Clean Through

Participants:

jaiden_icon.gif ygraine_icon.gif

Scene Title Clean Through
Synopsis A rifle round through the arm, in a filthy combat zone and without a trauma team on hand? All in a day's work in the Dome….
Date February 16 2011

The Dome


The War at the Store, as Jaiden has started to call it, is still fresh on the breeze. People, loaded down with the tins of food that they could grab, are busy streaming back to the places they've claimed for their own to hole up and have the first decent meal many of them have had in well over a fortnight. Jaiden, after meeting up with Keegan and exchanging some fresh water from his powers for a backpack full of food, is busy finding a place to sit down with his burden and relieve some of the pressure and pain. Said burden, Ygraine FitzRoy, is being carried as one might carry a bride across a threshhold, injured arm out, good arm around jaiden's neck, Jaiden's arms beneath her waist and knees respectively.

He's strong - there's that to be said, being able to carry a burden and a backpack over rough streets, but he does so without complaint, heading to a safe place he had established near the edge of the dome near some burned out buildings that had not really been touched since right as things started…..

Rather less than compos mentis she might be, now that she's slipping firmly into shock, but Ygraine is still capable of providing Jaiden with a little bit of assistance. Though her ability generates no force - instead merely redirecting some of the power of the universe around her - she can ensure that her weight presses solely upon Jaiden, and that she's not dragging down towards the ground. He's still bearing every bit as much mass, but the distribution is rather less troublesome and his balance considerably better, while Ygraine in turn receives rather less in the way of bouncing and jostling than would normally be the case.

Nonetheless, both are likely to be decidedly glad when they reach their destination and are able to stop moving, the Briton now deathly-pale though the flow of blood from both sides of her arm has markedly slowed under the pressure of Jaiden's impromptu tourniquet.

While a man with a burden does gather a bit of attention now and again, it's only skill at avoiding potential pitfalls combined with the attention of the mob on the rest of the world that allows Jaiden and his injured passenger to get where they need to get - an abandoned warehouse - half destroyed by a section of the dome going through the south end of it. "Hold on now, Ygraine…" Jaiden's words are reassuring as he shifts slightly to pull some debris away from a hole in the wall, slipping both through without too much trouble, kicking the debris back over to hide their access. Inside, the place looks as if a hurricasne has oassed through; boxes shattered, their contents strewn about like a child's playroom.

In the corner, hidden behind a pike of debris is a small door thast leads to an office, and it's here that one of Jaiden's stashes reside. Along with a few blankets, a first aid kit from a sporting goods store, and canned food, this place has one of the rarer things in the dome - safety.

"If you can do an initial job here", Ygraine croaks, peering about blearily, "then I've got a military medkit. Not with me, of course. Too precious. But it's still got some supplies. This… this isn't… have you ever been shot?"

"That'll do nicely, I think. Right now we need to get some fluids into you and stop some fluids from getting out. I can patch you up pretty decent, but let's hope that military kit has some sulfa or antibiotics stashed somewhere to keep this from going septic." Jaiden lets out a breath as he lowers Ygraine to the tattered couch against the back cinderblock wall - in style during the late 70's in mustard-yellow with three cushions - enough to recline on, even if you're Jaiden's size. He pauses and starts to ease her jacket off, careful not to move that wounded arm too much. "Been shot once, yes, and it's not an experience I'd care to repeat. Right shoulder, a little higher than yours. Just a graze luckily, but…" He shrugs. "Not fun."

"I've got a hole", Ygraine says rather forlornly. "Clean through."

Then her free hand delves into her jacket, unzipping a secured pocket, and drawing out… a metallic cannister roughly the size of a grenade. "The kit came with these. Four of them. Negation gas, as a 'medical treatment'. Antibiotics and the like, it has. I was using them on Jacob. The poor guy who lost part of his foot when the Dome came up…."

