Page 116 of Stars in Aura

Missions like these, which provided life-changing surgeries and healthcare solutions to souls who would otherwise be condemned, energized Ki’Remi.

Within hours of appearing in orbit over the New Madi, Perseus Prime became a hub of controlled chaos.

Teams of surgeons, doctors, nurses, and autobots descended in landers to set up a field clinic in a robust synth-tent setup.

Patients arrived on transports, their symptoms and defects ranging from severe to crucial.

Soon, the atmosphere was rank with antiseptic, sweat, and exhaustion, the frenzy of a battle being fought, not with weapons, but with scalpels, syringes, and desperate hands.

Each hour was utter carnage as the extent of the need unfolded.

Ki’Remi was expected to be in four places at once: an awning ward overflowing with those in need, a surgical list stacked with critical cases.

Plus, an onslaught of emergencies in the roughshod A&E and an isolation unit packed with souls deteriorating faster than they could be saved.

He raced, his meta-strength lending him speed as lives hung in the balance.

Close to him at most times, Issa was a blur of efficiency in theater. Focused on a series of severe cases, she was entirely in her element.

She moved like a force of nature, tending to the worst situations with hands that burned with herSsignakhtpower.

He let her, unwilling to stop her, given the level of need.

Yet, it wasn’t enough.

The sick kept streaming in, and at one point, he glanced outside to see a football field-sized tent packed with bodies leaning on crutches.

More in wheelchairs and hover beds, all waiting to be triaged.

He walked individuals through the consent forms, his gut twisting for time itself had already betrayed most of them.

He scrubbed in, the routine ingrained in his bones. Hands washed. Gloves pulled on. Drapes laid, and surgical autobots on the go.

Gazing down at the theater table, the switch flipped.

The patients in his care ceased to be an individual. Each was a battlefield, a puzzle, a body housing a problem that needed fixing.

He put them back together before sending them out and letting in the next patient.

The on-call shift stretched like an eternity, a relentless tide of cases and bodies needing saving.

Hours blurred, meals became routine, and even when Ki’Remi got a moment to spoon some food into his mouth, his trauma pager screamed.

When the surgeries slowed, the ward rounds still had to be done.

Then, it was back to the grind.

Rinse, sleep, repeat.

The most challenging moments came when he had to tell Falasian families that their loved ones’ lives were in danger.

The most satisfying, however, came from being thanked by those he helped save, sometimes in tears.

It took the edge off the guilt, the exhaustion, the lingering shadows of doubt that they’d get through the tides of Falasians needing their care.

What also did the trick was that Issa and Ki’Remi took solace in each other in their stolen interludes. Brushing hands in the hallways. Longing kisses in the back of tent wards, whispered conversations overkahawain the mess hall.

She waited for him as much as possible after the shifts, the chaos, and the back-breaking surgeries.

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