by Nana Malone
HH-negative. Only appearing in tiny, usually geographically isolated communities. She now knew which side of the family the peculiar DNA Azrael had told her about had come from. Had Oma known she was the descendant of a mixed-race ancestor fortuitous enough to escape the terms of the Armistice due to a lucky genetic mutation?
The sound of an incoming chopper interrupted her thoughts. The medevac unit. On its way back. If one of the incoming sported a tail, how would she hide it from her fellow nurses? She realized the soldier she gathered blood from scrutinized her as well.
“How long have you known Azrael, Ma’am?” the soldier asked cautiously.
“Around ten years,” Elisabeth glanced up from the blood collection bag. “What’s your name, Corporal?”
“Emmett Tills, Ma’am,” the soldier said. “After the young man whose murder sparked the civil rights movement.”
“That’s a nice name.” Elisabeth placed a folded piece of gauze on Corporal Till's arm and slid the collection needle out. “My friends … um. They don’t … know. If … um … I might need your help handling things if … um … your friend is…”
“That’s why we were stationed here, Ma’am,” Corporal Till rolled down his sleeve as soon as Elisabeth slapped a band aid over the needle hole. “Some of our best people are in there fighting alongside yours.”
Although he wore the bars of an army Corporal, the young man had the demeanor of someone much older and higher in rank. Samuel Adams had explained his men embedded themselves into low-ranking positions. They were expected to roll up their sleeves and get dirty, not direct traffic from some perch above like the Archangels, who the descendants of the lizard-people viewed with contempt. Azrael had won their respect because he was not too high-and-mighty to wade through the cesspool of humanity and get his tailfeathers dirty.
“Hey … Tills! I’m next!” a lower-ranking soldier said, fresh-faced and without a trench coat. “Quit flirting and let me talk to the pretty nurse! I’ve got A-positive blood, Ma’am.”
Corporal Tills rolled his eyes and glanced furtively to one side in a gesture Elisabeth read to convey the soldier was not one of them. A ruckus outside the tent let them know the medevac chopper was being unloaded. Time up!
“C’mere,” Elisabeth beckoned to the second soldier. “Corporal Tills? Do you have medic training?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Corporal Tills said.
“I’m going to start collection,” Elisabeth informed him. “But it’s going to be up to you to stop when the bag is full. Please be sure to mark it when you’re done.”
“Awww … man!” the second soldier groused. “If I’m going to give it up, at least it should be for a pretty nurse!”
“Knock it off, Private!” Corporal Tills said not-too-seriously. “Or you’ll be scrubbing out the latrines!”
“As soon as we get some latrines,” the Private joked, wincing as Elisabeth shoved the large hollow needle into his arm. “Ouch! This pretty lady bites!”
“This pretty lady outranks you, Private,” Elisabeth said, gently-but-firmly putting the flirting soldier back into his place. “And also thanks you for stepping forward to donate.”
“Ma’am,” the Private winked at her as she turned to see who was in the middle of the bustle of activity making its way into the tent. The Radio Specialist, who Elisabeth surmised was ‘in’ on things, directed one of the wounded into a curtained-off area, separate from the others, and beckoned for her to come.
“Report, Specialist … uh … Carver?” Elisabeth read the bars on his shoulder and last name velcroed to his chest. “Let me guess. George? After George Washington Carver. The father of the peanut?” She gathered by first the look of surprise, and then respect, that Specialist Carver was pleased Elisabeth guessed so readily the significance of his chosen name. Like Corporal Tills, the Radio Specialist appeared European by heritage, but he had a bit of a drawl, not English or Australian, perhaps New Zealand?
“Our man is not the first priority,” Radio Specialist Carver said with a nod. “We’ll keep him stable until you attend to that one over there. Then our guy. And then the third guy they’re bringing in now. His physiology makes him less prone to go into shock than your guys. Our men will assist you once you finish up with the first wounded. We’d like you to assign your nurses to take care of the third wounded to keep them busy. He’s got shrapnel in his arm and shoulder, but we’ve staunched the blood.”