"Well that's good, then. We won't have to fish for a bullet. I've got the tools to do it, but I don't relish fishing around in _anyone_ with a pair of long pliers." A bit of gallows humor as he helps ease her jacket off, putting it up on one of the office chairs. There's a quirk of a grin at the sight of the canister, Jaiden's expression going from concerned to disbelief and then back to fairly neutral as he reaches to take it, hefting the 'medical supply' in his so-far unbloodied hand. "These standard issue now, I guess?" There's a shake of his head as he puts it aside on the couch to concentrate on the task at hand, getting his bottle of whisky out and putting it next to Ygraine, pausing for a moment. "In a purely clinical sense, I need to get your shirt off. I've got a spare or two, so don't worry about going topless in here, but I need to see the wound." He also fishes around in his backpack for a bottle of hand sanitizer and a light that is mounted on a headband…hands free surgery.

"Be careful with that", Ygraine instructs weakly, watching the cannister as it's set aside. "I can't replace them…. You'll need to help me out of the jacket. I… can tweak gravity to help, 'cause I doubt I'll be doing much pulling myself. But it'll be stuck to me. Get my other arm free, then you can pull it off. After that… the shirt shouldn't be too hard. In comparison, anyway."

"If only it were so easy without the gunshot wound." Jaiden teases, making sure the cannister is wedged somewhere it won't go clattering off on the floor, leaning forward to help Ygraine out of her jacket, uninjured arm first. The injured arm? It takes a good five minutes to get it off, and even then, it's not without a little pain.

A little pain, Ygraine is more than used to. She's picked up 'road rash' at thirty miles an hour and ripped splinters out of a velodrome track by crashing at forty. Dislocations, breaks, sprains, muscle tears… but she's never had a hole through her before, nor has she had her body reporting this kind of wrongness.

As a result, she's crying freely well before the process is finished, her figure-hugging, reinforced leathers very toughness and weight now making them acutely difficult to ease gently over her injury, while the blood acts as seal of its own… at least until significant movement is achieved, after which the renewed flow that starts begins to act as lubricant.

Fortunately, with the temperature in the Dome higher than outside, and the complete lack of a wind, she opted to forego her thermal skinsuit for an evening of running around carrying heavy loads, and as a result there's merely the shirt and a sports bra beneath her jacket.

Jaiden is as gentle as he possibly can be, pausing, easing the jacket off and then starting again once she's caught her breath. When it's off, he's probably just as relieved as she is, the blood-soaked jacket laid aside on one of the chairs, a pair of scissors coming out to start on the blood-soaked sleeve of her shirt, clipping gently, peeling it away from the bloody skin beneath to reveal the bullethole, neat and clean through the meat of her upper arm.

"Well…the good part is…" Jaiden sits back. "I've seen worse." Jaiden's powers go to work and water is drawn from the surrounding air, gentle fingers cleaning away the dried blood from the wound - even touching the wound now and again to get the worst of it out.

"So've I", Ygraine grits out, gaze determinedly averted. "Crashes can be really nasty at times. But… fuck. At least you don't end up as a doughnut. "We'll… we'll need to clean it. Thoroughly. One of the more famous assassinations of the last century worked only because Heydrich's wounds weren't cleaned properly, and he died of infection from fibers left inside the flesh. And those leathers have been bled on, picked up road dirt, been in a sewer…."

"Yeah, I know….it's why I'm being rather careful. At least as long as it's bleeding, that means it's not gotten hold yet." It sounds good, at least, and almost as if Jaiden believes it. "Okay, this part won't feel very good…" The whisky is offered as the water encases her upper arm, surrounding the wound and starting to slowly scrub at her skin and the bullet wound, working in and out of the hole, little slivers of leathers and blood clots coming out and falling to the bottom of the water sleeve.

When she can talk again, Ygraine is vaguely confused to find the world at a different angle. Wasn't she sitting up a moment ago? But she retains enough presence of mind not to look at her arm.

"Did you know", she croaks, "that standard medical practice used to be to cut wounds if they weren't bleeding enough? The notion was that the flow of blood would clean them. Bullets were often thought to be deliberately poisoned, so a wound that offered little blood would be widened to try to get the deadly problem out. There's even a record of a formal commendation being given to a soldier in one of Napoleon's first army commands, because he had the quickness of thought to apply pressure to a wound and save an officer from bleeding out rather than waiting for it to 'clean the wound'…."

