Wendigo Island (ONC2024)

Entry 2: Muarice

Day 0/ Marie
right after the crash

They had the bodies laid out in a row along the beach. Wounded and dead alike splayed out in an orderly, if not rushed, manner. The ocean breeze hit the nostrils just before the stench of burning metal and death overpowered it. The plane finally sank below the surface of the ocean as most of us sat there in shock.

In the presence of panic and pain, one man was a becon of activity. A black man named Maurice Jackson tended to the wounded. He has a salt and pepper beard and a build that seemed retired from hard labor, but still plenty capable if it needed to be. It was hard to tell which was more impressive, the speed of his hands, or the size of his voice.

The wounded screamed out for help as he made his way to each and every one of them, in turn. He started with the worst one, though: a woman with a gut wound and third-degree burns across her face. She would alternate between screaming, moaning, and crying. The noises were soft when I landed on the beach, but almost as soon as the man had her bandaged, the noises stopped.

For a fraction of a second, the failure and grief washed over Maurice stronger than seemed possible, stronger even maybe than my own grief, but then he was moving again. It happened so fast that I think I'm the only one who noticed the change in his demeanor.

His second patient had his leg broken almost evenly in the middle of the shin. It was only held on by small piece of skin.

The first thing he did for the man was strap a turnakit just above the knee and tighten it to cut off the blood flow. The second, third, and fourth things he did involved a fifth of whiskey. Maurice let the man drink to just past the shoulders of the bottle, but then cut the man off (enough to thin the pain, but not the blood), then Muarice took a swig worth a few shots to steady his own nerves, and poured another dose on the man's open leg.

With a pair of surgical scissors, Muarice cut the skin, connecting the bottom half of the man's shin to the top half. He all but threw the man's foot to the side.

Things seemed almost done and dusted for the young amputee, but Muarice had a deep set scowl on his face.

"All right, kid, you're stable. You're good, and you're going to be just fine. I'll be back to clean you up once I take care of a few more people."

Muarice set about splinting a couple more broken bones and bandaging some less severe wounds. He did come back to the amputated guy, but 'clean up' was an understatement.

He used tweezers to pull several bone shards out of the man's stub. This must have been the reason Muarice had been frowning because it took a half hour, and he had enough bone shards to fill a bowl. He finished with another round of whiskey for everyone involved; himself, the aputee (Kalvin), and Kalvin's leg. Then he smoothed out some excess skin flaps out over the exposed muscle, just to close the wound and make it look pretty.

All in all, I don't know what to expect now. We have some very capable hands with us, but this island is getting stranger by the minute. Hopefully, someone will come for us soon.