Shake Hands With The Devil: Triage

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Backdated to Wednesday 13th August 2008 at 2:30pm

Crystal and Laurie help out doing triage at the front gate of the Red Cross camp when Laurie is forced to make a hard decision.



Laurie lifted her face as a, while not entirely cool, at least not stifling, hot breeze blew in from the road that led to their refugee outpost. She could see the crowds of people packing that road, some helping others, some pulling what appeared to be carts containing whatever they could safely pull from their homes before fleeing. It was a tide of humanity, not a great tide but certainly big enough that they weren't able to let everyone in.

That was what she was doing here at the gates currently, helping one of the doctors to assess the wounded and ill.

"I've got another for you to take, Crystal." Laurie called up to her friend, taking the baby carefully from it's mother, she used her power to sooth it's fitful crying. She could feel the warmth of the baby's fever as she placed a hand on it's forehead. She just hoped the doctors would be able to do something about it. "Miss, it's going to be okay, I promise. See, she's already stopped crying."

And the baby had, eyes closing as Laurie's sleep suggestion penetrated the tiny body, sending her off to sleep.

Rather than needing to take up the time and physical efforts of multiple people, Crystal was currently functioning as a living sky vehicle, creating cushions of solidified air on which she would then transport injured people to the medical facility. The baby, however, was gently taken from Laurie and personally held during the short trip while a few others floated nearby.

Laurie turned back to the line of refugees, smiling at the two teenagers and the older man who were now standing, or slumping as the case may be, before her. She frowned at the rather distant look in the older man's eyes, and the tired and drawn look of the children. "What happened to him?" she asked, quickly reaching out to give the man a quick examination.

The nearby Polish volunteer snorted with disdain. "They don't speak English here, princess." He couldn't have been much older than the X-Man, probably an intern a thousand miles from his hospital. Now elbows deep in blood and mud of a mundane genocide.

The chubby exterior seemed almost offensively at odds with the slightly blank eyes, a veteran's thousand-yard stare that never changed even as he snapped off a string of choppy Tamil phrases translating Laurie's question.

One of the boys answered after a hesitant pause and the Pole nodded and spat before relating the story. "There was a panic up the road, mob stampeded on the bridge. They aren't sure - he might have been stabbed. Or had his ribs kicked in.".

Laurie ignored the obvious disdain in the man's voice and continued with her general examination. She was still only trained in first aid, and whatever she'd been able to pick up from Jean in her time volunteering in Medlab. It gave her enough experience to be able to do a cursory examination but anything even remotely serious, she'd need to refer to more experienced hands. Knife wounds of any kind other then superficial, and even those in an environment like this would require a doctor's skilled hands.

"Tell them that I need to take their father to the medical facilities." Laurie replied, turning to the volunteer, Jerzy Mikulski judging from the tag on his overalls. "Tell them that he'll be well cared for, but I'm sorry, they can't join him there."

They were stretched to their limit already with so many refugees, they couldn't afford to let in completely healthy people. As Jerzy interpreted, one of the boy grabbed his father's hand protectively and the younger's eyes began to well up.

"Ah shit." Mikulski grimaced and tried again, gesticulating explosively. No translation was required as the old man put his good hand on the shoulder of his son protectively and shook his head weakly in denial.

"He's not going anywhere without them." Jerzy sighed disgustedly. There was a sudden scream from behind the building however and he swore tiredly. "Fuck, the burn victims are here. We don't have time for this bullshit." He signaled for his assistant, an elderly Tamil woman who used to be a midwife, and turned back toward Laurie. "Have Kari here change the bandages and do a basic disinfect on him. Then send him on his way and come help me."

There was already a sizable camp around the original settlement, and it was growing daily as the people continued to pour in. Some left, on their way toward relatives up the coast, simply too used to running or unwilling to place hopes in the Red Cross to protect them from the world gone mad. But many stayed, eager to cling to what was seemingly the only anchor of stability (and a prospect of food) in the increasingly chaotic situation. Tents and shacks were already stretching for miles around the outpost, with hygiene in a predictable state of complete collapse, the incipient starvation and diseases beginning to spread.

