Si Vis Pacem Page 24

  “What about Martyn?”

  “He’s going to be everywhere doing everything. We’re way over our heads.”

  “And the Fed medics?”

  “They’re on a break. They’ve just finished a long shift and the move exhausted them.” He blinks a few times. “They’re also assholes, I think. The Patrolmen became Martyn’s responsibility as soon as they stepped into our building, and those two just fucked off to take a nap. Anyway. Yes, you can help us, and yes, we’ll need you, but if it gets too much just back the fuck down and get out of our way, OK? We do not have the luxury to fuck this up. If you can’t deal, tell your supervisor and go home. Nobody will judge you for that.”

  Dee nudges me on my way. I find Nate and we start off undoing the straps holding the Patrolmen to their stretchers. There are a whole bunch of them, tying the Patrolmen down so that they are fully immobilized. I don’t understand why until I remember how landing here felt, all those weeks ago. Forcing unconscious, injured bodies through those g-force changes without securing them would be a bad idea, though, judging by how much some of their bandages have leaked, it might have been a bad idea anyway. I try not to look at that, though: I’m finding it creepy enough to handle those limp, unresponsive bodies without looking too closely at their injuries. All and still, I think Rody was making a big fuss over nothing. This is what we’ve been training for. Of course we can deal.

  Nate and I haven’t gone through half our patients when the first one starts coming around. His wail startles me so much that I nearly piss myself: it’s a noise of naked, uncomprehending animal pain that affects my body without my brain getting a say in the matter. Nate rushes towards it and I follow him, but Martyn beats us both.

  “You’re fine. You’re safe. Your transport anesthesia is wearing off. Give me a moment to check your vitals and your painkillers will cut in.”

  I don’t know how Martyn manages to keep so calm, to keep his voice so level. The Patrolman doesn’t seem to be able to understand him: he thrashes around in pain or panic. Nate tries to hold him still without touching any of his injuries, but that doesn’t give him many safe areas to touch. Martyn carries on working as if nothing was the matter, his hands steady and precise. As soon as he sets the monitor to work the Patrolman calms down suddenly, though he looks just as confused.

  The next wail seems to come with an echo. Two of the guys came around at almost the same time, one on our side and one on Rody’s. Martyn deals with ours before rushing off to deal with the other one, but by that point the wailing has turned into a chorus. Ben Two and Nate start rushing from stretcher to stretcher, trying to assist everybody at the same time. I do what I can to help them, but we just can’t manage. The three of us are covering four rooms, none of us can authorize painkillers, and some of the Patrolmen can’t be talked down. Some respond to touch, but they get agitated again as soon as leave them. Martyn is doing all he can, but it all seems to take way too long and allow way too much pain.

  When the last Patrolman has been dealt with, we huddle in the hallway. It’s all gone quiet again, but it’s not the same dead quiet as before; it’s a fragile, impermanent silence, interspersed with low moans and harsh whispers.

  I take a look at the lot of us, and wish I hadn’t. Martyn looks worn out already. The Bens look like they’re barely holding themselves together. Nate just looks like Nate, because his face defaults to that little frown when he’s not doing anything with it, but I know him enough to be able to tell that he’s really cut up about this. Rody is exuding a fury that threatens to consume us all. Dee is standing tall and straight, her features impassive, but she is weeping. I want to hug her but I can’t while we’re in public, and anyway I don’t trust myself not to fall apart if I do.

  Martyn nods at us – that, or he starts to fall over and catches himself. “Alright. This is how it’s going to be. I can’t take more than 12 hours of this without fucking up and killing somebody. Those two assholes…” he catches himself. “Sorry. The two Fed medics are contracted for eight hour shifts. That means I can overlap their shifts by two hours and make sure we’re all on the same page. You two,” he points at Rody and Nate, “you’ll have to take a shift each with one of them. I don’t care which you pick, and I’m not sure that it’ll make any difference to you as they’re both… Never mind. Just let me know what you decide. If anything starts to go awry, you come get me. Bens, you’re with me. If you can’t hack twelve hours, which I don’t expect you to, take eight each and overlap. We’re in for the long haul. We can’t afford to exhaust ourselves.”

