Crystal and Nathan - How to Save a Life

[x-aerial.livejournal.com]

Crystal arrives upon the scene of a car crash involving a mangled, upside-down car and a driver trapped inside. Crystal can do her best to provide easier access for others, but removing a car door is not something she can do without causing serious risk to the man trapped inside. Enter one telekinetic who can do the job with his brain. Questions on how to best proceed are raised and Crystal speaks her thoughts.

To most other people, the air was shockingly cold. Crystal didn't mind; a little bit of generated heat was all that was needed to keep herself from being bothered by the chill in the air. She'd been uncomfortable in the heavy clothes she had worn during her climb up the waterfall a few days earlier and although she had brought the outfit with her, it was actually easier for her to stay warm on her own power while helping with the task at hand than it would have been to work while feeling stifled in those clothes. Crystal's eyes widened in surprise as she came across a horrific scene. Why would anyone attempt to drive in such weather?

The Red Cross worker with her swore and pulled out his walkie-talkie, letting them know back in the evacuation area that there was a car accident here. "It's going to take forever to get an emergency crew in here," he said, rushing through the snow to the car, which was both upside down and wrapped around a pole. Quite an accomplishment, in weather like this. "Sir? Sir, can you hear me?" The car was a twisted mess, and try as the Red Cross worker might, he couldn't manage to get at the injured driver.

The car was covered with snow, but it was easy to tell that it was in bad shape. Crystal frowned, moving closer to the car. How could she get the passenger out of the car? She knew her powers could be useful in a variety of situations, but she wasn't quite sure that this was one of them. However, what she could do was uncover the car and give someone else an easier time at getting to the person trapped inside. Cold wind on the snow could help, but wouldn't be as useful as hot air that could also melt the snow. Crystal knew she had to be careful; this was a car, with a gas tank, and all she needed was to accidentally turn the automobile into a blazing inferno. Very carefully, she began melting the snow covering the car, setting up a unheated air shield directly against the car to prevent herself from igniting the fuel.

Looking at the Red Cross worker bundled up in weather-appropriate clothes reminded Crystal that the driver was trapped in a very cold environment. Physically, she couldn't get inside the car, but that didn't mean she couldn't alter the temperature inside the car as well as outside of it. Very carefully, and only a little at a time, Crystal began to raise the car's interior temperature. It wouldn't do to have anyone freeze before help could arrive.

The Red Cross worker seemed a little uncertain about what she was doing, but relaxed after a few moments and kept trying to get a response from the driver. It was perhaps five minutes later, and most of the snow around the car was gone, when Crystal's companion looked back over his shoulder and gaped at the sight of a giant firebird landing in the snow and folding its wings.

"Can't get the proper equipment in here," Nathan said briefly, "but I can manage."

"What do you-"

"Hi, Crystal," Nathan said calmly, joining the girl at the car.

"Hello," Crystal said, relieved to see him there. Nathan could help, could help get the driver out of the car. While she could appear to mimic telekinesis to some extent, the fact was that what she did was not like telekinesis at all. Telekinetics could move objects; she could alter and move the air around objects. She ceased functioning as a heater for the car and snow and released her air shield. "I believe that this is fairly obvious, but we could really use your help here." A small smile escaped her. "I know you can manage; you do not need to convince me." Please do not somehow manage to break your brain.

Oh, someone was making fun of him in the privacy of her own head. The little smile heightened her resemblance to Medusa, all at once, and Nathan grinned briefly back before he turned his attention to the car, the smile fading. "Driver's pinned," he said as he leaned closer to the now-clearing window, his eyes taking on that distant quality that meant he was doing something with his brain. "Hurt badly, too..." He could sense it, locked onto the driver's thoughts as he was.

"We need the jaws of life or something-" started the Red Cross guy.

"No, we don't," Nathan said, grimacing a bit. "I've got to do this carefully, though... Crystal, can you keep the snow off us?"