The Pole rushed off and Laurie bit her bottom lip, thinking hard. Sending that man out into the sea of unwashed humanity lapping at the walls of the outpost would be tantamount to a death sentence. Given their supply situation 'basic disinfect' amounted largely to washing his wound out with boiled water...

Laurie looked at the man and his sons, feeling helpless now that the volunteer who could speak to them was gone. There was no way for her to reason with them, no way to get him further help...Crystal! Of course, maybe she would know a language these people spoke. Laurie looked up for her former suite mate, trying to see if she'd made it back from delivering the baby to the hospital.

Crystal could be sighted not far off the ground, and seconds later she hovered close to Laurie. Something on the younger girl's face alerted the floating woman to the fact that something was amiss. Not that this entire situation was stress-free or usual to either of the two who had come here from New York, but Laurie hadn't seemed to be waiting for Crystal the previous times. She decided against questioning the young X-Man, meeting her gaze and waiting for Laurie to speak first.

"Crystal, thank God. What languages do you know?" Laurie asked quickly, holding her hands up to the three refugees in what she hoped they would take as a 'please wait' gesture. "I don't speak the language and I need to convince them to let me take this guy to the infirmary without them."

"I am fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, and Farsi," Crystal told Laurie. During Attilan's disappearance, she'd continued the Farsi lessons she'd begun the year before with Nathan at Xavier's. "I can neither speak nor understand the local languages here, Laurie. Why did the doctor not communicate this need to them?"

"Burn victims." Laurie replied, giving the three men a helpless look. There was nothing she could do, without the communication skills to actually reason with them, she just didn't have time to spare to convince them somehow to let her take their father. "He's may die without treatment, Crystal, and there's nothing we can do because I can't let the other two in with him."

"I could take him without them," Crystal said, glancing at the men for a moment before looking back at Laurie. "However, I am not sure that this would be a good course of action to take. It would create a rather unpleasant scene in what is already an unfortunate situation, and I doubt that it would cause this man to allow himself to receive the proper treatment."

"Then it's my decision." Laurie said, squaring her shoulders and waving over Kari to treat the man. "We'll do what the doctor said, a basic disinfect and then send them on their way."

The former midwife who waited out the argument patiently, shuffled up to the patient quickly as soon as she saw the signal, smiling at the aid workers obsequiously before turning to bark instructions at the patient. The man's face lost some of its shock as he weakly pulled his shirt off and Kari's nose wrinkled at the smell. The wound had clearly gone bad.

The crusted bandages came off the skin badly, the Tamil's face going white with pain and his teeth biting deep on the inside of his mouth to stifle the scream that would have pushed his kids into outright panic.

As the wound was uncovered the stench increased considerably and the sight of it made Laurie blanch.

"Crystal, I need you to go to the hospital and pick me up some antiseptics and painkillers, quickly please." Laurie said, her tone becoming almost terse as she waved Kari away to get a better look at the man's wound.

Crystal took a look at the waiting crowd of refugees, a large group containing other people who required immediate treatment, then looked at Laurie, the injured man, and his children. Nodding once to Laurie, she lifted herself higher into the air and headed back towards the Red Cross camp's hospital.

Laurie leaned toward the man, trying to get a closer look at his wound, despite the smell. She could almost feel the heat radiating from his skin, a high fever definitely then. She wished she spoke the language, even just a little.

She stepped back, biting her lip for a moment as she noticed the line of people, increasing rapidly still. This man was going to die, she could tell from the fever and the way he was breathing that he might have sepsis. Without a fully equipped hospital and the time and staff to treat him, all she'd be doing was delaying the inevitable.

She didn't know what to do, she hadn't trained for this, she wished someone else was here to make the decision.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jerzy materialized as if by magic next to Laurie's shoulder. A flat, unfriendly smile, purely for the patient's piece of mind, tugged the corners of his lips slightly upward in a rather ugly rictus as he advanced on the X-Man spitting out questions in a deceptively mild tone. "I thought I told you to Band-Aid this guy and move on? Why is your friend terrorising Dr. Avery up there, demanding medications we don't have?"

