The chill in the room helped him think but, even so, he could admit that having to do emergency surgery with a scavenged crab blade was not ideal.
His original claw-blade was trapped in the crab’s guts and his broken claw blade had been lost sometime in the door melee or even before. He continued his cuts as his brain steadily compartmentalized alongside him. The surgery was not pleasant for the patient and he had not gotten to her chest yet.
The cheek had been an easy fix even if it had kept pouring blood. That’s why he had fixed it first. He applied some Medjel and pinched it closed. He held her cheek together for about a quarter of a minute to be sure that the Medjel was able to get sticky enough to hold it together. A seizurous shake from her gave him a moment to appreciate his foresight in having removed the Zappa from his arm and sealed his own wounds before diving into all of this.
Her leg had been fractured, nearly in half. He had to carve into her leg to the bone, put together what pieces of bone he could find that matched and jam as much Medjel as possible inside and on the way out of his experienced, for a novice, surgical blade. He then used a series of rear crab legs, gauze, and more Medjel to stabilize and secure the entire thing together. He was magnanimous enough to admit that it was not his best work but it was basically a work of art for all the subpar tools he had on hand. After all, if she managed to wake up he wasn’t about to carry her with all these filthy crabs crawling all over the place.
Her chest was another story. He emptied his Medjel mini-duffle onto the floor and pre-tore open three packets of Medjel. Now that he had a clear look at it the part that was moving up and down opposite the rest of her chest was right above her heart.
In a moment of calm self-awareness, he realized that he was about to carve into and, more than likely, be playing around in this woman’s chest. As the cold closed around him he rinsed the assorted fluids from his fingers and gingerly wiped down the area with what he thought was the cleanest part of either of their uniforms. He took a sip of water for himself as he turned towards her once again. Objectively, he knew that he should have more Dexterity than he currently possessed to try this at all but he could not think of a better way so he started a circular cut into the top layer of flesh, edging roughly around the area that kept popping up and down. He waited until it popped up again, getting the timing right. It popped and he cut deep through the muscle and wormed one finger then another into the new gap. He held the broken section from moving back down all the way when she breathed out. He acutely felt his missing fingers more now than at any other point so far.
I need my damn thumb! This would be child’s play if he had stayed cool earlier and kept his thumb. Fools have no appreciation for tact and manners.
The moment that he had spent thinking about his missing thumb was a serious mistake.
Looking down he had two fingers buried in this chick’s chest right above her heart. His other, now deridingly, non-dominant hand held a hyper-sharp crab blade that he was having to angle and cut as it was held a half meter out and all of this was positioned directly above her heart.
He knew he was at a crossroads and with the falling temperature of the room, some distant part sent out a warm worm of anxiety that started to crawl up his chest.
The missing fingers, his low Dexterity, the damn unwieldy blade, his fingers buried in her chest. He would definitely kill her if he tried to switch to his right hand and use the claw-blade in his two-fingered hand. Instead, he was only most likely going to kill her. Her breathing was growing jagged and harsh. The deep breaths were becoming shallower.
He needed information. There was no way he would be able to handle that many crabs if he ran into it again. He needed another set of eyes.
No. She was not going to die, he would not allow it, not until he had some answers.
As his determination hardened to ice the anxiety and hesitation faded. His mind grew colder still.
He pulled one finger out of the chest cavity and sandwiched the area between his two fingers. He cut hard and fast with the other hand. He left a portion of the skin, muscle, and fat connected on one side, a small flap connecting it to the rest of her body. He flipped the fist-sized slab of bone, muscle, and fat backward onto her chest. He paused for a moment as he studied the laboriously beating heart. Ignoring the half-deflated lung, the other one was working fine, he saw what had happened.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He raged at the claw-blade and his missing thumb. Being forced to use them the heart had been nicked. It only looked like a small scratch but it happened with the crab-blade. Those cuts didn’t stop bleeding. He threw the blade away and grabbed one of the prepped Medjel packets.
He smoothly applied it directly to her heart as her chest cavity had already, at that moment, started to fill up with blood. The bleeding appeared to have stopped for the moment but he was sure that closing up the cut with all that blood floating where it was previously not would be a Bad Idea. He pinned the chest flap open with his hand and turned her on her side to drain. When he flipped her onto the back again he saw that the heart had stopped beating.