Crystal's smile was gone, replaced by a serious look that wanted to be a frown. If that Red Cross worker started up one more time... he had just seen what appeared to be a bird of fire land on the ground, a bird of fire that did not give off any heat, and seen a man emerge from it. Surely he should realize that jaws of life were not needed. And Nathan didn't seem too optimistic about the situation. Still, Crystal simply nodded. "Yes, Nathan, I can and I will. Please be careful." The last thing she needed to witness was the actual brain breaking process.

Nathan was going to assume she meant with the injured person inside the car, mostly because he didn't really feel the need to explain that the only strain involved in playing jaws of life, for him, was the concentration needed to do it carefully. There was a sustained shriek of metal as the smashed passenger's side door - he'd clearly hit something else before he'd hit the pole - tore itself off slowly, Nathan careful to shield the driver as he did so. Once the door was off, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled halfway into the car, to get a better look.

Nathan reached forward to feel for a pulse at the driver's neck and found one, although it was thready. The man's skin was ice-cold. There was blood all over his face, and blood pooling on the inside of the roof. Too much. "No side airbags," Nathan muttered. "This is an awful lot of blood. He's got to be - shit."

The pole.

Crystal moved closer, barely floating off the ground in a half-sitting position. The sight of blood didn't sicken her like she knew it did to others; she wouldn't have lasted thirty minutes in San Diego if blood made her squeamish. Still, Nathan was right; it was a lot of blood. "How is he? Is he breathing? Does he need air? Oxygen?"

"I-" The man's thoughts were flickering. He didn't like that. Reminded him of... "That trick of yours, where you make like a ventilator," Nathan said, keeping his voice as level as he could as he shifted backwards, getting clear of the car and standing. "Can you get him more oxygen, keep him breathing?" He gave her a quick look that barely masked concern as he moved around to the driver's side of the car.

"I can try," Crystal told Nathan. She'd never done this with someone who was suffering from horrible, life-threatening injuries. The man was upside-down, too. He had lost so much blood... she had to do what she could; she had to do her best to make sure the driver received the oxygen he needed until more help could arrive. Right now, he just had to stay alive. She had to keep him alive.

"You can't just yank him out of there," the Red Cross worker said to Nathan, coming over to take a closer look. "You'll kill him, when he's impaled like that..."

"I know. I'm not going to yank him anywhere." Nathan knelt down, focusing. "I'm going to excise what he's impaled on," he said tightly. "I'll hold it steady, but I'll take the car apart around him."

"You can do that?"

"I can do that. It's going to take me a while, though." Possibly too long, and the man was bleeding from other wounds, too. "I'm applying pressure to the wounds," he said. "Telekinetically," he added before the Red Cross worker could ask. "But if you could get back on your radio and tell that ambulance to hurry up..."

The man wasn't bleeding as much anymore, but Crystal knew that he had already lost too much blood. Who knew how long he had been in that car before she and the Red Cross worker had happened upon the scene? He had been hurt in the car and she had been playing "melt the snow." He was breathing, but was any of it still him or was she completely serving as a breathing machine for him? He wasn't fighting, was he?

The smashed side of the car disassembled itself in a feat of telekinesis that few psis could have managed. The part of the pole impaling the driver wasn't moved, wasn't nudged in the slightest. The rough edges of metal around the spot where it had penetrated the car peeled away slowly, delicately. The pole itself was separated from the whole, Nathan wincing at the vibration he was causing.

Then it was done, and he took a sharp breath. "Okay, Crystal, stop for a second while I get him out-" He wasn't sure if she could keep it up while the man was being moved.

As a rule, Crystal didn't question the teachers ar Xavier's. Not to their faces, anyway. She especially didn't want to get into anything with Nathan. who was Medusa's only real friend at the mansion. Nathan was her teacher, and he was a trained X-Man, but she wasn't here as a student and she wasn't an X-Man under his command. They weren't on a mission where she had no choice but to follow his orders with an unswerving sense of duty.

