22
“Rev, Rev, can you hear me?” a muffled voice tried to break through the fog. There was something familiar about it, something . . .
With an intense effort, Rev opened his eyes. The figure leaning over him coalesced into Tomiko, her helmet off, her face twisted in concern.
“I’m all right,” he mumbled, trying to push himself up off the floor. Only it didn’t work. He couldn’t push up.
“He’s coming to,” Tomiko yelled, but her voice sounded a thousand klicks away.
<Please lie back. Let your medinanos work.>
“Nanos? What happened?” He wasn’t sure if he subvocalized the question or said it aloud.
“You’re going to be OK, Rev. Just hold on.”
<You’re being administered antifibrinolytics.>
Somewhere deep within his muddled mind rose the fact that antifibrinolytics treated bleeding. He realized that he was hurt, which seemed right. He couldn’t really have expected to survive the blast when—
“Where’s Kat” he shouted, trying to sit up.
Tomiko pressed a hand against his chest, keeping him down. “Kat? The girl? Tulip has her. She’s fine.”
Rev continued to try and get up, but it was no use. Sergeant Nix was on his left side, blocking his view. He turned to the right, and there, just beyond Tomiko, was Badem, holding Kat to his chest. She was covered in dust, her blonde hair a musty gray, and she was sobbing, her hands wrapped in a death grip around his neck.
<Her crying is a good sign.>
He relaxed, relieved, and then looked back up into Tomiko’s face. “I’m good. Just let me catch my breath.”
“Am I good? What’s wrong with me?” he asked Punch.
<You’ve suffered extensive blood loss. Just over five pints. Two-and-a-half liters. Traumatic loss of your left arm—>
“What?” he said aloud. “That doesn’t make any sense. I can feel it.”
Rev turned his head to the left. Sergeant Nix was right there, holding his . . .
“Shit,” was all he could say as his vision constricted and his stomach threatened to empty. Nix was not leaning on his arm, holding him down. He was putting pressure on a stump that ended a few centimeters below his shoulder.
“Hang in there, buddy. Doc Paul’s on his way. He’s going to take care of you.”
“What happened?” he subvocalized, afraid that if he spoke aloud, he’d pass out.
<I don’t know anything from the explosion until you came to. Your automatic emergency response activated on your passive systems until I could take control.>
“Am I going to live?”
<Your chances are very good if your readings hold steady and you arrive at a Class A medical facility within seven hours.>
“And my arm? Can they, you know, put it back?”
<I can’t tell until you see it, and even then, it would have to be examined by a competent medical team.>
Rev didn’t want to move his head, but he had to know. He craned his neck to look behind him, to where half of what had been the front wall of the home was gone.
“Where’s my arm,” he asked.
Tomiko glanced at Nix, then in a hushed voice, said, “It’s gone, Rev. I’m sorry.”
Rev wasn’t as upset as he should be. He knew that had to be because he was being pumped full of happy nano-juice, but even with that, it should make more of an impact. He realized that his arm was no more, but after that first shock of finding that out, it just was a new fact of life. Tomiko seemed more agitated than he was.
“You OK?” he asked her.
“Me? Why are you asking me?”
“You seem upset.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she laughed. “Sometimes you kill me, Rev.”
“I think the bleeding’s stopped,” Sergeant Nix said, lifting the pressure off his stump for a moment, looking down at it.
“Keep the pressure until Doc comes.” Staff Sergeant Delacrie’s voice reached them from somewhere Rev didn’t feel the need to figure out. “You know the SOP.”
<You have a sixty-three percent hemostop activation. Combined with the antifibrinolytics, then Sergeant Nix is correct. The bleeding in your arm has ceased for the time being.>
Hemostops were micro-nanos that flowed within the bloodstream. When they reached a tear in the vascular system, they activated, blowing up to three times their size, large enough to plug a capillary. Enough of them could eventually plug an artery or vein until the self-destruct took over, deflating and turning them into harmless specks that would work their way from the circulatory system to the lungs and be exhaled out of the body.
“Punch says you’re right,” Rev said in a conspiratorial whisper.
Nix smiled but said, “Let’s just humor Delacrie, though, OK?”
“OK.”
Rev turned his head again. “You OK, Kat?”
The little girl slightly twisted in Badem’s grip and gave Rev a quick glance before burying her face against the PFC’s chest again.
That made him feel worse, somehow, than losing his arm.