His mind whirled and calculated. No, impossible. He had said that she would not die so she would not die. That made sense.
He wrapped his left hand around her heart and then clumsily picked up the Zappa with his two-fingered hand and shook.
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He sat back, wiping the sweat from his forehead as her heart started up again. The room was growing warmer now. He was stopped from closing her up again by her heart failing just a dozen seconds after the first shocks. Then he was stopped by a new high-speed grinding sound coming from the door behind him. As he looked back at her he debated whether to close the flap or not.
On one hand, he knew that he was going to have to shock her alive again. On the other, he did not think that it was the best idea to leave the chest flap open with how filthy they and their surroundings were. He settled on Medjel-gluing it together along a few points spread out on the edges of his cut.
He easily picked her up and carried her to the back of the room; she was lighter than she looked. He carefully, if not gently, set her down.
Looking back at the room and the dead crabs he picked up his new, but post-surgery crab-blade, and cut off another one that he added into his belt loop. He took another moment, for himself and gazed proudly at the crabs in appreciation for his hurried, yet still tasteful, crab totem, the second in his series. Next to it was the other dead one and assorted crab limbs strewn near the doorway, he sighed and took out the Magno-Tube to drain them. To his surprise and satisfaction it filled up the first tube and half filled the next one. He was glad he had moved her before doing this, he would not have waded through the slop to pick her up. On the walk back he noticed that the Magno-Tube was also draining a thin stream of silver from her chest. In a fit of curiosity, he slowly closed the top as he discovered her heart had stopped beating once again. Sighing softly in disappointment he worked her open with his blade and shocked her alive. Again.
He reacquired his mini-duffel and stored the mostly empty packets of Medjel and a, thankfully, half-full packet of it. He placed his weapon against the wall and got his shield up and running with a smooth machinelike shake. Standing in front of a half-dead woman and a buzzing shriek cutting through the door behind him, he pressed his left hand down on the pad then picked up and readied his weapon.
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There was not much behind the door beside a small loading bay. The loading bay and about a hundred egg-shaped milky spheres stacked haphazardly over and between each other from the floor to the ceiling. So maybe not nothing. Pallet carts were strewn around with strange, knee-high metal and glass tubes sitting dusty and unused in disturbed piles. To the side was a small attached room that had what appeared to be a [Non-Standard] Terminal. Unable to find an appropriate slot to insert his Terminal disk he pressed it to the top of the screen. The only response he got from bringing it in contact with the machine was a surprisingly warm electrical current that quickly warped up his hand and a screen that was currently fizzling and smoking out of the now cracked screen. So not all terminals were Terminals.
He debated taking his time to apply his art to the eggs in the room but his final thought about that was, needs must and I need some answers.
He readied himself again and after walking to each of the doors on the walls he noticed that the disk was, nearly imperceptibly, vibrating more towards the door at the back of the room. He would have missed it but for the comfortable warmth drawing a stream of his attention. Ignoring the doors to his left and right, he decided to follow the nearly unnoticeable buzz and head deeper. He needed to find somewhere with a Terminal, not another room like this. He looked around. And something that ideally wasn’t some sort of baby crab storage.
He wanted to get stronger and unless he got her to a Terminal and the Local AI did some magic it wasn’t going to be him that would keep grabbing her heart and shocking her alive every couple of minutes. That just wasn’t something he cared to keep doing.
He dragged her close to the next door, cut her open, shocked her alive, Again, and resealed the wound shut, Again. He sighed in exaggerated exasperation as he looked at the mess of her chest. One breast was definitely going to be a different size than the other. More annoying than that reminder; after about 30 seconds the Medjel would get too hard to easily cut through and he was running out of skin to keep cutting around the Medjel and then reattach the entire thing closed.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to plant the Zappa inside of her chest permanently. If he didn’t need it for his shield he already would have. He might still have to.
He found a perfectly sized opening next to the handpad and inserted the Terminal disk. The hand pad flashed green and the next room was different. Much different, he thought in a small fit of eagerness.