Keeping Your Promise

The Criminal Type

Summary: Kylo Ren hasn't been around for a while, and sometimes rules have to be broken, no matter the repercussions.

Warnings: semi-graphic descriptions of medical trauma, blatant malpractice.

Ever since three weeks ago when Kylo Ren carried you to bed, you'd been wondering where he'd disappeared. This was the longest he'd been gone since before graduation. His absence wouldn't have prompted a second thought if he hadn't left on such a bewildering note, one that littered your mind with questions, holding you back from any chance of decent sleep. The only things keeping you awake – and alive – were energy chews and adrenaline.

The med bay had gotten increasingly more chaotic since you'd arrived on the Finalizer; once a place of predictability, the rise in case severity had turned it into a hostile, wearing your nerves thin with every half-dead officer of the First Order. Before, Talia would assign you a max of four patients, and they would typically only be admitted for observation and fluids, but now it seemed you had six patients every shift who needed near constant monitoring, practically circling the drain under your care. There were whispers around the nurse's station about rising tensions with the Resistance, but nobody knew many specifics, only the fact that it was no longer solely storm troopers suffering.

"Are you sure? You've checked everywhere?" You had been off and on the phone for the better part of your shift, feeling the seconds eat away at your lungs as you watched your patient's current blood bag drain to nothing.

"Miss, it's against protocol to spread misinformation relating to medical supply, you should know this," the lab technician had been fed up with you ever since your fifth call, asking the same question, hoping for a different answer each time.

You couldn't stop the sharp, spite-infused exhale that left your nostrils as his words ground against your ears, once again explaining that the Finalizer was completely out of blood products. "Well," you sucked your teeth, making sure it was audible through the phone, "you know to call me when you get a new stock," you slammed the phone into its holder before the technician got a chance to reply.

Fingers tread through your hair as you held a scream within your chest, wishing it was professional to pout in front of patients. Unlike your master, you didn't have the privilege of throwing temper tantrums when things didn't go your way; instead you chose to hide out in your patient's room, shutting the curtain to appease your own privacy needs.

The patient was a young male engineer, healthy and a head member of his cohort. He had come in earlier after a modified TIE-fighter blast cannon exploded; a piece of shrapnel sliced through his left carotid artery and another lodged itself into his right eye. The force from the blast caused his head to slam against the floor when he landed, creating multiple fractures along his skull. It made the situation worse knowing that there had been an increase in equipment malfunctions, further proof of the heightening tensions with the Resistance.

The IV pole was cluttered, full of current running medications – contradictory due to his unfortunate situation, heparin hanging next to protamine, fluids hanging next to Lasix – and countless empty blood bags. The bag hanging right now had probably about thirty minutes before he would need another one, and it was unlikely the lab would turn up with any fresh blood within that time frame.

"God," you breathed, slumping down into a chair, your head falling against the wall as your eyes closed, praying for the phone to ring, knowing he wouldn't make it through the night without a constant cycling of blood replenishment.

You sat there, watching the drip chamber, seeing the falling line of the rust-pigmented contents the bag contained; the vitals monitor shifted every now and then, indicating his body's attempt at regulating all the external sources of volume. As the blood became lesser, draining to nothing while the monitors chimed along, something clicked. Your eyes shot open as your head sprouted goosebumps and your heartbeat filled with adrenaline: there was an unlimited supply of universally compatible blood at your fingertips, locked up in Kylo Ren's personal med bay.