"Really? I didn't know that. That was in the napoleonic wars, then? What other bits of history do you know?" Keep talking, Ygraine. Don't pass out. Keep talking. Not until he's done. The fingers of water probe a little deeper, pushing in and out of the wound carefully, the stuff he's cleaning out collecting in the bottom of the water column. When it's as clean as he can tell, he rummages around in the kit again, leaving the water there for a time to protect the wound from the air, the water tinged a light hue of pink. "Now for the…ahem…fun part, Ygraine. We've got to pack the wound and wrap it tight….I'd take a drink or five if I were you, because this will not be pleasant."

"My first degree was History", Ygraine croaks, making no immediate move to reach for the whiskey. A few more seconds without gulping down the burning liquid, and that's a few more seconds before she has to cope with things being put inside her arm. "It's part of the reason why I'm such a cynical optimist and such a bitter idealist. I've a damn good idea of the heights people can reach, and how sodding often they hit the depths."

Curling her fingers around the bottle, she very cautiously shifts her shoulders a little, to offer a more natural drinking position - though she doesn't make use of it yet. "One of Napoleon's many bright ideas - as a counterpoint to his casual disregard for human life, for honesty, and the like - was the organisation of a proper medical corps. The man he put in charge of it did crazy things like study how to help soldiers survive. Designed ambulances. Distributed medicines that worked."

Taking a long swig of liquid, she coughs, shaking her head. "Gah. He wound up as a Baron of the Empire. Deserved more, given the changes he made - and the precedent set for other armies." Another long swig, then she closes her eyes.

"Let's see how well I cope with this", she says, before turning her head to bite upon the collar of her opened shirt, in an effort to try to avoid closing her teeth on her tongue.

Here we go….

The water sleeve bleeds away, taking it's cargo of bits down the nearby sink, leaving Jaiden looking at a freely bleeding gunshot wound. A pack of cotton, sterile according to the label, is opened and, with clean hands thanks to the hand cleaner, Jaiden soaks small bits of it with antiseptic ointment and then, with a wince, begins to push it in to the wound. There's no tardiness to his job here - he works quickly and methodically, making sure that the antibiotic ointment is covering it completely, stopping if the pain she shows appears to be too great.

Ygraine is doing a fair job of adding still more damage to one of the tiny handful of items of clothing she has within the Dome. Not that one sleeve was salvageable, of course, but the collar is taking a lot of punishment. Still, the woman - underfed and over-tired though she is - has the pain tolerance and constitution of an athlete, and though she comes close to passing out she manages to persevere, telling herself over and over again that it'll be even worse if she makes Jaiden stop and restart, however tempting it is to just beg for him to call a halt.

It takes only five minutes or so, but for Ygraine and Jaiden, it's a lifetime of pain encapsulated in a moment that's stretched out for far, far too long. Finally, though, with blood spattering his fingers, the wound is packed completely full of antibiotic-soaked cotton and an ACE bandage is wrapped tightly 'round it all, with absorbent pads on either side of the entry and exit wound to catch any seepage.

He doesn't speak for a time, water appearing from somewhere to let him wash his hands off, still more entering a coffee pot that is heated by a leftover heater that was used for catering at some point, lit to start brewing some coffee. Jaiden does rummage around in his pack after a bit, pulling out a t-shirt - large, mens, clean - and putting it in Ygraine's lap to be put on when she feels up to it which, to be honest, will probably be quite a while.

Certainly, it's quite some while before Ygraine shows any inclination at all even to right herself, let alone attempt to get redressed. Indeed, the first comments she makes are delivered while keeled over on the couch.

"I should get to the Center. Get an x-ray. Check for fragments, fracture in the bone, and the like", she says hoarsely. "Could… do you think you could tie my arm up? A sturdy sling, or tie it to my body. I don't want to be moving it right now. Not even by accident."

As long as she's not bleeding, they should be able to help her out rather easily, and with the packing, she should be okay until they can get hold of that medical kit from the military transport. Once they get to that point, Jaiden should be able to do just about anything they need to have done.

"You stay and sleep, okay? I'll keep an eye on you all night and we'll hit the center in the morning."

"Thank you", Ygraine says softly, after only a moment's delay to consider arguing. "Robyn's going to be so pissed off about this. Should… should I eat? Water. Definitely water. Dehydrating while low on blood would be bad. Not sure I want to try any food, though. I feel rather ill. Can't imagine why…."


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