#injuryaskmeme

[starman-john-tracy]

"Don't take the knife out!"

From this ask meme  

“Geezus.” John breathes, the sound thin and rattly as he presses his fingers down hard around the wet, squelching blade that’s embedded in his side, just above his lift hip. There’s a short, awful choking noise completed with a bitten off whine from the astronaut, as the action makes yet more blood bubble up from the stab wound, John curling into himself despite the knowledge that it’d be best to lie flat.

It feels like every nerve ending in his body has decided to flush with white, searing heat. Vaguely, he realises that he’s shaking, and that’s not exactly helping to keep the pressure on.

“I…oh wow,” He manages, faintly. The horror he feels seems external: disconnected. Like it’s a rescue only it’s not. “T-that’s a lot of blood.” It’s seeping out into his shirt, saturating the grey fabric with a dark, wine red. Ruined.

It’s with an almost scientific curiosity that John nudges the blade ever so slightly with his thumb, and he’s rewarded by a gritty groan that’s forced out from between his teeth as he concludes that that was a terrible idea. The knife is pretty well lodged in there. He’s done more than enough Field Training to know that if you remove such things before getting to a hospital, the casualty could bleed out.

Bleeding out sounds like a bad idea, but John’s rapidly losing cognitive track of what’s a good idea, so he’s not sure why that is. It feels like his braincells are leaking out of him along with most of his blood.

He needs that, right?

His head is buzzing; something sharp and fizzling, like a lit firework, flares in the back of his skull, making dark spots flash across his rapidly blurring vision. John coughs, his chest hitching, side burning. His mouth tastes hot and coppery and this world is rapidly narrowing to the veins of agony that are crawling through his side and chest and hip, radiating out from the knife wound.

“I-If I can’t take it out.” John manages, bleary and gasping, “What do I do?”

[starman-john-tracy]

**“You’re going to be fine. I promise.”

From this ask meme

“Star.” John gasps, the sound wet in his abused lungs. “I... ouch.” There's a thick layer of upper-atmosphere frost clinging to his skin and spacesuit and lashes, frostbite darkening painful purple marks high on his cheekbones and across the top of his nose. His eyes are half-lidded, his expression a little too vacant, curled into himself as he is with his head resting loosely against the side of the airlock. 

It almost serves him right for climbing outside the Space Elevator at just over one hundred kilometres above sea level. Just over the Kármán line - the edge of space itself. It might have been to grab a inexperienced, falling Balloonist, but John had done so without a helmet on - no time to grab one in the urgency of the plummet. Sending John over his brothers had been decided on as the fastest, only option that guaranteed getting to the falling man in time, but it had also proved to be incredibly risky.

Weak, grapply fingers search for some kind of purchase on the airlock door, like he might be able to get himself somehow upright like this.

“Where’s David?” The astronaut asks, raspy, his ridiculous priorities, as always, focused on the man he’d rescued over himself. “Is he... alright?”

He’s in a lot better way than John himself is, to be sure.

He’d, at least, had an emergency helmet.

[starman-john-tracy]

“You have blood on your face.”

From this ask meme

“I... what?” John’s blue-clad fingers reach for his top lip, where a slow trickle of red is making it’s way down his philtrum from his nose, running coppery over his lips. That’s what he can taste, he realize suddenly. He blinks, the action sluggish and unfocused. It feels like someone’s stuffed his head with cotton wool. “Oh...”

His own fluttery hands dance, confused, about his face, before instinctively John manages to clap one to his face; only to smear the sticky liquid unhelpfully across his chin. Harried, fumbly (why are they so fumbly) hands try to reposition themselves, trying to get a good pinch on the cartilage, even as worry about what’s causing this picks up on his vitals. Eos says something somewhere above him, evidently noticing up the spike, but there’s no cognitive processing happening in John’s head for him to be able to make out the words.

He feels his heart rate double in his chest as he sways upright, alarmed. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with the human body in space and John’s blurred eyes widen as he realizes that something’s definitely not right.

Trying to keep a hand on the bleed and struggling to get his eyes to focus, John, more than a little panicked, reaches for the line to Tracy Island.

It’s lucky holograms can’t get blood smeared on them.

[starman-john-tracy]

"There's no exit wound, the bullet is still in you"

From this ask meme  

“O-Oh...” John’s face is a horrible grey shade of pale. He’s got one hand clamped tight over the perfectly round hole in his leg, blood welling up between his fingers and coating them with hot, slick red, all slippery and gross. His leg feels like it’s burning. Like someone just took a red-hot poker and jammed it straight through his thigh: only, not straight though, John reminds himself blearily, because there’s no exit wound. Trying to suck more air into his panicking lungs, John turns his wrist so that he can apply a little more pressure and there’s an awful squelching sound, accompanied by a low keen that’s been building in the back of his throat, and John’s world whites out into nothing but crackling, popping-candy static and jumbled white noise.

It feels like passing out, but as things start to fade back in, he discovers that he’s still slumped where he had been, gasping for breath, and that he hasn’t dropped the pressure.

“O-Ok...” John manages, shaky and more than a little horrified by the sheer quantity of red that his jeans have absorbed, turning the thigh area an awful, rusty purplish colour. There’s starting to be what looks like more blood outside his body than in, and the sudden, rapid pounding of his heart not helping stem the flow. “Bullet stuck in m-my leg.” The astronaut gasps, trying to ignore his welling dread in favour of being practical, though he’s finding it hard when it feels like all his nerve endings have been lit on fire. “What can I do a-about that?” It’s still oozing out, all hot and squelchy around John’s trembling fingers, all gross and smeary and John kind of wishes that he would hurry up and pass out because this has to be one of the top ten worst days of his life.

[starman-john-tracy]

“How does it feel?”

From this ask meme

“...Achy.” John admits, the reluctance heavy is his voice as he rolls his shoulder backward, as if scientifically testing his own hypothesis of how much pain he’s in. It’s not a very good test, restricted as the limb is by the sling that Virgil had insisted he wear, and John winces, evidently discovering there’s more pain than he’d previously anticipated from the action. “Ack.” His astronaut son grits his teeth, ever eloquent, John’s other hand coming up to grip where his elbow is fractured, the brace under his fingers heavy and clunky through the soft weave of the sling. “It’s fine.” John still tries to insist, even though his eyes look suspiciously watery “Virg said it would take a few, ow, hours for the meds to properly kick in.”