiling, bathrobes, yellow and red. So serious now, so dedicated to their work, like she knew, she already knew that, why does it seem so strange, like they're different people?
Scared, suddenly. It's finally hitting her. Breathing hard and fast, labored, like she's been running for miles or dancing all day.
Reach the chopper. Unloading stretchers from chopper and jeeps. She tries to get out, stumbles, almost falls. Small person, standing next to her, catches her. Pulls her arm over his shoulders, helps her over to jeep. Sits in front, next to him. Small, glasses. She wants to see him smile, see it in person. Hear his voice. Is it the way she imagined it?
He says nothing. Doesn't seem to recognize her. Supposes she can't blame him. He hits the gas, driving down to main camp.
She's surprised to see tears on his face. He'd told her that he didn't cry much, not after the first few months. Why now?
Make it to camp. Unload stretchers. Triage in the compound. She sees more people, serious expressions on once-smiling faces. Not how she wanted to meet them.
They made her wait for a long time. Her injuries were determined to be less serious than others. Certainly less serious than injuries like Randy's and Trevor's. She wonders what happened to them, if they even made the trip.
For a long time, she stayed in the same spot, curled up on the floor in a corner of the pre-op ward. After a while, so many hours that she lost count, they made room on a cot for her to sit and wait. People moved in and out, but she didn't see her bespectacled friend again. She wished he was there with her, to talk with and share jokes with and distract her from what she'd just seen, from what she'd seen over all the time since she'd left home. But instead she just had to wait, calming her breathing and slowing her pounding heart back to something resembling a normal pace.
She didn't know when she'd fallen asleep, but she woke to a dark-haired nurse shaking her gently, telling her she could go into the OR now for treatment.
Blinking wearily, she stood and followed, proud of herself for only swaying a little when she first stood up. The lights seemed unusually bright to her after her nap of unknown length, and she squinted against them.
The whole scene seemed surreal. The OR was filled with clean white sheets, illuminated with lamps – actual electric light! She was greeted by sober masked figures, standing around a bed, waiting for her. It reminded her of the nightmares she would sometimes have when she was little, after the first time she heard a reading of War of the Worlds and a discussion of alien abductions, of extraterrestrials kidnapping her and taking her up to their spaceships for experiments. She hesitated, freezing for a moment.
The man, presumably the surgeon, eyed her warily. "You alright, kid?" He asked, his accent familiar and comforting, sounding like the ones she sometimes heard back home. Her eyes strayed to his cap, spotted the brown curls peeking out beneath it.
She forced herself to relax. These people weren't here to run experiments on her or cut her into pieces; they were here to take care of her. She nodded, resuming her path up to the table. She turned around and hopped up on it, facing the doctor who would be taking care of her.
"Let's get this guy's shirt off, okay? I need to get a good look at that arm," Trapper ordered. It sounded more like a request, the nurse's daughter in Sam noted with approval. She tried not to flinch away when the blonde nurse behind her began to cut away at her shirt. Some residual modesty tried to flare up, telling her to be embarrassed, that it wasn't proper to let a bunch of strangers see her bare skin like this. She shoved it away, ignoring its stupidity.
She winced a little as something tugged on the wound. "We'll give you something for the pain in a minute, Private," the nurse said crisply.
"It's fine," Sam murmured. "It doesn't hurt that badly."
"You got shot, kid," the surgeon told her, raising an eyebrow. "You're allowed to admit it hurts, you know."
Sam nodded her head, biting her lip as the last of the shirt sleeve was pulled away from her arm. She immediately looked over to assess the injury. There was a neat bullet hole in one side of her arm, a dark circle of torn bloody flesh.
Trapper eyed the soldier in front of him. He had been a bit concerned when the kid had turned to look at his injury – people had had all sorts of negative reactions to far less serious wounds. Just ask Frank "How-The-Hell-Did-Such-A-Wimp-Become-A-Doctor" Burns. But the kid seemed to be handling things pretty okay. "You alright, kid?"
The kid cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I've seen a lot worse."
Trapper raised his eyebrow again. "Yeah? That must have sucked." He took the syringe that Margaret handed to him and shot a local into the area of the injury. The bullet had passed straight through without hitting any major structures, so it was mainly just a matter of stitching the wound closed and giving the soldier a few days to heal before, unfortunately, sending him back to the lines.
