The Island (The Madion War Trilogy #1)

Chapter Three, Part II - Galian

Theo was a girl.

A pretty girl.

I'd always thought Raven women were more interesting looking than Kylaen women—with their olive skin and black hair, they seemed to draw my attention. And this girl, something about her made my head spin.

Even with her mangled, bloody legs.

They were a sight: dark red staining her gray jump suit.

"Thank you, Dr. Maitland," I said, cracking open the bag he'd given me and sliding on the pair of latex gloves.

She murmured something and had gone pale. The amount of blood she'd lost was a real concern, and she was most likely concussed. I would worry about the head injury later; it wouldn't matter much if she died from blood loss.

"What are you doing?" she croaked.

"Pardon the invasion of privacy," I said, flashing her my trademark smile.

I unzipped her jumpsuit and pulled it down, exposing a white bra and underwear and nothing else. Immediately, her skin puckered with goosebumps as I tossed away the soaked dark gray suit.

"Are you still with me, Theo?"

She blinked, but didn't respond.

"Okay, I'm going to examine you now," I said, leaning over her bare legs. I pressed my hands to her hips, and she reacted, swiftly, sitting up so fast she nearly whacked her forehead to mine.

"Get your filthy hands off of me," she hissed, her breath touching my face.

"I'm a doctor."

"Bullshit."

"Seriously," I insisted. "You're bleeding very badly, and I need to find the source of it."

Her deep brown eyes stared into mine, her lip twisted in a snarl, but she removed her hands from my wrists. I explored the bloody patches on her bare legs. Most of them seemed to be small scrapes...until I brushed something on the underside of her leg, and she screamed in pain.

"Ah, there it is," I said, placing my hand on her hip to calm her down. The four-inch gash was deep, and probably nicked a major artery in the leg, based on the amount of blood seeping out of it.

Gently, I rolled her onto her stomach and she didn't protest. I used nearly every antibacterial wipe in the bag to clean the wound, then fished out sutures and twine.

"This is going to hurt," I said, sliding the needle through the bottom of the wound. She sucked in a loud breath, and her knuckles went white. I worked quickly, using all the sutures in the bag to close up the wound. I wrapped it with gauze as tightly as possible, hoping that it would keep her alive until we were found and I could get her to Dr. Maitland.

I rolled her back onto her back. She'd gone pale and was mumbling to herself. I fished out the tube and rubber tourniquet that I'd seen in the bag and looked at her.

"Well, Theo," I smirked. "You're just lucky I'm everybody's type."

"What are you doing?" she mumbled.

"Transfusion." I wrapped the rubber band tight around my forearm. Tying the other band around her arm, I felt for a vein—she was so muscular, it took me no time, and I stuck in the needle connected to the tube. With care, I slid the other end into my own vein and released the tourniquet.

She watched, wordlessly, as the red blood flowed from my arm down into hers. I counted the rate of blood flow on my watch.

"Okay," I said, sitting back and shaking my foggy head after I disconnected our transfusion line. There was significant bruising starting on her other leg on the inner calf, and it was swollen enough to make me curious.

"I'm going to check your leg," I said, placing my hand between her legs.

She tensed, and her eyes flew open.

"Theo," I said, as professionally as I could. "I think your leg is broken. I'm just going to check it. I promise, I'm not going to hurt you."

She snarled at me, but I continued moving my hands down to her knees and lower to her calves. She sucked in air when I touched the bruised spot, and, based on the swelling, I knew that if her tibia wasn't broken, it was close to it. At the very least, she needed a brace. Hopefully, there was something to help me in the bag. So far, Dr. Maitland hadn't let me down. I dug around for a moment, pulling out more antiseptic wipes and gauze, until my hands fell on a small box with a glass vial inside.

"You are one lucky girl," I said, assembling the needle. "This is anesthesia. It'll numb the pain locally until I can set the bone."

"I don't want your Kylaen poison," she spat, to my utter shock.

"Really?" I gaped at her. "I just gave you a damn liter of my own blood, and you think I'm going to poison you?"

She said nothing but looked away. Still muttering to myself about Raven paranoia, I pulled the cap off the syringe and inserted it into the swollen nub on her leg. She hissed, but I held still as I finished administering the drug. After a moment, she relaxed.

"Pain won't go away fully, and that's all that I have," I said. I glanced at the syringe and tossed it into a nearby bush, as I didn't have a biohazard disposal box at the ready. Then again, from the looks of this island, Theo and I seemed to be the only ones on it.

I stood up and looked around for a pair of sticks that would be sturdy enough to keep her from doing any more damage. I found a couple of straight ones that would do the trick and returned to her. She had regained a little color, and seemed to be enjoying the anesthesia because she seemed more relaxed when I crouched next to her.

She stared at the sky with a stoic resolve that I kind of admired. This girl was a warrior, having seen her share of scrapes and bruises, based on the state of her arms and legs. I was no longer surprised that she'd survived the crash of her ship.

What did surprise me was what she said when I finished bandaging her up.