From Darkness

My heart was racing as I chased after Dana. She was quick on her feet despite being so small. It took me a minute to catch up with her, and she was already on the steps leading to the front door by the time I did.

“What changed?” I asked once she was within earshot.

“He was warm last night before we went to sleep,” she explained as she opened the door. “He told me that he was fine and not to worry. But when I tried to wake him up to eat breakfast, he was very hot. He’s turned all red, and he’s barely making any sense.” She pushed the door open, and I followed her in. Bucky reached out from behind me to hold the door open. I didn’t even realize he was there.

“It’s infected,” I stated. Dana led me into her room.

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m a doctor, remember? I thought you had medical training.” She shook her head and pinched her lips. “No, but I spent a lot of time reading Beata’s books. She taught me a few basic things I might need to know for emergencies. That’s it.”

“Shit.” I pushed past her and went right to Russell’s bedside. His face was red, and he was sweaty. I put my palm to his forehead. “Jesus. Captain Russell? Ivan?” His eyelids parted for a moment before dropping closed again. All that came out was a groan that sounded like, “…van.” He was trying to correct me again.

I quickly moved around to the other side of the bed to yank the curtains open. I tried to lift the window, but it was too heavy for my weakened arms, and I was impatient. So I turned back to Bucky, standing next to Dana, looking like he was prepared to take orders.

“Can you open the window?” I asked. “It’s too hot. We need to bring his temperature down.” He nodded curtly and crossed the room in just a few strides. He got the window open with one good push, and I returned to the bed to pull down the blankets and expose the wound.

The shirt she’d put on him was stuck to his skin. When I lifted it and peeled the bandages, it was swollen, red, and shiny. And oozing more than just blood. I winced and looked over at Dana.

“I need all of the medical supplies you have. And hot water, clean cloths, towels, that kind of thing. Lots of them. Really sharp scissors, if you can find any. Preferably very small. Like sewing scissors. Unless you have medical scissors or a scalpel,” I told her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. I pointed to the exit wound, where she had a better view. It was worse than the front.

“See where the skin looks discolored and gross? I have to cut it out before it spreads to his bloodstream and makes him go into septic shock.” She said something I couldn’t understand but was probably a curse word.

“Won’t that cause him pain?”

“If he’s in pain, then we’re doing a good job. But if you have something that can knock him out and make him see manticores, that’d be even better. We’ll also need something to secure him to the bed.” She hurried out of the room, and Bucky came to my side. Russell groaned as I tried to tuck the blanket beneath his legs.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked. I took a deep breath and looked up at him.

“I need you to be my assistant. I think Dana will be reluctant to do anything that causes him pain. I have to cut into the infected flesh, which means he’ll probably be screaming, and there will be a lot of blood. I don’t know if she’ll be able to stomach it. I’ll need someone to hand me towels and supplies as I ask for them. Do you think—you can handle it?” He looked over at Russell and then back at me. His jaw was tense, but he didn’t say no.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” He smiled and pinched my chin for a moment.

“I’ll do whatever you need.” I nodded again. I was confident he could stay standing and do what I asked, but I didn’t want it to eat at him.

“Right now, I just need light. Lots of it.”

“I remember.” He strode across the room to gather up all the lamps while I went to check Ivan’s heart rate.

“The difference is that I was never worried you’d get an infection when I was digging shrapnel out of your abdomen.” He returned with a lamp and set it on the bedside table. He yanked the shade off to flood the room with unfiltered light. He handed over a watch, apparently understanding what I was doing without explanation. I took a moment to count. His pulse was too rapid.

“What’s the best and worst-case scenario?” Bucky asked. I sighed and jumped back up to go wash my hands in the kitchen sink. He followed after me.

“Worst case is that it’s already too late or I miss something, and he goes into septic shock. The wound was through-and-through, so there’s more damage to the exit. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to get it all out or that it hasn’t already gone internal. It can cause organ failure. There’s no way I’ll be able to dig more than an inch without causing permanent damage. If we start seeing red splotches on his skin, his fever doesn’t improve, or he starts struggling to breathe, then we’ll have no choice but to get him to a hospital or Stark and hope for the best.”

“Red splotches, what does that mean?”

“It means the infection is in his bloodstream, and the only thing that will save him is antibiotics. Which we don’t have. And even then—even if we got him to a hospital—chances are slim.” He took my shoulder and squeezed.

“You can do this,” he assured me. I nodded and went to scrub my hands in the sink. He pulled out a drawer to collect towels.

“Get all of them.” So he emptied the whole drawer and handed one out. I brought it to the bedroom and took a deep breath. “It isn’t a sterile environment, so I’ll need to sterilize the equipment as best I can before I use it. Just to be extra cautious. Alcohol. Fire. Something like that. We won’t have time to boil everything. This could do more harm than good.”

