ghosts that we knew: A mockingjay fanfiction

35

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 35

Madge POV

••••••flashback•••••
The gadgets of the surgeon's medical machinery glints in the dim light of the room. He instructs for his patient to hold still.

Of course, Gale disregards his instructions entirely and squirms like a madman the minute the bullet is yanked from his shoulder.

He almost falls over from the shock and pain of it all. I catch him instantly.

Those eyes, shimmering gray pools of dancing coal dust and determination, remain focused on a fixed point on the wall as I bring him back up into a sitting position. He barely flinches as the surgeon tending to his injury probes at the gaping wound. He breathes in through his nose. Out though his mouth.

The hole embedded in his flesh is rimmed red with the beginnings of infection, and it takes a tag team of nurses and several infusion pumps to stop the bleeding at the site of where a bullet once lay.

All bandaging of the wound is stopped short by the doctor receiving an emergency call in the room down the hall. My mind immediately retreats to the worst. Johanna, Effie, Peeta...the emergency could be for any of them.

"We need all the hands we can get," the medic announces breathlessly as the nurses scurry past him and out of the room.

Peering above the rim of his glasses, the surgeon eyes his unfinished work, and then up at me.

"Can you dress a wound, Soldier?"

I nod quickly. "Yes, Sir. I can take care of Soldier Hawthorne."

In a flurry of gauze and beeping pagers, I am left alone with the one person I can never seem to find my way around.

The quicksilver eyes have landed on me once more. I realize how much I am gaping only after he points it out.

"You gonna stand there and let me bleed out or help me, Undersee?" he speaks after what feels like an infinitesimal amount of time.

I spring into action, muscle memory working its way around the exposed olive skin of his toned bicep and over the taught white gauze. Once I've finished, I stand back and survey my work. A smear of blood continues to peek through the top layer and the ends are sloppily tucked out.

"It's not a science project, Madge," Gale mutters, taking in the sight of my scrunched nose and pursed lips. "You can stop staring at my arm like it's a bowl of day-old stew."

I shake my head violently. "It's all wrong. I've got to do it again," I tell no one in particular as I step forward and start unraveling the gauze. Gale simply blinks at me as I make a show out of his arm.

"Why do you care so much?"

"Because," I spit back, as if the answer is obvious. I huff and violently throw the bloodied gauze into the waste basin, feeling tendrils of blonde hair falling from my loose ponytail and grazing my shaking neck. "I have no intention of letting you bleed to death, Gale Hawthorne. You're here, and you're alive. It's my job to keep you alive. I need to keep you alive."

Gale's hardened gaze dies down several thousand notches, and he veers back in his hospital bed, as if a thought has come to him so strongly that it pushes him away from me.

"This isn't the first time you've kept me alive," he states.

I freeze. He is right.

But I can't let him know that.

"What do you mean?" I ask, a frantic laugh creeping its way into my dismissive voice and betraying every ounce of confusion that I am attempting to feign.