“She’s just scared, Rev. She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Tomiko told him. “She knows you saved her life.”
“The staff sergeant wanted to kill her.”
Without the drugs coursing through his system, he’d never have uttered those words. Even now, he knew he’d stepped over a line.
“Shh, Rev. No, he didn’t. He just wanted to make sure you weren’t in danger,” Tomiko said, raising a hand to put a finger over his lips. “And he’s going to feel like shit over it. But sometimes, a commander, he’s gotta make those tough calls.”
“I never want to be a commander, then,” Rev said through her fingers.
“Doc’s here, and the lieutenant,” Strap called from outside the building. A moment later, Doc appeared, telling Nix to shift over.
“Reiser, Nix. Join the rest and let Doc take over,” the staff sergeant said.
Tomiko said, “I gotta go. I’ll see you later.” She leaned over, kissed his forehead, and disappeared.
Rev caught a glance of the staff sergeant, his face pensive, until the lieutenant appeared, blocking his line of sight.
“You hanging in there, Pelletier?” the lieutenant asked.
“Sure am, sir. Just like on Roher when we got that—”
A quick hand covered Rev’s mouth. “Yep, yep, I know. You just relax now. Don’t try to talk,” the lieutenant said, giving Tomiko a quick look.
Doc Paul visually examined Rev’s stump before doing anything else.
“Looks like you’ve got two or three centimeters of humerus left. Good deal for either growing a new arm or prosthetics.”
That was the first time Rev even considered that since the blast. Of course, there was going to be something done. The Corps needed warm bodies, and they weren’t going to let a missing arm change that.
“This is going to sting a bit,” the doc said as he took out a small, round tube. He held it a few centimeters from the stump and sprayed.
Sting? Bullshit. Despite his drugs, Rev yelped as the spray penetrated the mangled flesh.
“Sorry about that, Rev, but we have to stabilize all the flesh we can and let the surgeons decide what can be saved and what can’t. Now, I’ve got to see what else is wrong with you that your bio readout doesn’t tell me.”
He pulled out the Doc Eyes, the portable body scanner that was the lifeblood of any corpsman. Doc was getting updates from Rev’s bios, but they weren’t sophisticated enough to pick up everything. He ran the Doc Eyes over Rev, then hooked it into his wrist jack. With the half-closed eyes favored by some while jacked, he studied the results for a moment before opening them wide and unjacking.
“Aside from your arm, you’ve got a bruised kidney, two broken ribs, a slipped disk, a dislocated hip, a concussion, and two ruptured eardrums. Lots of bruises. There’s something wrong with your small intestines, too, that I can’t make out.” He took a look at the destroyed wall and the devastation in what was left of the home. “I’d say you got off easy, from the looks of things.”
“What’s his prognosis?” the lieutenant asked.
“If we can get him to one of the Class A facilities in orbit, pretty good. Most of what he has can be repaired or left to heal. The arm, well, you know. . .”
Rev had been surprised to hear the litany of the damage done to him. Like with his arm, however, it didn’t bother him that much. He knew it would later, but for the moment, he was pretty complacent for having almost been blown to bits.
“Corporal Pelletier,” the lieutenant said, kneeling and bending his head in close. “We’ve got a CASEVAC bird coming in. It’s going to take you up to one of the ships where they’re going to patch you up before sending you home.”
That registered, and he tried to protest. He didn’t want to go back to New Hope until the rest of the team returned.
“Can’t I come back here? I don’t need an arm to help out.”
“No. You’re going home.”
“Shit, Corporal. You lost a fucking arm,” Badem said before he looked at Kat and said, “Oh, sorry about the fuck, little girl. And the shit. I shouldn’t swear in front of you.”
The lieutenant looked and gave the PFC a withering glare before turning back to Rev. “We’ll be there, soon. It looks like we’ve broken the Angel shits’ backs. So, you go back, get healed up, and watch things for us. No squatters taking over our barracks, OK?”
“CASEVAC inbound,” Strap yelled.
“I’m going to put you out now, Rev,” Doc said. “You won’t wake up until after your surgery.”
He took out a cylinder of sleepy gas and attached the facemask before entering some numbers on the control panel.
“I’ll give you three puffs. Breathe normally, and you’ll drift off.
The doc placed the mask over Rev’s mouth and nose, giving it three spaced, firm squeezes. That last thing Rev saw was Kat, turning her head to look at him and mouthing “Thank you” before everything shut down.