“Would it be best just to call Stark anyway?”

“I have to get as much of that infection out as I can regardless. Or he won’t last long enough for Stark to get him. The best-case scenario is that I get it all out, and he’ll be back on his feet in less than a month. Either way, we’ll want to get our hands on antibiotics. Fast. But it will significantly decrease his immune system’s ability to fight infection. Right now, I’m just trying to buy him time.”

“And what do we do if the best-case scenario doesn’t seem likely?” I took another deep breath and looked over Russell—Ivan’s—red face.

“Then we make sure Stark is on his way, or we get to a hospital, and then we run.”

“Will we have time?”

“I don’t know.” He nodded once.

“Just tell me what I need to do.” I pointed at the towels.

“Soak one in water. We need to get his temperature down.”

“I’m on it.”

He disappeared out of the door, and I got to work stuffing towels beneath Russell—Ivan to collect the inevitable bloodshed. Dana and her mother returned to the room, piled high with the supplies I’d asked for. I pulled one of the nightstands closer, so I’d have everything within reach and examined what she brought me. She set down a brown glass bottle with an eyedropper lid.

“What’s this?”

“All we have for pain is ibuprofen. This is what I gave him when I was trying to close up the wounds,” Dana explained. I shook my head and lifted the bottle to read the old scratchy label. Bucky came back in with the rag while I spun on Dana in disbelief.

“This is laudanum,” I stated. She winced and nodded. “Jesus Christ, are you running a secret opium den we didn’t notice?”

“It’s the best that we have. It’s from when my father was sick. We were too scared to take him to a hospital. A man in town sold it to us.” I swept my hair out of my face and bit my lip.

“Will it work?” Bucky asked as he began securing Russell’s wrists to the headboard.

“It’s an opiate,” I told him. “Which means it’ll suppress his lungs. Which might make it harder for him to breathe. Which he’s already struggling to do. If he goes into septic shock, his blood pressure will drop dramatically. Which will be a lethal combination. But it’s all we’ve got. And it’s no wonder he saw manticores.”

“I thought he was just joking about that,” Dana remarked. I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking now, but I didn’t spend a lot of time studying outdated illegal drugs. I just used to read a lot of historical fiction.

“We just need to make sure he keeps breathing,” I said, measuring a dosage in the dropper. “And it might be best to get rid of it when we’re done. It’s addictive. I won’t be surprised if he asks for more.”

“How much do we give him?” Bucky asked.

“I only gave him a few drops before,” Dana said.

“A few drops should be enough. We can always give him more. But we can’t take any away. We don’t want him to suffocate or be so high that he can’t communicate. I didn’t even know people still made this. It’s illegal in the states, you know?” I paused to take another deep breath. I was not ready for this. “We just have to hope for the best. Keep an eye on how he’s breathing. If it starts going shallow, but his heart is pounding, then we’ll have to get him to a hospital immediately.” I handed the measured dropper to Bucky. “Empty it on the inside of his cheek. Let gravity take care of the rest. I can’t imagine it tastes very good, so he might fight you.”

“I’ll do it. You hold him down,” Dana instructed. So Bucky handed the dropper to her and went to hold Russell’s head still and his mouth open. The old woman stood back, wringing her fingers at her front. The wrinkles around her eyes were creased with worry. I slapped my hands together to try and motivate myself for what I was about to do.

“This isn’t going to be fun or pretty,” I told them. “So weak stomachs need to be left at the door.”

“She said she’s staying just in case we need anything,” Dana told me, standing back up and setting the bottle on a table. I watched Bucky tie Russell’s ankles to the bedposts.

“The front should be easy, but there will be a lot of blood. We’re not going to be able to break once I start.”

“We’ll do what we have to,” Dana assured me.

“I’m going to get started. Brace yourselves.”

I sat down beside Russell and pressed one of the hot cloths against the entry wound. Bucky got his other wrist secured to the post and then got to work on sanitizing the scissors. Once he was done, he went to my back and pulled my hair out of my face, tying it off with his own hair tie while I sanitized my hands again. His fingers brushed against my neck, and I was so grateful to have him there that I didn’t even bother pointing out his exposed metal hand.

“Alright, here goes nothing,” I muttered and reached for the scissors. I made the first cut and glanced at Dana and Russell at the head of the bed. He’d only flinched and groaned, and that’s it.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she remarked.

“That was just the stitches,” I explained. Bucky got my hair tied, and I positioned myself for the next cut. As soon as the sharp metal blades came together in a snip, Russell started screaming.