Azrael had explained how the Sata'an-hybrid tail conferred a survival advantage due to its ability to store extra calories, oxygen and blood in the fat-rich tissue. A Sata’an ‘docked’ at birth lost that advantage, rendering them no stronger or weaker than a human, while a Sata’an ‘docked’ later in life was usually physically weakened. This didn’t stop Sata’an adolescents anxious to disappear into the human population from getting their tails cut off anyway. She stared at the radioman, wondering which he was. An ally? Or a Sata’an descendant docked at birth?
Or maybe he was like her?
Not likely. Although numerous Sata’an descendants had disappeared into humanity over the years, they lived quiet lives, sequestered into remote areas of the world where they could keep their offspring’s peculiar genetic features a secret. Azrael only knew of a few cases where offspring had truly been born without a tail. It only happened when there was a genetic mutation.
“Elisabeth!” Mary called. “We need that magic scalpel of yours to do wonders over here!”
“I’m on it!” Elisabeth's thoughts were forgotten as she did what she did best. Save lives. The soldier’s arm was shredded from shrapnel and burned, but he’d managed to cover his face, sparing it from horrific burns.
“This guy's arm looks like a Swiss cheese,” Lucy stepped aside. “I don’t think we’ll be able to save it.”
“We’ll see.” Elisabeth grabbed forceps from the tray of instruments seeping in alcohol and began to pull out chunks of metal. “Mary … where’s that blood? Which one is this, anyway?”
“Mister A-positive,” Mary hooked up a freshly drawn pint. “Still nice and warm. I understand there’s a second pint on its way?”
“Affirmative,” Elisabeth grunted, no longer paying attention to the chatter in the room. She was in save ‘em mode now. “How’s his blood pressure?”
“Dropping,” Lucy said after pausing to check it the old-fashioned way. “Shall I dig out the bone saw?”
“Not yet,” Elisabeth said. “I’m not amputating unless I have no choice.” She dug through the charred flesh, picking out pieces of shrapnel and clinking them upon the metal tray.
“Any spurters?” Mary asked.
“Not that I can see,” Elisabeth said. “Only this section … here … is fourth-degree. The rest are second and third. They may be able to save some function in the arm.”
“These two fingers look bad,” Lucy said. “They’re fused together and it looks like the tendons are gone.”
“It self-cauterized,” Elisabeth said. “We’ll leave that decision to the surgeons in Germany. Radial artery looks good. Ulnar artery was damaged by shrapnel, but appears to have self-cauterized from the burns. Can’t tell if he’s getting blood flow or not.”
“Amputate?” Lucy asked.
Elisabeth poked at the cratered arm, unable to tell if anything could be saved. In ideal conditions, a trauma team might be able to use cutting edge microsurgery to piece together severed nerves, tendons and arteries. Unfortunately here, if the soldier wasn’t getting blood flow, by the time he got to Germany, gangrene would take his entire arm and probably his life. How she wished Azrael was here! He had a way of telling when ‘death’ had overtaken a limb or organ. If only she had the same gift.
The soldier's wrist from three inches above his hand all the way down to his fingertips flashed black before her eyes. Everything above it looked pink. Elisabeth blinked. The image disappeared. She focused again. The blackness reappeared, slowly creeping up the wounded soldier's arm like a cancer. Oma had described how som
etimes she could see sickness, but this was the first time Elisabeth had seen it for herself.
“Get the bone saw,” Elisabeth snapped. “We’re going to amputate here, three inches above the wrist. Everything below that point has been without oxygen too long. Gangrene has already begun to set in.”
“How can you tell?” Mary squinted as she tried to see visually what Elisabeth just … knew.
“Don’t know,” Elisabeth said. “It’s like everything else I do. I just do it.”
Neither of her team-mates questioned her decision. One of Corporal Till's men had dug for the bone saw and started prepping it as soon as Lucy had said they might need it. Efficiency. They were treating them as though they were the doctors and Corporal Till's team was their nurses.
