Fire Starter

Chapter 2: Healing hands.

       "Common medic! Get your ass over here." Someone shouted through the hanger doors. I had just finished up with the last patient for the day and had started cleaning up when I heard the aircraft carrier land. Washing my hands I looked in the mirror. I was tired. The paleness of my face spoke of it. The lines of my eyes where defined with dark circles but no matter how I felt.. it was never about me. I started towards the door, bringing my bag and trying to get my hair to stay out of my face, or at least make the black mess go in somewhat the same direction.  

       "Jake we need you now!" My earpiece demanded. Must be important if they are calling me directly I thought. I was the youngest member of the military medical unit in quarantine 075 but they needed everyone they could get apparently. I closed the short distance between me and the carrier and that's when I saw five patrol personnel on stretchers being pulled down the ramp. From the front of the airship, I could see that their armor was in bad shape and the exposed skin even worse. I ran up to the carrier pilot standing beside the closest stretcher and that's when I saw the full extent of the damage. Enter parts of the suits had been shattered by hunks of metal. Places, where the suits were ripped, were burned. Black pieces of plastic and fabric were glued to the skin with blood. I only had time to catalog the different types of injuries before the pilot grabbed my arm.

       "You think they're bad? You don't wanna see the captain.." He said, the fear in his eyes making its way into his voice. "But we need you." He pulled me up the ramp leading me to a single stretcher in the back of the carrier. As we approached three medics wearing blood-stained scrubs where already around it.

       "We were afraid to move him again so we'll have to do this here. He's already flat-lined once. He's stable but barely." The first medic stated, turning to look at me as we reached the stretcher. His name was Michel and he looked displeased with the current situation. Not as if he cared about the charred, deformed figure on the stretcher but as if...

        "Marcus will have our heads if he dies. He's an A' class captain so we need to do this now." Michel said dryly, not even looking at the rest of us standing around him. I guess that was the answer to my question. If he had told us what the weather would be like tomorrow it wouldn't have sounded any different I thought to myself but I was getting used to this type of attitude. All the medical staff developed it after a decade or so. With what we do, I'm not surprised either. Michel, being a young blond with a relativity stocky frame only in his third year as a medic, he probably picked it up to sound more like the higher-ups. The higher ups had been through the riots and seen more than anyone else when it came to disfigured bodies. Most of them they couldn't save. Michel's mimicking was more a joke to the higher ups than anything else. I hadn't seen enough in my year in the medical unit to pick up the tone myself. Unlike Michel, I wasn't anywhere near the cities that were hit by the riots or old enough to even remember the massacre that took place. I, like few others, watched the fires burn from the mountains where people fled when the first cities fell. 

      "The burns are pretty bad," I said, looking at the blacked parts of the suit and making my way to the side med station to douse my arms in disinfectant. We all grabbed our bags and started pulling out the necessary equipment.

       "Apparently an outsider blew them up in the old fuel yard." The second medic standing next to Michel stated. Curious we all looked at him. "What I really don't understand is the outsider blew them up but then radioed the second patrol unit at Viewpoint." He continued.

       "Sammi, go get wraps and tape and I think we will need pliers" I told him. He moved away from Michel and grabbed the tool bad from the floor. The pilot started to look a little sick at the mention of pliers and sat down facing the ramp. Not many could stomach the work we did, but I didn't spend years in training to spill my guts at the first sight of blood.