I won't make this a habit, but a quick thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this so far. Don't forget to review and tell me what you like, don't like, want clarified, ect.
This chapter will be a little longer as I start to introduce some of our main grounder characters in more detail, and it is my goal that from here on out most of the chapters will be as long, if not longer. - SOVA
Maybe being floated would have been safer, I thought as one of the warriors from before took a swing at me as I walked out of the building. I moved out of the way quickly, not wanting to be on the receiving end of his spiked gloves again. Throwing my hands up I tried to plead with him.
"Wait, I'm not trying to escape," I said, ready to dodge if he didn't believe me. While fighting wasn't on my list of mastered skills, dodging guard attacks back home was something I had gotten decent at. "I need my backpack."
The warrior grunted and moved closer. Either he didn't understand me, or he didn't care.
"Please," I said. "If you want your people in there to live you have to listen to me for a moment."
"You are in no position to give orders to us girl," the woman from before commented. Moving from the shadows of the tree closer to the light given out by the fire in the center of the circle of buildings.
I shook my head, "No, I know. And it's not an order, I'm asking you."
Pointing back to the room I had just exited, "I can't help them with the supplies you gave us, but in the packs we had there are medicine kits that I can use to help them. If you can get those to me, I think I can save them."
"What makes you think we would do anything for you?" the warrior closest to me asked.
So now he speaks English, that's convenient I thought.
"I'm not asking you to do it for me, I'm asking you to do it for your people in there that are dying," I replied. I was mildly impressed with myself for a moment, that actually sounded convincing. Apparently the woman thought so to because she ordered the two men to gather all the packs they had taken from us and have them brought back to me.
I almost thanked her, but I knew she wasn't doing it for me. I still had no guarantee that once we healed her people that she wouldn't have us all killed, but one problem at a time.
"Remember what I told you," she whispered quietly, her voice dripping with venom.
"Yeah, yeah, heal them or we all die. Got it," I replied.
Seeing the warriors make their way back with their hands full of our various packs I returned back to the building and Lucas.
"You're still alive," he half joked from next to one of the cots. He was washing blood from around the burns of one the more badly wounded men.
"Yeah, and I come baring gifts," I joked back as the warriors moved past me to place the bags on top of the tables.
"Holy shit, you got them!" Lucas exclaimed, standing up to move towards the table. "Asking nicely worked?"
I bit back a laugh and shrugged my shoulders, feeling it best to not go into detail.
"Let's see what we have, shall we," I said as I unzipped one of the packs. It took a few tries to find the ones with medical kits inside, but eventually Lucas and I had everything laid out neatly on the table. We had found a few bottles of disinfectant, a tub of burn cream, healing salves, a case of gauze and bandages and a travel size kit of medical tools. The supplies wouldn't last long, but they would serve our purpose. With some luck, we might have some of the other random supplies from the kits left over in case of an emergency - I laughed at the thought. Because being threatened to perform miracles or die wasn't a big enough emergency.
"I'll start with the healer and treat his burns if you'll prep the other two," I supplied. Lucas nodded and asked what I wanted him to do.
"Clean around the wounds, make a count of exactly where the shrapnel are embedded and how many there are overall," I told him, adding a few additional instructions. "I want to get his burns treated first, we may have already waited to long to clean them out. But after I get him wrapped up, I'll come and help you."
Gathering the supplies I needed I moved closer to the man with the bad burns. He had already been mostly stripped, leaving him in a pair of shorts on the cot. Before now I hadn't really taken the chance to study our captors, but as I prepared the ointments I looked over my patient.
Like many of the others he had tattoos scrawled across his face, his created a circle vortex almost around the right side of his face disappearing into his hairline and beard. He had long, braided dark hair and an equally dark and coarse beard to match. Like the others I had seen, his skin was a dark tan - exposure from the sun I guessed.
Carefully I wetted a rag I had found in some of the disinfectant and began to clean off the dirt and grime covering his burns on his arms and upper chest. The clothes he was wearing must have provided some protection I assumed. At some of the more damaged spots he twitched when I touched him, but he never woke up. I quickly applied the burn cream we had found in the packs and finished wrapping gauze around his wounds.
Standing up I evaluated my work. If we could break his fever, and infection hadn't already set in, he would live. Good, one down and two to go.
I moved towards Lucas who was finishing "prepping" the second man. The one Lucas wasn't next to groaned loudly and I moved towards him first.
"His temperature is higher and the shrapnel is deeper in his chest, I think we should start with him," Lucas suggested.
"Where is the other one injured?" I asked as I knelt down to the one who had moaned in pain.
"Most of the shrapnel is in his back, it's deep but his vitals are stable for now," he replied.
I looked over our next patient. Lucas was right, this man was worse off.
"We'll need more rags, some clean water and the sewing kit if you can find it again," I listed off for Lucas who had moved towards the table with the supplies on it.
The man in front of me was fading in and out of consciousness, and I willed Lucas to move faster with my mind. This man was built differently than the healer, he was as tall as the first but his body was lean and defined with muscle. A thought that both made me blush in realization and groan inwardly as I realized that would make it more difficult to pull the shards of metal out of his body. Like the others I had seen he had tattoos across his body, starting on the sides of his neck going down to a point on his shoulders. Around both biceps he had black bands that circled his muscles in different thicknesses. However, the markings that stood out the most on his body were the blood red circles that started from the center of his collar bone and spanned out in a neat line, evenly spaced out across his clavicle.
I absently reached out to trace the red tattoos, but the moment my hand touched him his body jerked. I looked up to find him staring at me, now fully awake though obviously wounded and limited.
