Shell Shock
Renly dreaded the military hospital. The air in there was febrile with the blood and cries of the wounded and dying. His friends and his enemies reduced to bloodied piles of limbs. His friend Fox, the medic, had described to him logistical nightmares. Mountains of amputated limbs piled high on gurneys waiting to be transported to the mass grave. Wounded men, amputees, and the sick and suffering all limping and wandering through the corridors like disoriented ghosts. A man who’d died with peculiar smile memorialized on his face just as half his skull had been blown away. The sight and smell of bile mingling with feces in devastating abdominal wounds. A rocket shell melted into a man’s side. The strange and terrible ways that life could end. Death’s humor was unbearable.
Renly passed a paper with a name to an orderly rushing by. “Can you help me -?”
The man, who had a strange brown stain on his uniform, feces or blood Renly couldn’t tell, pointed in the direction needed. “Down the hall. Third room on the left. Better hurry, she’ll be done there soon.” And he rushed away again.
Renly followed the instructions, limping towards the room indicated. He pushed open the door to the expected scene. A Covenant soldier moaning on the bed, blood leaking from a gaping wound where his leg used to be. A hint of white bone in seeping red. The severed limb on a shining metal table nearby. Medics bumbling around with medications.
What was unexpected was the floral scarf on a tiny woman with red hair shoving past him. So much red in the room.
The patient started seizing, limbs flailing, spraying blood every where. The medics yelled for Ativan.
“Don’t worry about the seizure, you fools! It’ll stop soon enough!” The little woman had lungs. “Hold him down. I do not want to be bucked off.”
The woman turned to Renly. “Hey shell shock.” Her fingers snapping in his face. “Why don’t you grab his other leg there so he doesn’t kick me in the face!” Was she yelling at him now? He was disoriented registering only impatient, demanding, green eyes.
His ears were ringing, he numbly took position, holding the patient’s shaking leg while the medics held the patient’s arms and torso. The woman with the floral scarf, hiked long billowing skirts up her legs and mounted the patient. Sitting right down on his hips facing his lower half. Her chosen outfit added to the otherworldlyness of the scene. Why was she dressed in a cream-colored chiffon shirt only for it to be stained with blood? Ishara was vain. No other way to put it.
Was someone screaming? Or was the sound coming from inside his own head? No it was the patient wailing while the woman worked. Renly couldn’t comprehend what was happening, what she was doing to him. It was the sound that bothered him more than anything.
Suddenly it was over. The patient wasn’t screaming anymore. His head lolled back and forth and he was moaning again. The woman dismounted arranging skirts now stained with blood around her legs. She didn't seem to care about the blood. At all. Save for her movements the rest of the room went still. The woman wiped her hands clean and then petted the patient's hair matted with sweat. She murmured an apology to him and kissed his forehead. Her only moment of softness.
Then it was back to business. “Another meat shield for you boys.” She said addressing the Covenant medics. “He’ll be ready in, oh, in a week or two. Best to let his psyche settle.” She tapped her own temple as she said it before turning to Renly. “You can let go now, shell shock.” She spat the chosen epithet at him and turned to leave the room.
The woman walked fast for having such short legs. Bloodied skirt billowing around her legs, hair bouncing around her shoulders. Was she an angel? Or a demon? He couldn't decide. Renly tried to jog to catch up to her, half limping, half dragging a painful leg.
“Excuse me. Miss?”
She stopped suddenly, wheeling around. Auburn hair flying, held out of her face by the floral scarf. “Are you speaking to me? What do you want?”
“Are you Ishara?”
“Yes. What do you want, shell shock? Spit it out.” She wasn’t normally so demanding but she’d lost patience with managing the needs of men who found it fit to make a living shooting at other people. She had what a seasoned soldier might call 'battle fatigue.' She'd seen too much. The stress was too much. She'd broken down and built herself back up into something harder. You couldn't be soft during a war.
“My name is Renly. I - I was told you can help me. My leg. I - I have an infection.” He gestured to his right leg. It was aching miserably from his recent effort.
“Oh! You’re Leg Infection. Of course. Come this way.” She didn’t wait before hustling off again leaving him to limp after her as she lead him to a small room that looked more like an office than an exam room. “Sit there, take off your boot, roll up your pants. I’ll dress the wound for you.”
