Hi! Love your blog. I have a character (character a) who gets shot (a lot) on a roof, then is rescued by character b who has to get them off that roof before a bomb hits. (I'm thinking BASE jump or some sort of zip line? Maybe a helicopter if need be) Uh character b is/was a doctor. How likely is A to survive transit off the roof and what does B need to do to keep them breathing? (I can get them to an ambulance and state of the art care really quick) they have 2ish minutes before the bomb hits
Why do I think this a certain Sameen Shaw rescuing John Reese at the end of the last episode of Person of Interest?
So here’s the thing. This? This is survivable.
I count two bullet wounds: right deltoid and right lower abdomen. Yes, this is more than enough to fell a skilled fighter like John.
This? This is not survivable.
(screencaps courtesy of screencaped.net).
That’s +- 90 high-powered assault rifle rounds fired at close range against a stationary target. Even assuming a miss rate of 50%, that’s 45 high-caliber bullets. That’s not survivable.
So I’m going to base this ask on somewhere in the middle.
The big thing is going to be stopping the bleeding. Tourniquets will stop extremity bleeds, wound packing will stop torso bleeds, but the biggest thing is that the wounded character (definitely John Reese) is going to need blood products and a trauma surgeon, and he’s going to need them immediately.
Wound packing is basically taking gauze and stuffing it into a wound until it’s full, then stuffing in more gauze. The idea is that the packing puts pressure on the bleeding.
Honestly, if we’re going high-tech, REBOA is going to give the best odds of survival. REBOA is short for Resusctitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta. Basically, the doc would put an arterial line into the groin of the rescued character, dilate it with a dilator, then thread a balloon catheter into the wound, get it up into the aorta, and inflate it between the last branch of the brachial artery and the first branch of the renal arteries.
The idea looks like this, but higher up, ie, above the renal arteries:
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27868418
There’s even precedent for this being done in the field; London HEMS did a REBOA in the godsdamned fucking street because they are badass motherfuckers and their motto should be Life From Above.
The other option is simply cutting open his chest and putting a pair of clamps on the aorta in the desired place. Both procedures are desperate, both require sterility, and both are extremely dangerous, but they’re the only way he’ll live.
The point is that to stop bleeding, simply pinch off the aorta as long as you can. Keep blood going up to the brain, but keep it from going down to the abdomen (where it will just bleed out.)
Sameen is exactly the person to do this: she’s action-minded, and very very good at not letting her feelings get in the way of doing what has to be done. It takes dedication to cut your friends open.
Look, the honest answer to this is actually a movie title...
It’s very very very very very unrealistic for John not to die at the end of this scene even if he don’t get blowed up. (And he deserves his heroic ending -- he’s earned it.) But if you absolutely must save him, this is how.
I’d like to un-thank you for making me relive the tragic ending of one of the shows I’ve held most closely to my heart for this ask.
I have one more thought on this situation:
Let me tell you who we were...
xoxo, Aunt Scripty
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