"Can… Can you understand me," I asked, stuttering at first from the intensity of his gaze. He said nothing, but spared a glance back over my shoulder as Lucas moved behind me with the supplies I had asked him to gather.
"I think that you might be able to," I continued softly. "I am a healer, sort of.. I"
The man snorted at my comment. Well, at least I know he can understand me now.
"Listen," I continued, using a little more force in my voice than before. "I was asked to heal you, and that's what I am going to do. You have pieces of metal buried in your skin and I have to get them out so your body can heal and you don't pick up any toxins or infections from the metal. I wish you weren't going to be awake for this... I don't have any anesthetic."
Lucas pulled out a piece of leather I guess he found at the supply table and raised it to the man's mouth.
"Bite on this," he suggested. The man just grabbed the leather with his teeth and spit it out to the side.
Guess that's a no then.
"Listen man, this is going to hurt," Lucas tried to argue, but I just put my hand up.
"He knows Lucas. He doesn't want, so don't force it on him," I said as I picked up a wooden bowl that I had placed a scalpel, tweezers and the sewing kit in. The man on the cot seemed pleased with that as he stopped glaring and moved his head back to look at the ceiling above. "Besides, if the screaming gets to be too much we can always duct tape his mouth shut."
I was mostly being cheeky - we didn't even have duct tape - but the glare from the warrior told me he didn't find me to as funny as I thought. Letting a deep breath out, my face fell to a serious expression as I caught the man's eyes again.
"Once I start, I can't stop. We've already waited to long," I told him. "This will hurt, even though I will try to be as gentle as possible, but I need you to try not to move. No matter how bad it hurts. It's critical that you understand that, some of these pieces are pretty close to your heart, if you jerk up I could kill you, and I don't want to do that. Do you understand?"
For a moment I almost thought he didn't, but he eventually nodded his head once.
Well that would have to due. With another deep breath I began to cut around dead tissue and pull the pieces of shrapnel out. One by one I was able to get the pieces out, quickly disinfecting the wounds and sewing them up as neatly as I could after. To his credit, aside from the involuntary muscle spasms I was causing, the man didn't flinch or jerk away from me once. Though, his face told me that this was still no picnic for him either.
"Almost done now," I tried to reassure him. Me and Lucas had been working on him for what I guessed to be nearly an hour, if not longer. It was hard to tell time underground I noticed. The last piece was the deepest, and the closest to his heart. It was also the one I was most nervous about. I had no way of knowing if the metal was acting as a plug to a deeper wound - if it had already pierced his heart, pulling it out would mean killing him. On top of that, if I didn't pull it out at the same angle it went in, I could still puncture his lung myself.
From beside the cot the angle to pull out the shrapnel wasn't right and I huffed in frustration. Standing up I realized that the shrapnel had entered in from straight on. Biting back my blush and ignoring the confused looks from Lucas, I climbed onto the cot and straddled the man's waist causing him to groan.
"Oh hush, I'm not that heavy," I responded, suddenly self conscious of my figure. While I was by no means unhealthy, I was very aware that I was in the upward range for the normal statistics for weight for women of my height and age range. I tried to readjust my weight anyways though, resting more on my things than on the man himself.
His eyes met mine again, and I noticed they were a startling shade of grey. And for once, he wasn't glaring at me.
Focus Cole. Ignore the extremely muscled, dreamy eyed warrior your stradling. Yeah, I was bad at pep-talking myself.
"Careful now Cole," Lucas whispered from my left. I blushed at being caught in the middle of an internal debate and focused again on the task at hand.
"I need you to hold still now," I told the man beneath me, as if he wasn't already a still as a board. Carefully I grasped the edge of the shrapnel with the tweezers and began to pull it out, following the same path that it cut open to go in. I felt the man tense beneath me, but heeding my words he did not move more than that. The tweezers lost their grip and for a moment I fell backwards slightly, I hadn't realized I had been using so much effort to pull it out.
Lucas beside me took a sharp breath in and I carefully reevaluated the damage. Luckily the slip hadn't made things worse, meeting the man's eyes once more I tried once more to pull it out. Hearing it make a hollow clang into the bowl next me made me swell with pride. Watching the wound for a moment I realized that he was still breathing fine and no blood had come rushing out after - I had done it.
"Good news bud," I told the man I was still sitting on top of with a cheeky grin. "I think you're going to live."
He again said nothing, but returned to looking at the ceiling. I would take that as a sign of immense gratitude.
I moved off of him with some help from Lucas and finished stitching up the last wound.
"Why don't you get some sleep Cole, you did a good job but you must be exhausted now," Lucas said softly.
After taking a moment to think about it, I realized that I was starting to feel extremely tired. Tending to the man had been nerve wracking and had drained me more than I cared to admit, but we still had one more to go. Sensing my thoughts, Lucas quickly assured me he could take care of the last one, that none of his wounds were as severe.
I was unsure, "You've been up as long as I have Lucas, if not longer. It's not fair for me to sleep while you work. Let me help you."
"Cole," Lucas replied. "I can tell just by looking at you that you're exhausted. That procedure was way harder for you than it was for me. I can handle the last guy, and I promise that if I run into any difficulties at all I'll wake you up first thing."
I was going to argue, but caught myself yawning instead. I grudgingly agreed, sitting down on the cot next to the man we had just patched up. Pulling the blanket back I laid my head on my arm as a makeshift pillow, glancing over at the man on the bed next to me. Drifting into sleep, I noticed he had turned his head my way. Saying nothing I just nodded my head towards him slightly, and to my surprise before sleep took me I thought I saw him nod his head back.