  Dee sticks her chin up in the air, still weeping. “What about us?”

  “You go back to your classes. Thank you. You’ve already done plenty.”

  “Maybe so, but there’s still plenty to do.”

  “We’ll manage. If you really want to help, have a word with the kitchens. We’ll need food, drinks, and a shitton of coffee. Every four hours, if they can make it happen.”

  She nods. “They will. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Martyn thanks us again and sends us on our way. We set off walking towards the refectory. I’m not sure why we’re heading that way until I check the time: it’s just coming on for lunchtime. I thought we’d been in the med bay for an age or so, but it was barely a couple of hours.

  Dee’s face is still set, though her tears have dried up. “This is what we’re going to do. We grab a bite, then we go tell the kitchens that the guys will need feeding.”

  “Not a good plan. They’re super busy until lunch is over. We’d be better off picking up six, no, seven lunches, I’d forgotten Martyn, and bringing them over to the med bay. We can talk to the kitchens when we bring the trays back. They’re all nice people, but they’re way more amenable to special requests when they’re not rushing around.”

  “Heh. I forgot you’ve got connections there. I was wondering whether I’d have to ‘path them the right idea to make it all happen.”

  That stops me dead. “Are you serious? You would have done that?”

  She looks down at me and her eyes start streaming again. “I don’t know. As of this morning, I don’t know what I would or wouldn’t do.”

  “I do. You wouldn’t ‘path some poor bastards just to get the guys coffee. Come on. Sort yourself out.”

  She sniffs, collects herself, and puts her arm through mine. We walk down to the refectory as if this was just another day. If we can hold it together, maybe things will just magically snap back to normal.

  We’re trying to balance way too many containers on two trays, when a bunch of dudebros collar us. Apparently the fact that we’re carrying heavy shit and they are standing in our way isn’t of note to them. I’d be disappointed, were this not par for the course.

  The Dudebro-In-Charge – the most articulate of the bunch, though that’s not saying much – grunts at us. “You been down the med bay?”

  I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. “How could it possibly be any of your business?”

  He shrugs, his massive shoulder muscles moving under his shirt like tectonic plates. “You have, though. You weren’t in class and now you’re prolly going back.” He pokes the stack of lunches on my tray.

  “Again, it’s none of your business.”

  “You’ve seen those guys? We’ve seen them get wheeled in. They looked proper fucked. One of them had no legs or something. Is that right?”

  Dee’s intake of breath sucks all the air from the room – that, or the hot lump in my throat is interfering with my breathing. When she speaks, her voice is glacial.

  “Yes. He’s dead now.”

  “Huh. Did you see him, though? Was he all blown up or something?”

  Dee turns around with great care, puts her tray back down on the serving rail, picks up a cup of coffee, takes a slow sip while looking at the dudebro, and throws the rest right in his face. The coffee is still hot enough to make an impact. While the scolded asshole cusses and howls and his little buddies stare at us, desperately trying
to get their two neurons to bang together, Dee turns around, hands the cup over to one of the service staff, and, in her sweetest voice, asks for a refill.

  When she gets that, she carefully arranges it on her tray, picks it all up again, and turns around. The dudebro is still standing there, glowering through reddened, swollen eyelids.

  “You seem to enjoy the thought of people’s suffering. I thought a taste of it might do you good. Ten minutes under cold water and you’ll probably not even scab up. Don’t even think about bothering the guys at the med bay; I’ll do it again, and next time I’ll make sure it’s really hot. Good day.”

  She strides off, straight as a queen, even though her tray is as heavy as mine and I’m struggling to hold mine up. I follow her out of the refectory, so proud of her I think I might explode.

