Percy Jackson One Shots

How to Save a Life - Solangelo

Soulmate AU in which your skin is black where you will first touch your soulmate.  When you touch them, that part of your skin bursts into color.

Will

I'd always wondered about the weirdly shaped, black splotches on my hands.  I knew about soulmates.  I wasn't raised by wolves with absolutely zero human contact, but I just couldn't figure out why my left palm and the tops of my fingers were black without the rest of my hands being stained dark.  It was quite unusual.  Normally, people have upside-down handprints when their hands are black.  I couldn't possibly imagine what scenario I'd be in to have such a strange mark.  That is, until I started training to be a paramedic.

Most people don't realize just how weirdly positioned your hands must be for CPR.  It wasn't until I first learned how to do it that I finally understood what the black marks on my hands meant.  I was sitting in the CPR certification seminar, watching the instructor as he demonstrated what to do on the dummy.  I watched as he positioned his hands just so, then encouraged us to try it.  I laced my fingers together, stacked my hands on top of one another, and looked down.  The realization dawned on me after a few seconds, and I hurriedly attempted to look at the underside of my hands.  I froze.  The instructor dismissed us to practice, but I barely heard him.  I stood exactly where I was as the rest of the class swirled around me.  My only thought was  I am going to meet my soulmate on the worst day of their life.

~*~

"Get ready, Solace.  We're heading out," Austin says just as I am finishing my lunch.

"What do we got?" I ask, hopping into the passenger's side of the rig as he turned the key in the ignition.

"Huge pileup on the highway.  They need some damage control.  Doesn't sound good," Austin peels away from the curb.  

We sit in silence, steeling our nerves.  The sirens blare as we speed through stopped traffic.  Even though I am used to the speed of riding in an ambulance by now, my stomach turns at the thought of what lies ahead of us.  Just how many people have been hurt?  How many would get to see tomorrow?

We pull up to the scene, practically skidding to a stop.  We throw the doors open just to have another EMT come running up to us, pulling a stretcher behind her.

"He needs to get to the hospital, like, yesterday," she yells as she approaches.  I immediately clamber my way into the back of the rig, pushing open the back doors to let her and her patient in.  She stops the stretcher, and Austin and I quickly help load it into the ambulance.  We slam the doors, and we're back on the road in a matter of seconds.

"Male, maybe early twenties, hit during the accident while on his motorcycle," the women informs me while I scramble to get bandages ready.  Now that I can see him up close, I can tell he's bleeding heavily even through his thick, leather jacket.  "Blunt force trauma to the chest, possibly to the head as well, and severe bleeding from the left arm and leg," she continues.

Before I can even attempt to cut off his jacket, the heart monitor he's hooked up to starts blaring a long, loud beep.

"Shit shit shit shit shit," I say, immediately moving to start chest compressions.  My gloved hands are quickly covered in blood.  "Stay with me, buddy," I mutter.

We lose him twice more before pulling into the hospital ER.  I'm still doing compressions as doctors swarm to unload the guy from the rig.  

"Male, maybe early twenties, coming from the massive accident on I-71, blunt force trauma to the chest and possibly head, severe bleeding from the left arm and leg, coded three times on the way over," the woman, Kayla, informs the doctors as she opens the doors.