"Did–" the kid started, then stopped, swallowing hard. "Would you know what happened to my friends, the ones who were brought here?"
"Well, I don't know," Trapper said. He usually tried to talk with the soldiers while he was working on them. To distract them from what he was doing, that sort of thing. Usually he chose a topic a bit less morbid, but this one seemed to be catching the kid's interest already, so he didn't see any point in trying to change the subject until the kid started getting upset. "What were their names?"
"Randall Curtis. Jack Mitchell, Tony Brigham, Marcus Brewer . . . I don't even know. There were so many of them. Trevor Ryans, too."
"I don't know, kid. I'm sorry," he said. "I could ask around for you later, though."
"Thanks," The kid bit his lip, his voice quavering. It had broken in a few places, jumping up to a higher range occasionally as he spoke.
This, of course, caught Trapper's attention. "How old are you, kid?"
The kid blinked at him. "Eighteen," he answered.
"Uh-huh," Trapper said, disbelief coloring his tone. "And how long have you been eighteen?"
"Since Christmas," the kid replied, shooting him a mild glare. "You don't believe me."
"Not a bit, kid," Trapper told him. "You're too skinny and your voice is too high. Now how old are you really?"
"I told you, I'm eighteen," the kid snapped.
There it is again, that higher register. "Look, kid . . . what's your name?"
"Sam," the kid said bluntly. "My name is Sam."
Trapper swore that if this kid made him raise his eyebrow one more time it was going to get stuck that way, and then he was going to make the kid pay for the operation to fix his face. "Look, Sam, I get it. Go to war, get the glory, get the girl . . . but this isn't a game. You could really get killed out here."
The kid blinked hard, but wasn't able to stop a tear from falling. Trapper watched, fascinated, as it dropped from the kid's eye to his cheek and began making its way down his face. "Don't you think I know that, Trapper?" The kid asked softly.
Trapper blinked, shocked. "How do you know my name?"
The kid reached up and wiped away the tear, smearing new patterns in the grime covering his face. He shot the doctor a half-hearted grin. "Come on, surely I'm not quite that forgettable." At Trapper's confused look, the kid continued. "Sam? Sam Wilson?"
Trapper felt like his brain had stopped working for a second. He heard Hot Lips gasp behind Sam. It took him a moment to realize that the kid was looking at him with wide, expectant eyes. "Sam? As in . . . Samantha?"
The kid made a face, scrunching up his – no, her – nose and eyebrows. "Sam," he – she – replied firmly.
"Right, sorry. Sam," Trapper answered, mentally shaking himself. "You do realize that Radar's been worried sick about you?"
She bit her lip. "Yeah, I kind of figured." She hesitated, but apparently decided that what she was going to say had to be said. "I saw him on the drive down from the helipad. He was crying." Her voice was soft and sad and worried. It struck Trapper that she might very well care about Radar as much as the boy cared about her.
"We've been looking for you since Radar got you letter," Trapper explained. "Margaret only got back today, to tell us where you were."
"Wha- How?" Sam asked.
"I have a . . . friend, who's a general. I asked him if he could look for my cousin, Samuel Wilson, as a sort of favor," Margaret explained as she bandaged Sam's arm. "Is there anything else that hurts?"
Sam shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Just tired." And she was. Now that the adrenaline of the day had quite thoroughly worn off, it felt like all of her energy had been drained out. Almost there sweetie, you can do this. "S-so, I'm guessing Radar knew that I might be one of the wounded coming in?"
Trapper nodded, looking the kid over one last time. She didn't seem to be otherwise injured, just tired and shaken up, as anyone would be. "The kid's too well informed for his own good."
Sam let out a shaky laugh. "Yeah, yeah he is," she said, nodding. "Wh-where is he?"
"Hawkeye noticed how upset he was, so he sent him to get some rest," Trapper answered.
Sam nodded again. "C-can I see him?"
Trapper looked at her. The stress of the day combined with her injuries had taken a toll on the girl. She was shaking like a leaf. "No, I don't think so." He held up his hand as she began to protest. "No, Sam, I know, I know. But look at you, you're exhausted. You need some rest. Radar's still going to be here tomorrow, after you've gotten a little sleep."
Sam locked eyes with him, refusing to back down. "And I can see him then?"
Trapper smiled. Yep, she's from Boston all right. "Yes, you can see him then."
Hope you liked it!