  The guys work so much for the next couple of days that we hardly see them. The shift pattern Martyn came up with would work if there simply wasn’t too much to do. They are all doing their shifts and then staying on until they collapse – well, our guys are. The Fed medics do their eight hours and fuck off back to their quarters. I took an instant dislike to them when we were introduced, which is hardly unusual for me, but Dee detests them and the guys struggle to find anything good to say about them. Not that they say much anyway: they work, eat, pass out, then wake up and do it all over again.

  Dee and I are in charge of managing the food, the passing out, and the waking up. The latter is the hardest task: every time I have to shake Nate awake – nothing less works anymore – I feel worse about it. I’m starting to really question their approach to this problem. It’s all very well and good that they are so dedicated, but if they let themselves burn out they’ll be of no use to anyone. Preventing that is our job. I just wish they’d let us do it.

  The Bens fall under our care on day two. Their rooms are at the far end of the compound and a complete pain to get to from the med bay, particularly at night, when the outside doors are locked. Even during the day, the distance is too much for them. After we find them asleep in our seats, all bent out of shape because they’re simply too tall to fit, we convince them to use our bunks. Dee and I only need them at night, anyway, while they are out working with Martyn.

  The service staff are being utterly marvelous. As well as conjuring up filling but easy-to-eat meals at all times of day and night, they’re doing all they can to ensure that the med bay area is kept spotless and the patients disturbed as little as possible. Our room is turning into a disaster area, but they can’t do anything about that: there isn’t a time of day when someone is not passed out in there.

  Dee and I are doing our best to keep up with classes, but it’s getting harder and harder to take them seriously. Our people need us, and that trumps all other considerations. It’s also hard to take seriously all the pretentious twittering about a Patrolman’s duties when we’ve seen a score of them all mangled up, some permanently so, and watched one being wheeled out as biomass. If we needed a reminder of what we’re here to do, and why we don’t want to do it, that was it.

  Eight days into it, things start to calm down. Most Patrolmen have had all the procedures they need. Now all that’s left is for them to heal and recover. The guys start to cut down their shifts to a more manageable level and regain their ability to carry out human interactions. For the Bens that mostly means getting drunk together. For Rody, hugging Dee. I can’t blame him for that: nothing is more comforting than Dee’s hugs.

  Nate is the only one I’m worried about. He’s with us in body only. He will speak when spoken to, but it’s obvious that he’s doing it for us. He is still lost to us or to himself, cut adrift and unable to find his way back. Every time he catches me looking at him, he tries to smile at me, or for me, but the smile never reaches his eyes. Seeing him like this fills me with rage: someone like him should not get hurt.

  He’s better when we’re on our own. He talks a little bit then; his eyes will fix on a distant point and words will just spill from his mouth, as if he’d run out of the energy it takes him to keep them inside. He tells me about the Patrolman still on probation whose arm they couldn’t save. About the Patrolmen who are less concerned about their own health than about the fate of the rest of their squad, which is most of them. About how some of them should have come here way sooner, because the emergency care they got was appalling, and some of them shouldn’t have come here at all, because the g-force changes didn’t do them any good. Sometimes those people are the same people, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that what he wishes had happened is a physical impossibility. Most of the time, he just doesn’t say anything; he sits and stares at nothing.

  There is still no official news, no explanation of what the fuck went on and why, no Fed statement detailing the nature of the conflict and its current status. The only official com was a two-liner about how officers of the Patrol responded to a minor incident on Pollux. Given how that is clearly bullshit, all we can guess is that the Fed aren’t keen on advertising their actions. If the Patrolmen are talking about what happened, they are not doing it when our guys can hear.

