“Are you sure?” Melly asked. “You can hang back with Mike if you’d rather. This is a mass casualty incident, battlefield trauma and who knows what else. It’s going to be ugly chaos.”
“I intend to pull my weight as a team member and you need all the help you can get,” Tamsyn said, determination in her voice and stance.
“She goes then,” Jeff said. He motioned curtly to Cody and Zach, who followed him from the APC, leaving Trent behind as a guard.
The trio returned in five minutes, grim faced. “The ER is clear of infected and people are milling around, waiting for the injured to arrive,” Jeff reported. “I’m leaving Zach here as your guard. Watching your six is his only job. He doesn’t help with wounded. He’s here to keep you safe. Got it?”
Melly pulled him closer and kissed him quickly on the lips. “Got it. Thank you.”
* * *
Tamsyn followed Melly and Zach into the ER and stared at the scene. People thronged the place. As yet she saw no wounded but guessed they’d be coming in soon, probably in a rush. The area was well lit so the town must have prioritized this facility when it came to rationing the power they were able to generate.
“If I can have your attention, please,” Jeff said in a voice that carried easily to all corners of the room. Slowly people shushed and turned to face their little group in the doorway. “This is Dr. Melisande Jericho, from the Sectors. She’s in charge as of now so listen up. We only have a few minutes before the wounded begin arriving.”
Tamsyn observed surprise, hope, resentment and other unidentifiable emotions on the faces of those in the big room.
Melly was very much in her Dr. Jericho mode. Her voice was firm and carried as well as Jeff’s had. She stepped forward, in front of the captain. “I’ve handled mass causality incidents in the past, at several Inner and Mid Sectors hospitals. We can get into the details of my resume later. For now, I need to know what I’ve got to work with here. This is Trent Halfrey, Sectors Special Forces combat medic and Tamsyn Wendover, my assistant. Trent is going to be doing triage on the incoming patients. For those of you unfamiliar with how it works, he’ll color code each person on their forehead as follows: red for immediate intervention needed to save the life. Yellow has serious injuries but can wait. Green are the walking wounded, the ones with nonlife threatening injuries we have to treat but not the priority. Black are those already deceased or for whom nothing we can do here will help. We’re a severely limited resource as you all know. Now, I want you to go around the room and tell me your name and what medical experience you have. I’ll be assigning you to teams and you will please gather in the indicated corner of the room.” She called out the colors quickly, pointing at the respective corners. “Now, who have we got? You can start.” Melly indicated the woman standing closest to her.
People rattled off the requested information and Melly assigned them to sections with no hesitation. The group ranged from a woman who’d been an operating room nurse in this very hospital who Melly immediately put in charge of the floor to a few who’d been volunteers at the hospital, to people with basic first aid training to inexperienced but willing to help.
“Incoming,” Trent called out, as he headed for the ER doors. He took a group of the volunteers with him to serve as transportation and runners.
“Take a deep breath, everyone,” Melly ordered.
A pair of white-faced teenagers brought in the first patient, lying on a litter, a glowing red marker on his forehead. The man was rushed to the red corner of the huge room and Melly and the team went to work on him. Tamsyn positioned herself at the door, directing traffic and trying to anticipate needs. She grabbed one of the women who’d identified herself as a former schoolteacher. “You’re in charge of the waiting room,” she said. “Keep people out of here unless they have relevant experience Dr. Jericho can use. We’ll send you information by runner as we get it. We’re going to need food and synthcaff if you can organize that.”
The woman nodded and headed toward the group of onlookers, which kept increasing as more injured were brought in.
There was no time for doing scans beyond the basic medsensors which Melly and a couple of the more experienced helpers carried. She’d told them to evaluate the patient’s responses, whether to voice or pain, their pulse and breathing and go from there. Melly was in constant motion, easily located by the near constant flickering of her handheld decontam unit as she moved from patient to patient. A few bodies were brought in with the black mark on their foreheads and Tamsyn swallowed hard as she directed those litters to the annex which had been declared the morgue for today.
We need blood, The supply I brought is nearly exhausted already. Melly told her on the subaural com. See what you can do to organize live donors. Florencia tells me there’s a blood lab down the hall with the machine we need.
“Who here has any experience with drawing blood?” Tamsyn asked the people in the green and yellow areas.
Everyone shook their heads until one young woman, hardly more than a kid, raised her hand halfway. “I was a volunteer in the lab for a few months. I uh served the juice and cookies but because I was interested in a medical career after I graduated from school, they showed me how to work the autoextractor. But I don’t know if I can?—”
“What’s your name?”
“Helena, Helena Gallegher.”
Tamsyn grabbed her by the elbow and towed her out of the green area. “That’ll have to do, the doc needs whole blood. Go tell the lady I put in charge of the waiting room to get you two helpers, find the lab and bring the portable extractor back here. Set up in the empty bay there. Let me know when you’re ready and we’ll start running donors through.”
The girl gulped. “I—I guess I can do that.” She ran for the waiting room, barely avoiding a puddle of blood on the floor.
Tamsyn made a mental note to check on Helena if she didn’t get a report in a few minutes but she hoped the girl would come through for them. She grabbed a mop and cleaned the floor before rushing off to do her rounds of the whole place again. It was chaos and probably the worst situation she’d ever been in her entire life. She had a hard time focusing on what needed doing to support Melly and the others in their life saving efforts. Already several patients had been moved into the cubicles. Patched up as much as they could be for now and stabilized.
Two guards dragged in a man with his hands tied behind his back and a yellow mark on his forehead.
“What’s this?” Tamsyn asked, stopping their forward progress.
“One of Ruger’s men. Found him out there in front of the wall, dazed. Your man outside told us he goes to the yellow to be patched up,” the man on the left told her. “Mayor Wyler wants to question him and then later he’ll be put on trial and executed.”
Tamsyn stared at the face of the enemy and gulped. “Not sure what kind of care he’ll get but take him over here and wait.” She led them to an empty wheelchair at the edge of the yellow area and went to tell the man in charge of yellow what the situation was.
Incoming, Trent said from outside to her and Melly. Apparently one of Ruger’s mortar rounds hit inside the cleared area of city and destroyed an apartment house. They’re digging out the survivors now and sending them over. There’s a couple of kids, I’m told.
Can this day get any more awful? Melly responded. Keep me posted. Remember any babies will be red status automatically.
