Give Me Love

chapter eighteen

Warning: graphic depictions of  injuries
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One time, when you were 12, your mother dressed you in a gown so glittery and gold that the sparkles would puff up and drop off your dress with each step you took. It was for a gala that your family was invited to, some fancy dinner with a wealthy client of your fathers, and there was going to be food and dancing and live entertainment. You were no stranger to these events, although usually the dresses your mother picked out were prettier than this.

This one was just hell to be in.

You coughed up the glitter in your throat, chugging water before you even left your house. And when you got to the gala, you had to pee so bad you were running through the halls for a bathroom before you even got invited in.

The embarrassment you had caused your mother that day made it seem like you had been caught kicking puppies rather than simply needing to use the bathroom. But if you just hadn't been wearing that stupid glittery dress--

The sand on this planet reminded you of it. How, with each step, a cloud of dust would be kicked up and sting your eyes. It coated your throat in a dry, gritty layer that had you swallowing thickly every two seconds, except this time, you had no water to wash it down with.

Your two superior's-- Malachi and Amara-- skirt around the edges of the west medical tent, the one you had been assigned to, and were handing out water pouches. You hadn't been able to reach for yours yet. Instead, you had been working since you touched down and found the tent that had been in your mission details, quickly inducted and shown where everything was before a clone was dragged in and dropped onto the cot before you, screaming and writhing in agony, like most of the clones in this tent.

His shoulder was ripped to shreds, no doubt by some sort of droid seeing as how the indents on his flesh were too precise to be blaster shots. He was fighting against the hold of his comrades, gushing blood all over the white of the cot, and dripping onto the sand below.

You immediately got to work trying to calm him, using a loud voice so he could hear you. Once you realized he wasn't going to relax, you reached for his helmet and began carefully inching it off his neck to expose his face to cooler air.

His eyes were wild, full of fear, face crumpled and flushed and sweaty. You wrung a cool cloth with some water and wiped his face, telling the clones that had come in with him that they could go back, before starting on his armor.

You became very good at figuring out the best ways to take off clone armor throughout the day, but this first one was difficult. You could not move him without him erupting in screams of pain, could not reach any clasps without rolling him onto his back, and so you had to make due with peeling back the broken bits of plastisteel to reveal the wound, clean it as he bled profusely, and then try to see what, exactly, the damage was.

It was deep.

Almost his whole shoulder was gone, the joint being held up by just a few ligaments and the skeleton of his armor. Whatever droid had caught him stripped him of almost all of his flesh, fat, and muscle, straight into his chest area. You stared into his chest cavity, the membrane having also been torn, and you could just make out the quiver of his lung expanding as he breathed.

You had never been squeamish, but you suddenly felt very ill. There was no way you could fix this here, not with the resources you were lacking. He would need to be extensively cleaned, bandaged, then have skin grafts taken from various parts of his body to span his chest. That process would take months in itself, and that's only after his arm would be amputated.  It was barely holding on as it was. But he had already lost too much blood, and now you had a decision to make.