  We’re starting to get used to the idea that we may never quite know what happened when Martyn gets news: twenty more Patrolmen are going to be arriving. No extra medics will be supplied. The guys are so tired and so jaded that they don’t even bother getting angry about that. They also don’t bother arguing against Dee and I coming to work with them: there is no way in hell they can cope with twice the number of patients. We make space for them by clearing a few more rooms and cramming some of the Patrolmen together, and we brace for impact.

  I thought that we were prepared for the new arrivals, that what we’ve already seen and done would have made this rerun easier, but I was wrong. It’s hard to believe, but they are even more fucked up than the first batch. It makes sense, really: these are the guys whose injuries were deemed too serious for them to withstand a landing until now.

  It’s a repeat of the horror of two weeks ago, and worse. I’d be shitting myself at the mere thought of being allowed near people this injured if I had the time for that, but I don’t: we’re way too rushed to think about anything but the work in front of us. However much we do, however fast we work, we always seem to come short, to always be neglecting something or someone. I don’t know what the fuck to do, so I just do whatever Martyn or Nate tell me. It’s easier, in a way: nothing I’m doing is anything I want to think about. Blindly following orders blunts everything just enough to stop me from running off.

  As the day wears on, I become less and less able to think. Everything becomes a blur: the grinding tiredness, the faces distorted by pain or despair, and the endless screaming. All I can think, on repeat, is that everything is fucked. It’s far from inaccurate, but also far from helpful. My brain just won’t stop repeating it, though.

  I only realize that we’re nearly done when Martyn comes to grab me.

  “One last push. You’ve done great. We just need to settle everyone for the night. Nothing medical, so I sent the boys home.”

  I look around, realize that it’s been a while since I’ve seen Nate, and I’m furious at him for fucking off and leaving me here. Then I remember how worn out he’s been lately. I can’t even imagine how exhausted he must feel right now.

  Martyn grabs my shoulders and talks right into my face. I guess he’s been speaking all along while I was spacing out.

  “All you’ve got to do is a quick walk through, if you can. It shouldn’t take long. Ask everyone if they need anything – drinks or toilet, mostly. Most of them are zonked out on painkillers, so you shouldn’t get many takers. Any problems, call me. I’ve got a cot in my office. The Bens are grabbing a quick nap, but will be back in a couple of hours. It’s just a case of filling this gap. Can you do that?”

  I try to nod, but the movement makes me nauseous. “Yes. Dee?”

  “She’s doing her side. You’re damn good kids.”

  He stumbles off towards his office and I start to walk thr
ough the rooms. Martyn wasn’t wrong: most of the Patrolmen are asleep, and the rest aren’t terribly communicative. A few have a drink or a piss. I lost the ability to feel embarrassed about all that at some point during the day. I don’t even have the energy to feel embarrassed on their behalf. That’s not a problem, because most of them seem past caring.

  I stagger out of the last room and see my own room only a short walk away. My bunk is there, probably with a Ben in it. I would be happy enough to share with him or take the sofa. Anything would do as long as I could lie down, close my eyes, and let my brain switch off. I’m fairly sure I could make it all the way there. If not, it wouldn’t really matter: the hallway floor looks comfortable enough.

  I’m just trying to summon the energy to find somewhere I can prop myself up until the Bens relieve me, when someone barges into me and sends me flying into the wall. That wakes me up alright. When I turn around to find out what the fuck is going on, I see Dee standing in the middle of the hallway, swaying slightly. She looks horrified.

  “It’s OK, Dee. I’m fine. No harm done.”

  “I’m not going back in there!”

  “What?”

  She points at the door behind her. “That guy. I’m not going near him!”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Someone else can take him. I won’t!”

  She storms off down the hallway, goes straight into our room, and slams the door behind her. This is not like her, not like her at all. I hope she didn’t wake the guys up. I also hope she’ll come back, because right now I’m in charge of the whole show, and I know I can’t manage. I know we’re all a bit overwrought at the moment, but whatever is in that room has got to be something else if Dee can’t handle it, and seriously fuck-awful for her not to realize that she’s just dumped it all on me.