"Do you have no sense of smell?" Laurie demanded, having started violently when Jerzy spoke. "The man has sepsis, a band aid isn't going to cut it."

Jerzy stepped closer, blatantly invading the X-Man's personal space. "Look at that guy, girlie. Look at him. Forget sepsis, he's about 2 minutes from gangrene." He hissed, the flat, fake smile still firmly on his face. "What do you want to do here? Stop everything, get all the doctors here? Or were you perhaps planning to do surgery on him all by yourself? We have maybe half a box of phenol left, which I am pretty sure has been laying around since the fucking seventies. We also have 73 penicillin doses. I count them twice every day. That's my job. All right?! I count the FUCKING penicillin!"

He stepped back stretching his arms widely, voice bitingly sardonic. "You want it? I can give it all to you right here and now. You can shoot this guy full of everything we have. He might even make it. Although, since I can use his damn ribs as a xylophone, I sorta doubt it."

Jerzy was breathing deeply now, visibly trying to control himself. "There's a 12-year old boy in there getting his arm amputated and Avery is disinfecting the stump with whiskey. J motherfucking D. Fingerlicking good." He giggled, a thin and slightly deranged sound.

"You know why? Triiiiiaaaaaage." He drawled, stretching out the word, savoring it. "You do what you can for those who may be helped. The one-armed kid in there? Has a mild congenital heart defect. Probably won't survive the post-op by a week. His sister on the other hand, burned in the same fire - might. So she gets the penicillin."

The young Polish medic stopped suddenly, gritting his teeth and swallowing slowly and letting out a long shuddering breath. When he spoke again it was a quiet monotone. "We can't save them all. We can't even save most of them. So give this guy a basic disinfect and come. help. with. the burn victims."

Jerzy captured Laurie's eyes with his own for a long moment before snapping something at Kari in Tamil, probably instructions to oversee that his orders were obeyed this time. Before turning away, however, he gripped Laurie's shoulder briefly. "Come find me after dinner, kid."

Surprisingly the word did not seem patronizing or silly coming from him even considering the little difference in ages between the medic and the X-Man. "Not all the whiskey gets spent in surgery. You gonna be a humanitarian, you gotta start drinking like one."

He smiled, at her and the wounded man, mouth twisting below the feverish eyes, and started back toward the main building.

Laurie had stood, listening while Jerzy shouted, in a state of mild shock. His hand against her shoulder snapped her out of it and she struggled to keep the burning in her eyes from turning to tears. Squaring her shoulders, she nodded to Kari to continue her job, trying to find somewhere inside herself the ability to shut off from the horror in front of her.

Once again, Crystal returned to where Laurie was positioned with the injured man and his sons. "Laurie," she began, "I was unable to bring back either antibiotics or painkillers. Supplies are extremely limited, and they are needed to be used on those in the hospital, those who are able to and willing to be treated in the hospital, those who actually have a chance of survival." She sighed slightly, and shook her head. "I am very sorry."

"It's fine, Crystal. We'll just have to clean him up the best we can and hope he dies quickly." Laurie noted, trying not to meet the eyes of the two teenagers as Kari finished up cleaning the wound.

She grabbed some gauze and a fresh bandage and walked forward to wrap it around his torso, covering up the wound, and lessening the smell coming from it. When she was done, she smiled politely at the three of them and nodded her head towards the tents and dwellings that had sprung up outside the fences .

"We're done, you can go now." she said, mostly for her own benefit, since they couldn't understand a thing she said.

The man smiled at her with pitiful gratitude and said something to his kids, who turned in unison toward Laurie like sunflowers toward the sun and chorused what presumably were thanks for helping their father.

Laurie swallowed thickly and did her best to smile back before they disappeared into the tent city outside.

Crystal hovered silently behind Laurie for a few moments, watching the family walk away from the gated camp. "There are others who require our attention and can use our help," she said, softly but loud enough for Laurie to hear. "It is unfortunate that this man would not do what was needed in order for us to help him, but we have to continue on and do what we can for the other people here. You cannot save everyone, Laurie."