“Don’t have any idea where the splatter mask is,” Lucy handed her the portable oscillating bone saw. “Sorry. At least we had time to sterilize the blade.”
“Wonderful,” Elisabeth said sarcastically, pulling her regular surgical mask tighter around her face to minimize the anticipated gore. “Mary … I need you to electrocauterize the blood vessels as soon as I tie them off.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Mary reached over to grab a surgical instrument that looked like a pair of tweezers attached to a wire.
As soon as Elisabeth tied the nerves off, Mary pinched them together with the tweezers. An electrical current passed between the two tines, cauterizing the vessels together so no more blood could flow through them. The aroma of cooked flesh wafted up to Elisabeth's nostrils.
“Lucy …” Elisabeth sliced through what undamaged skin remained around two inches below where she was about to cut. “As soon as she’s done, I want you to pull up the skin to protect what he’s got left. I’m trying to leave enough of the brachioradialas so he can use a prosthesis.”
“Hand’s shot anyway,” Lucy said. “Even if the quacks in Germany could save the fingers, they’d never be able to unfuse them.”
Elisabeth tested the power button on the oscillating bone saw. They all winced at the high-pitched sound, halfway between a dentist's drill and something a contractor might use when demolishing a house.
“My first solo amputation.” Elisabeth took a deep breath and steadied herself. She’d participated in numerous amputations. Even handled the bone saw. But this would be the first time she had made the call without input from a doctor.
She wished Azrael was here, if for no reason other than she missed the steadying feel of his presence. After years of sensing him in the periphery and finally getting to know him, the fact he wasn’t here bothered her.
“Blood pressure is dropping,” Lucy said. “He’s losing blood as fast as I can get it into him. You’d better get at it.”
“Stay with me, soldier,” Elisabeth touched the soldier's arm just above where she was about to cut. “Ain’t nothing wrong with you we can’t fix. Just stay here. Okay? If you leave, they’re just going to make you come back and start everything over again from scratch. Different body. Different family. Different friends. Same bloody issues. Better to work it out in the body you already have.”
Azrael had been teaching her to interpret what she’d been able to feel her entire life. She could sense the soldier hovering above his body, holding on by a sturdy thread. This one was a fighter. He had only retreated far enough to avoid the pain. If she salvaged his mortal shell, he would move back in to inhabit it.
“I’m going to try to save enough of your arm so you can wear a prosthesis,” Elisabeth said into the air, not even earning a curious glance from her team-mates who were by now used to her eccentric ramblings. “You’ll be able to fire a gun again within six months.”
The others winced at the high-pitched whine of the bone saw as she sliced through muscle, tendon and bone. Mary moved in to cauterize the smaller blood vessels as soon as she lifted the saw out of the way, while Lucy went right in behind her to pull the skin over the stump and stitch it up with thick, ugly black stitches. They wouldn’t be winning any awards, but it was done.
“Blood pressure is rising,” Mary checked his vitals again using the crude sphygmomanometer which was all they had unpacked at the moment. “Pulse is still erratic, but stronger. I think he'll make it.”
“Lieutenant Kaiser?” Corporal Till called from the curtained off area. “We need you.”
“You two finish up here,” Elisabeth said. “And then attend to our third guy. I’ll take care of the man behind curtain number one.”
“Need help?” Mary asked.
“It's black ops sneak-and-peak stuff,” Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “Probably Prince William or some other VIP playing soldier. They don’t want anyone to knowing he’s here until it’s time to roll the cameras and ask for campaign contributions.”
“Great…” Lucy said sarcastically. “We get to play nursemaid to some pampered poodle with a paper cut while the real soldiers have to stand in line to get treated.”
“This is a straight triage situation,” Elisabeth said crossly. “I don’t play favorites. Don’t care who the poodle is.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mary applied a bandage to the soldier’s stump as she finished up. “We know. YOU don’t play favorites. But Major Jackass Devens would have been falling all over himself to treat the guy behind the curtain first and let this poor soldier die.”
“Which is why we are here,” Lucy interjected. “Someone appreciates real results. Not just spin.”
