how to save a life / self para
Rhea stepped in, careful with her every step, as if the floor were some sort of lava. Looking up at the Gamemakers made for a vertiginous sight, but she smiled through the anxiety, trying to focus on whatever little plan she had sketched for herself. This wasn’t going to be a Ten, but she had to make sure it wasn’t about to be a One either. Without the slightest clue on what they were expecting, she stepped ahead.
“Do you have any dummies that the other tributes--?” she inquired, basing her plan on other people having hurt a ton of the props. But a lot of people haven’t gone in, only Avenue. The Gamemakers didn’t even shake their heads. Rhea’s cheeks faltered, but she understood. She nodded, and then looked back at the trainer assisting. They shrugged, a wordless apology.
And so Rhea went on and grabbed, against her will, a knife -- the least dangerous thing she could be wielding out of the weapons. She never did plan to get to weapons, but now that the original plan was jeopardized, she had to do something, anything. The knife shuddered in her hands, but it wasn’t too heavy, and the chances of herself getting hurt were minimal. Then, she went to the dummy corner, where they were placed on pillars, and trailed her free hand over one’s abdomen. As if having forgotten, she placed the knife down and hugged the doll from behind. It was thicker and weightier than expected. She didn’t even flinch, though.
With her fingers pointing to different spots on her abdomen, she started explaining. “You stab it here, and here, and here, and he’s almost dead. Exactly here, he loses so much blood it’s practically unsavable. Obviously the heart is deadly, but not the lungs. Not the stomach right away.”
But this was all talk. She let go of the dummy and knew she’d gotten to the part she dreaded, the part she didn’t think she’d get to. “Are you sure you have no already holed dummies? From... training, at least?” Looking over her shoulder, she could catch the trainer firmly shaking their head. “That’s a shame. I would have cost you way less money.” As if money were the issue.
By this point, she was stalling, and she did not want to be. So she took the knife back into her hands, and she pushed it, staple-like the way she’d seen doctors, into the dummy’s chest, slashing a diagonal line that was barely avoiding the rib cage. The sight of blood stunned her -- she didn’t expect there to be blood. But, luckily, she was not afraid of blood of all things. Even on her hands, she could keep her focus. The dummy fell flat on the floor.
Rhea stabbed and inflicted strategic wounds to the rest of the still dolls -- four of them were bleeding by the end of it. A cut throat, the chest slash, a long cut spread down the leg and the knife, now resting into one specific spot of a dummy’s back, lying on its face. Then, she rushed to the medical area of the training room, and quickly grabbed all she could in terms of supplies. Barely able to carry the improvised kit, she dumped them on the floor and knelt by the cut throat. The cut wasn’t so deep -- and for that, she only had her hesitance to blame -- but red was still spreading all over.
Rhea applied pressure to the wound, patting it with a sterile cloth and holding it over for a few seconds at a time before slightly changing the position. After doing this a couple of times, enough for the cloth to be soaked in blood properly, she just held it over the wound, pressing slightly, to stop the hemorrhage. “This is where I’d have injected ranitidine 50mg, metoclopramide 10 mg and, dexamethasone 6mg, but that’s probably not available in the Games,” she said and smiled a little, not particularly looking at any Gamemaker rather than at their shadows from above in perspective.
Then, she passed by each of the other dummies and patiently tried to patch them up, in the order of the severity of the injury. One she stitched up. One she tied a couple of rubber gloves together, then tying them around the dummy’s leg in order to stop the bleeding for the moment being. The last one, with her knife in its back, she was graceful as she removed the knife and then immediately covered the wound and held a chunk of gauze against it with precision.
“And this would have to go on for about eight to fifteen minutes for the bleeding to even consider stopping, but I believe my time is over,” she spoke and smiled away. “I think this would have been cooler if I could have treated injuries inflicted by the other tributes, but I suppose that comes next.” Rhea smiled a little, even though it wasn’t funny, and the thought of that did leave her hollow, which she kept to herself. She executed a small bow and then left, knowing this wasn’t impressive, but it was what she was good at, and she was proud of it.
