The Bittersweet Fate Of A Duelist

Chapter 15

«Seto...»

His shoulders shaking with sobs, kneeling on the cold hard floor of his now empty room, Yugi could see nothing but one thing.

« I know you can hear me»

Blood.
Not red, but a crimson so deep it almost seemed black.
Dark drippings on pure white tiles, red streaks leading away from the spot where the bullet hit, and then white again.

«Pl-please...»

They took him away, so quickly Yugi was still shell-shocked and frozen in place when the helicopter took off.
His face, streaked with tears, stayed blank and emotionless during the whole trip back. His mind only remembering the look of helplessness on his boyfriend's face.
His ears hearing nothing but his painful gasps, and terrified screams.

«Please, wake up»

The knife in his hand wasn't steady.
His fingers kept trembling in fear.
Tiny droplets of blood needed a long time to slither down his wrist and onto his fingers, until they dropped on the dusty floor.

« Please, wake up...».

And then, suddenly, someone knocked the knife off his hand.
The item touched the ground with a metallic noise, making Yugi's nose scrunch up in annoyance.
When his grandfather knelt in front of him, snatching his wrist to examine little, jagged cuts, Yugi only saw his lips moving. His eyes filled with worry and fear.
Nothing else.
Everything was too blurred, every sound muffled, even in his mind.
Maybe Atem was trying to call him, screaming at the top of his lungs, as Yugi tried to kill himself.
The Puzzle was glowing, a burning gold light, but Yugi didn't care.
As his grandfather tried his best to cover self-inflicted wounds, Yugi didn't register his touch. He didn't hear the loud ambulance approaching.

«Don't leave me».

Maybe Solomon realized too late.
Maybe Yugi's plan worked.
Too many cuts on his skin, too many pills taken. Too many tears shed.
Finally, as Domino's medical team barged into the room, Yugi's consciousness faded away, lost in the deepest darkness of his mind.
And blood kept dripping away.

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«Primary survey, now!».

In the extremely frenetic situation in which the medical team was operating, while on a not so steady helicopter, orders flew from one person to another, everyone working quickly and efficiency to operate the ATLS program.
Advanced trauma life support was the most important and prominent thing they could do in that moment, without proper equipment and on a moving aircraft, and there was definitely an urgent need to understand how critical the wound was.
Kaiba's right arm "gave" the CEO to them to keep him alive for as much time as possible, and the team analyzed all their options, pondering resuscitation or life-saving maneuvers.
Unluckily, Seto had completely lost consciousness shortly after he was placed on the stretcher by rescues, so two of the team immediately started dealing with airway management.

«Check the airway, they could be obstructed!».

Another order, this time directly for the head doctor, quickly complied to reveal blood obstructed airways.
Without wasting a single second, the team decided to resort to an endotracheal tube, to prevent Seto from suffocating in his own blood.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team took care of carrying out other ATLS steps, trying to find life-threatening thoracic conditions as well as examining where the bullet struck.
The bullet had hit the left side, and the first two hypothesis made were regarding possible damage to both heart and lungs.
Something fairly impossible to confirm at first sight and no equipment, and more worrying because the bullet didn't have a way out.
To make everything worse, a severe hemorrhage was leading Seto on the edge of a hypovolemic shock, the blood loss barely controlled and contained by emergency procedures.