“Carry on, Ma’am,” Elisabeth gave her two co-nurses a perfunctory goodbye salute as they both outranked her. Although she was the so-called ‘talent,’ she had no illusions that she could pull off the kinds of stunts she did on a daily basis without the rank and extensive knowledge of her support team. And also a hefty dose of pressure from Azrael’s friends.
“Lieutenant Kaiser,” Corporal Till opened the curtain for her to step inside.
A tail… Now that Elisabeth knew it was there, she could see the bulge where he kept it carefully tucked up into a special sling to keep himself from inadvertently using it to maintain his balance. As soon as a Sata’an descendant could walk he was taught to walk with his tail holstered so he learned to compensate for the imbalance. In battle, Sata’an descendants strapped spikes to their tail so it could be used as an extra fighting limb. The spike had already been unstrapped, as had the soldier's shredded flak vest.
The scent of blood filled her nostrils. Blood poured out of profuse shrapnel wounds and down the body bag they’d jury rigged to keep his body heat in while he’d been transported here. Both bags of HH-negative blood they’d gathered earlier had already been used up and a third soldier had come in and hooked himself directly to the wounded soldier in a direct transfusion. Anger boiled up in her gut as she realized what they’d done.
“Why wasn’t this soldier treated first?!!” Elisabeth hissed, her voice low so her peers wouldn’t hear her. “Blood loss trumps burns in a triage situation!!!”
“The other soldier is a full-blooded human,” Corporal Tills said without emotion. “You’re a protected species. The armistice says humans with life-threatening injuries go first.”
”-I- say who goes first!!!” Elisabeth snapped. “And –I’m- color blind! I can see now why Azrael insisted my team come to this triage unit!”
“But…” Corporal Tills said.
“God and Satan can both go to hell!” Elisabeth hissed. She hurriedly checked where shrapnel from the exploding RPG had blown straight through the soldiers flack vest into his belly. “Dammit! I thought you guys were supposed to have more technologically advanced armor than us?”
“We’re supposed to remain unobtrusive, Ma’am,” Radio Specialist Carver said. “Your technology has advanced to the point that your body armor isn’t much different than our body armor. An Alliance energy shield would be too conspicuous.”
Elisabeth paused, her mouth open to speak. She had absolutely no idea what an Alliance energy shield was, but pictured something out of a Star Trek movie deflecting photon torpedoes. It
was irrelevant. She pushed the image out of her mind and focused on the ruptured bowel.
“What’s his name?” Elisabeth glanced up at the trench-coat clad soldier giving a direct blood-to-blood transfusion and realized he was chalk-white against his black sunglasses. “And … you! How long have you been hooked up to him like that?”
“Your patient's name is Kennard … Clyde Kennard,” Corporal Tills said. “Private Young has been hooked up to the transfusion since before you grabbed the bone saw.”
“Young … you’re out of here,” Elisabeth said to the soldier who’d already given more blood than was safe. “That’s an order. Tills! Either find me another HH-phenotype or you’re donating another pint! And find the first guy who gave HH-negative. One pint is best, but you can donate two before it becomes dangerous!”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Corporal Tills immediately rolled up his sleeve. He snapped some orders at the other soldiers in the curtained off area in a language Elisabeth couldn’t understand, a language comprised of hisses and low growls.
One rushed off while a second helped the soldier who’d given too much blood to a chair. Elisabeth managed to avoid recoiling when he hissed and tasted the air with a long forked tongue, showing he had sharp teeth like a wolf. She wondered what his eyes looked like beneath the black Maui Jim sunglasses.
“Ma’am?” Radio Specialist Carver tugged at her arm. “Are you okay?”
Elisabeth looked up from the very human-looking intestines she had her hands buried in to repair into absolutely human-looking brown eyes. The Radio Specialist wasn’t wearing a trench coat. Her mouth opened and closed, unable to force herself to ask the question.
“Docked at birth,” Radio Specialist Carver said as though reading her mind. “I’m wearing contact lenses.”
“I’m … Az says I’m…” Elisabeth sputtered.