Safety Net

[ViolentMedic]

((Marshall West continued from Megaphone.))

He'd never seen a dead body before.

Marshall didn’t know Jack Kilgore well. He might have scolded him for being flippant once or twice at school. He’d been on the announcements that morning, but Marshall thought… hadn’t he been listed as a killer? Marshall stood over the body, huddled in on himself with the emergency blanket bundled around him like when he’d got up on cold nights as a child.

He should have been horrified. Revolted. Sad. Something.

But all he could do was stare at the half-empty first aid kit, and the windbreaker it sat on.

-

Marshall had spent the night somewhere on this mountain. Upper, lower… he couldn’t tell. It had been dark, there had been a dent in a cliffside where he could hide from the worst of the wind and cold. He’d had his emergency blanket – the only part of his first-aid kit that he’d brought with him.

He hadn’t known what to do about his fingers. He wasn’t sure if tying shoelaces around the bases of them had been a good idea. But he had nothing to stem the bleeding except for what he wore, and he was afraid of the cold. And they had stopped bleeding. Mostly.

He shouldn’t have fallen asleep, either. Not after being smashed in the head by the handle of a gun. The gun had come into contact with one of the glass eyes of the gas mask perched on his head, which had shattered and dug pieces into his scalp. He had taken the mask off and put it in his little bag when he took the blanket out, but the shards remained. Fragments of glass kept falling out of his hair.

But by the morning, he was still alive. He hadn’t bled to death. He hadn’t frozen to death, though there were parts of his nose, left ear and left cheek that stung and felt red and sore. Sorer than the ring finger and left pinky on the other side, when they’d gotten frostnip.

Every time he tried to do something, he damaged his fingers and whatever he’d tried to do didn’t work out.

But he could try again.

It wasn’t so bad.

-

“I’m sorry,” Marshall said to the body. “I need to borrow your things.”

He turned away and sat down on the edge of where the blood had pooled. It wasn’t fully dry. He stole the windbreaker from the bag, briefly shedding the blanket and his jacket, and pulling it over the other windbreaker that was his only defence from the cold. Not much. Slightly better. Jacket over the second windbreaker, then blanket back over.

Now he had to handle the fingers. He had to compartmentalize, and think about that first.

Then he could think about Jack.

Then he could think about the rest.

Marshall took the saline solution from the first-aid kit. He wished he remembered more than the one first-aid talk he’d been to. That one had been CPR focused, anyway.

The only part he remembered in the moment is what to do when someone else was in a dangerous situation, and couldn’t help themselves. Do you help them, or wait for the danger to be removed? Marshall had thought that the person should be helped, but the teacher had corrected him. No-one, even professionals whose whole job it is to rescue people from these situations, go ahead and put themselves in danger to save someone else. They wait for the danger to be removed, and then go in to assist.

Marshall didn’t think he could ever be a medical professional in situations like that.

As he tried to sanitize the severed fingers before wrapping them up so that infection wouldn’t set in, he gritted his teeth to stop himself from screaming. His jaw ached from the force of it. But that pain… it was good. It stopped him thinking, for a while.

-

He’d done too much thinking, going down the mountain. Blurry, hazy thinking. But thinking about what he’d said to Dani. Thinking about the game. Thinking about everything.

Marshall didn’t really settle down to think often. He always preferred to be doing one thing or another. He had never needed to hesitate for long. He always knew what direction he was going in. He had his schedule, and he abided by it without question. Self-improvement, both physical and mental. Good grades and sporting achievements would mean a better chance at scholarships. A degree in law, that could be applied to multiple career paths.

And then…

Well, that was the problem. He’d never had anything after school planned out.

In school, there was one path forward. He didn’t need to think, as long as there was school to consider first. The thoughts only started to drift in late at night, right before he slept.

He’d never known what he wanted to do for a job. He’d never had any personal goals that didn’t relate to his grades and the scholarships that might follow. He’d never known what he’d wanted to do with the rest of his life. And occasionally, the start of a thought came to him. The idea that, when the safety net of a rigorous schedule was taken away, that Marshall wouldn’t have the faintest idea on what to do.

The game had proven what Marshall had always known deep down.

-

The pain of the antiseptic lingered, but it was no longer enough to drive away his thoughts.

Jack’s blood skimmed Marshall’s shoes. He was still sluggishly bleeding.

“I’m sorry,” Marshall said, not looking as he loosely wrapped the two half-remaining fingers. “I should say something.”

He hadn’t gotten here in time. He never got anywhere in time. He’d left behind his supplies so he could be faster, and he was still never anywhere on time.

Not in time to help any of the people who had been on the announcements. Not in time to stop Josh from killing again, or to help Ashlee… not in time to either stop Jack from killing, or stop him from being killed in turn...

Marshall couldn’t find the words.

Once he was done, he turned back towards Jack. He reached out slowly, touching the cold arm. Then he shifted the arms so they were placed on his chest, and made sure his eyes were shut. It required him to touch far too close to where all the brain and skull fragments were, and Marshall had to jerk his head away and try his best not to throw up.

That was the most he could do for Jack.

And that left him with what to do next, and he just… had nothing. Nothing except…

…

Chloé. He had to find Chloé.

((Marshall West continued in "Man, this SOTF thing sucks."))