"I believe that it will be harder to restart the breathing process if I stop now," Crystal said, tentatively at first, then with more conviction. "I am not sure that this man is still capable of breathing on his own. His injuries... if I do this, he may die." She looked at Nathan expectantly; whatever he asked her to do now, she would do, but she had said her piece.

"Can you keep up work that delicate while I'm moving him telekinetically?" Nathan asked, brusquely. "If you can't, or you slip, you may do damage."

"I do not know," Crystal answered honestly. "This would be the first time for me to try such a thing. I have never before been in a situation involving the possibility of aiding someone's ability to breathe while the person was being moved telekinetically," she said in a serious yet calm tone. "I am certain that you have more experiences in these situations than I do. If you believe that he has a better chance for survival if I cease providing him with oxygen, I will do as you say."

Nathan hesitated. "Slowly, then," he said, his own chest feeling tight. If the man died because of this... but they had to give him every chance. "I'll go very slowly." He eased the man out of the car so slowly that he could sense the Red Cross worker's impatience. Righting him in the air took longer. He could feel Crystal's powers still at work, and hoped to hell that this wasn't doing more harm that good. "Where the hell's that ambulance?" he growled at the Red Cross worker as he got the injured man down and immobilized telekinetically.

"Five minutes out."

"Still?" Nathan checked the injured man's pulse - and froze, searching for it desperately. He bent over him, ear almost to his chest. "His heart's not beating," he said sharply.

"We've got to start CPR," said the Red Cross worker.

"I can do that." He could blow up a heart, but he'd also been taught how to save a life. A telekinetic didn't have to have the chest open to do heart massage. Except... there was something wrong. "What-" Nathan stared blindly down at the man, trying to... "Something's wrong, there's... the heart isn't working properly-"

As attuned as she currently was to every breath taken by the driver, Crystal felt his heart stop. One moment it had been beating, not the way it should have been but it had still been functioning, and the next moment its motion had ceased. Her eyes grew wide and she looked up at Nathan, but he had already noticed.

"Of course it is not working properly; it is not beating!" Crystal responded, but she too realized that someone else was amiss. Why was the Red Cross guy still there? He wasn't doing anything; he was just standing there, talking. "You can still help him, Nathan, yes?"

Nathan bent closer to the man's chest, trying to focus. "There's something. A piece of... bone, maybe?" It felt like fluid, around the heart. Blood? Nathan paled. "Cardiac tamponade," he said, pulling the term up out of his field medicine knowledge. "I have to try and force his heart to work, it can't pump properly."

Crystal nodded, hoping Nathan was already starting to do that. While they were discussing things and the Red Cross worker just stood there uselessly, the man could die. Already, he wasn't breathing on his own and his heart had stopped bleeding, but they could save him, couldn't they? They possessed lifesaving abilities; they had to be able to help.

The damage was just too much. Even as the ambulance was pulling up, Nathan was coming to that realization. There was only so much that he and Crystal could do, and the man's system was shutting down. Even as the paramedics took over, loading him into the back of the ambulance, Nathan could feel his thoughts disintegrating.

Crystal watched as the paramedics did their job, but it was to no avail. One look at Nathan told her that much. "We... tried. Did he know that we tried?"

Nathan held onto those fading thoughts, until there was nothing left to hold. He shivered at the cold shock that ran through him, his own thoughts growing unfocused, blurry for a moment before he pulled himself back together. "He... wasn't aware of much, but I think he knew someone was trying to help him," he said, his voice low and hoarse. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then looked down at Crystal, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Come on," he said more gently. "We should go back, take a bit of a break."

Crystal nodded mutely, beginning to notice the chill in the air. Feet touched the ground and she nodded again, resolutely this time. It was hard to believe that after all of the effort she had exerted on saving just one person, he had died anyway. She could cling to the naive idea that it shouldn't have happened this way, that their efforts should have worked, but deep inside she knew life didn't work that way. Sometimes, no matter what anyone did, no matter how hard someone tried, the end of the story lacked the "happily ever after" people wanted. Sometimes life happened, and sometimes it didn't. The End.