Renly followed her orders. He felt like he was constantly a second or two behind her. Like she operated in double-time and he in slow motion. She was overwhelming. “The medic dressed it this morning. He said you had salve for it.” He offered, trying to save her some effort.
Ishara scoffed, rolling her eyes. “You trust the medic? Better let me have a look at it.” She was bending over rifling through cabinets and drawers creating a growing pile of bandages, jars, and implements on the desk. “Come on then. The boot. Your pants.” She was snapping her fingers again.
He complied removing the boot and rolling up his pants. She pulled up a rolling stool in front of him and patted her knee. “Up here then.” She wasn’t gentle at all unwrapping the bandages and probing the wound with her bare hands. He winced and gasped when she hit a particularly painful spot. She tsked. “You’ll lose your leg at this rate.”
He gaped at her. Would he be her next victim for the procedure he'd just witnessed?
Ishara smiled darkly. “Don’t worry, I’ll just put it right back on for you.” She poked at an ulcer on his heel. “Here’s the origin. You need better boots. When did the infection start?”
Renly was panting at this point and gripping the side of the chair. The woman had no mercy. “We got it in the campaign in the swamps.” His voice was strained.
“Well that’s what you get for invading a sovereign territory and having battles in swamps. Did you say ‘we’? Who all is ‘we’?”
“I don’t know hundreds? Maybe thousands? Sixty percent of my company have it.”
Ishara stopped her work on the wound and raised her eyebrows. “Sixty percent with infections like this? That could change the tides of the war.”
She was so matter-of-fact. Renly didn’t know how to respond to her. “They said the healers would treat us. Won’t you?”
“If I had a choice? No.”
Renly was indignant. Where did she get off acting like this? He hadn't done anything to her. He felt the sudden urge to spank her. A strange impulse. “What kind of ethic is that?”
“You shoot men to death for a living. What kind of ethic is that?” She snapped back.
He didn’t answer. He hadn’t volunteered for service. He’d been drafted from a pool of felons serving life sentences. The Covenant needed 'meat shields' and they were good at getting them. But he didn’t need any more judgments from the sassy healer, and he knew he wouldn't get her pity. “Why are you forced to treat us? Hippocratic oath?”
“Hippo - what?”
“It’s an oath our doctors take. Do no harm. Something like that.”
Ishara laughed cruelly. “They should call themselves primitives. Some good your doctors do for you. Look at this mess. They could learn a thing or two from me. Slicing and dicing the body. It’s disgusting. And most of the time completely ineffective!” Just as soon as she had started the tirade against doctors she abandoned it and returned to the topic. “No, its a clause in a treaty we have with the international community. We can stay ‘a sovereign territory’ so long as we put blown up men back together whenever anyone asks us to.”
“Didn’t the war negate the treaty?”
“Of course not. The Covenant expects us to keep our side even while they break the law. It’s always been this way and it always will be. Don’t mind us as we try not to get completely annihilated by you.”
Ishara finished wrapping the wound and handed him the salve container. Renly felt somewhat emotionally battered. This woman was exhausting.
“Here. Dress the wound just as I have. Once in the morning and once at night. Don’t bother with the medic. Just get the bandages from him. And take a crutch there from the corner. One of the tall ones for those long legs of yours.”
Renly was slow to push himself up. He limped over to the crutches, but she was quicker already picking one for him and pushing it into his hands.
“Oh Renly? Don’t use that cream as a lubricant when you masturbate. It will irritate your penis. Especially the foreskin.”
Renly felt his cheeks flush with heat. He stammered but no words came out, fumbling with the crutch and salve bottle.
“I know how men are. You’ll reach for any lube-like thing in your excitement for yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t want you coming to me crying about your foreskin sloughing off. I will be forced to help you but I will laugh at you first.”
She was so blunt. “What do you know about my foreskin?”
Ishara planted her hands on her hips and looked him up and down. “You’re a Nordic barbarian aren’t you?”
Renly half nodded,eyes rolling to the ceiling as he considered it. “I suppose I am, yes.”
“Well I’ve never seen a viking without foreskin. And if you want to keep yours, keep the salve away from your cock, dear.” She patted his arm sympathetically, and pushed past him, disappearing in the hall. "Tell all the other Leg Infections to come see us."
Bitch, I'm limited edition.
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