UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

When she arrives at the infirmary jet, every medic, both on and off duty, is already there. While a couple are older teens who stayed behind when they reached seventeen, the rest are just kids who have been trained to treat minor injuries, nothing more. The sight of blood doesn’t scare Risa anymore. What scares her are her own limitations—and from the moment she rolls in, she knows she’s way out of her depth.

In the corner one kid grimaces and groans with an obviously dislocated shoulder—but he’s getting only minimal attention, because the kid on the table is much worse off. His side has a huge, jagged wound through which Risa can see at least one protruding rib. He quivers and moans. Several kids frantically try to stem the bleeding, applying pressure to key arteries, and one kid with shaking hands tries to fill a syringe.

“Lidocaine or epinephrine?” Risa asks.

“Lidocaine?” he says, like it’s a question.

“I’ll administer. There are epinephrine injectors already prepared.”

He looks at her like he got caught in the school hallway without a pass.

“Adrenaline!” she says. “It’s the same as adrenaline.”

“Right! I know where those are!”

Risa tries to focus in, not allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the larger picture, and gives the injured boy the first shot, which will ease the pain.

“Did anyone call the doctor?” Risa asks.

“Like three times,” says Kiana.

There’s a doctor who comes out to the Graveyard when they have something on their hands they can’t handle. He does it free of charge, no questions asked, since he’s sympathetic to the resistance; however, he takes their calls only when he wants to. Even if they’re able to reach him, however, Risa knows what he’ll say.

“We have to get him to a hospital.”

Once she says it, all the kids there are visibly relieved, because now this boy’s life will not be in their hands. With all the injuries at the Graveyard, only twice before have they had to send a kid to a hospital. Both times the injured kid died. Risa is determined that it will not happen again.

“Hurts bad,” the kid says, between gasps and grimaces.

“Shh,” says Risa, and she sees his eyeballs begin to roll. “Stay focused on me.” She gives him the epinephrine shot, which should slow his bleeding and hopefully keep him from going into shock. “Tell me your name.”

“Dylan,” he says. “Dylan Ward.”

“Really? I was a ward too. Ohio State Home Twenty-Three.”

“Florida Magnolia. Florida state homes don’t got numbers. They’re named after flowers.”

“Figures.”

Dylan Ward is thirteen, maybe fourteen. He has a bad cleft lip, and looking at it makes her angry, because like her, he was a ward of the state—and while parents won’t unwind a kid on his looks alone, the state homes have no problem unwinding kids they don’t want to look at. For Risa, saving him now is a matter of honor. She tells Kiana to get the ambulance.

“It has a flat,” Kiana tells her.

Risa growls in frustration. “Fix it!”

“Don’t leave,” Dylan says, putting all his trust in her.

“I won’t,” she reassures him.

The ADR keeps promising to permanently station a doctor at the Graveyard, but that has yet to happen. She knows the resistance has other priorities, but when a kid is bleeding out, it’s a pretty lame excuse.

“Am I gonna die?” Dylan asks.

“Of course not,” she tells him. In truth, Risa has no idea whether he’ll live or die, but that’s not very comforting to hear, and no one wants the truth when they ask that question.

Risa rolls her way over whatever debris is on the floor and down the plane’s rear ramp, where a bunch of kids have gathered to fret.

One kid comes forward. It’s Starkey. Ever since Connor put him in charge of food service, he thinks his nose belongs in everything. “Is there anything I can do?”