Page 311 of Alchemised
Calm down. Focus. Assess your condition and act from there.
She forced herself to look down and gave a strangled whimper.
There was a piece of metal buried in the centre of her chest, splitting her sternum.
She kept staring at it, too shocked to move at first. She was going to die. She was going to die in a field hospital, just like her father. All that vivimancy just to run into the same fate.
She closed her eyes, struggling to stay calm as feeling crept back over her. She could sense her fingers. Toes. Her spine was intact at least.
She kept trying to breathe, but she wanted to scream with every hitch of her lungs. It was worse than a knife wound; the agony seemed to radiate outwards, seething like cracks through every rib. It consumed the whole of her consciousness.
Get up. You have to get up.
She could barely make herself move. She looked towards the road again. There was just a hole. The road was gone, but there were still people in the hospital.
She managed to get her hand up and peel the mask off. She didn’t think that lung damage from dust mattered anymore.
The air was so much cooler. She managed a half breath.
She couldn’t die.
She fought to her feet, managing shallow, panting breaths, and nearly fainted when she got upright. Every movement was agony. The need to breathe warred with the excruciating misery of forcing her ribs and lungs to shift. She bit down on her lip as she tried to shuffle towards the doors. One step at a time.
Her lungs kept agitating her with the urge to cough, but she fought it back. Pain exploded through her each time, bright white, so searing she’d waver, unable to see.
If she coughed, she would faint, and she’d be dead before she regained consciousness.
She would not die. She would wait. Someone would come back and find her. Maier could operate. Shiseo would work night and day to find the right chelator, and she would make herself recover quickly.
She’d promised Kaine that she was safe, that nothing would happen to her. She could not die.
She made it through the doors. There was a tray with a few discarded instruments and bottles on it. She fumbled through them until she found a vial of laudanum.
She managed to unscrew the lid and forced down a sip of the tongue-biting contents.
Not too much. She had to stay lucid. She searched the rest of the supplies, looking for something, a stimulant to keep herself going.
She’d kill for a cough suppressant.
She forced herself to look down at her chest. She was wearing so many layers, she couldn’t see exactly where the shrapnel went in to tell if it was nullium dissolving into her blood or just a stray piece of the lorry.
She wanted to pull it out but knew better. If it had punctured her heart or aorta, she’d bleed to death in seconds. It might be keeping her alive.
Someone would come. She could wait until a lorry came back.
She made herself keep moving, because it was easier than sitting, feeling the injury.
She checked the remaining patients. The nearest was a boy who’d been cut out of his armour. He was missing an arm. There was an intravenous drip in his remaining arm, but there was so much blood pooled beneath him. Reaching feebly for a pulse and finding none, she drew his eyes closed and moved on.
Most were dead, several unresponsive; only a few were still conscious. She checked all of them, noting where they were.
The laudanum had managed to numb her enough that she could move a little easier.
“Mum …?” one of the soldiers moaned, catching her wrist as she passed.
Pain ripped through her chest and up her spine, shattering the relief. Her legs nearly gave out, and she bit down on her tongue so hard her mouth flooded with blood.
His helmet was crushed around his skull. Through the openings, one side of his face was mangled. There was thick blood oozing from his head onto the pallet underneath him.
