Arrival - The Reality Breakdown [OTA]
After the staging area was cleared and the triage tent erected, it was decided that those hands that were better suited to plasma scalpels and dermal regenerators could be used for clearing rubble to look for survivors. It wasn’t what they were trained to do, wasn’t what they were there for, but none complained, cutting their hands on debris, bleeding on the scorched earth with dust and smoke clogging their lungs and coating their skin.
‘A trial by fire, a lesson in misery.‘
He’s not sure what possessed him to stray from the main search grid - be it whim or perhaps there was something that caught his attention on the subconscious level - but Leonard did stray, around a shelled building of some kind still smoldering and puffing thick smoke. Behind what was left of the building was something from a nightmare.
Twelve little bodies littered the ground outside a blackened hovel. A white fence, broken and peeling, marked off what looked to be a small play area with melted toys and twisted metal shapes just to the left. There was a large body just inside the crumbling doorway. He could see the bones of an intact foot and the charred flesh of another from where he stood; the stark white against black was chilling.
Leonard was a doctor, though, and had been trained to desensitize himself to the trauma suffered to the human body in order to treat the patient and to move on to the next when it was clear there was no life left in which to save. But he was also human and far more sensitive than people seemed to believe him capable of. He might be damn good at his job, one helluva doctor, but he was still a man, and every man had his limits.
He moved sluggishly forward, unable to stop his feet from carrying him over the ash covered ground, towards the first body. It looked to be of a boy but only because the body was wearing long shorts - The head was missing. Troubled eyes cast about but there was no sign of the skull. He moved on to the next and continued moving, cataloging injuries and gender as he could until he was at the last.
This body was of a little girl with polished sandals on her little feet and a basket clutched in her tiny hands. It was so strange to see a body so intact where all the others missed more than one distinguishing feature but here she lay there in her dirty white gown and horrific halo of blood and bone; a perfect little angle without a face.
He closed his eyes against the sight and opened his mouth to howl in outrage, in terror, in anguish but nothing came out but a ragged croak. He didn't open his eyes against until he was on the ground, his legs having given out, landing him on his ass in the dirt and ash and debris both human and otherwise.
It was no mercy that his mind continued to function whereas his body refused because he knew, with clarity, that he was going into shock and that he'd not called in his location to the other searchers. He would be forced to sit here until either someone found him - that could be hours from now given the devastation - or when his body jump-started itself and allowed him to move. But until then he would be left to stare at body of the little girl...
Leonard shut his eyes tight when the child's blond hair started to morph into familiar brown and started reciting passages from medical texts he'd long ago memorized, diseases and their cures, quotes from favorite books, anything to keep his mind occupied and far, far away from a little girl with pigtails in a white gown laying dead on the ground in front of him.
Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to months; time stretching and became indistinguishable. A heavy nothingness settled on his shoulders and clouded about his head, muddling his thoughts and drowned out his thoughts. It was like he had been plucked from reality and settled into a gigantic void where nothing, not even sound, permeated.
But that couldn't be right because there was a soft sound whispering in his ears. Leonard's brows drew close in his confusion as he tried to decipher what it was. It rose slowly and broke suddenly - a shushing sound. Like waves crashing over sand then sweeping the remains back out to sea.
Now that he identified the sound he noticed that he was warm too and that when he breathed, and breath deep he did, there wasn't a hint of acidic smoke or stale blood coating the air, just warmth and salt. It startled him so badly that his eyes snapped open of their own accord and all he saw was blue-green ocean and sand along the shore.
It was then that Leonard believed he'd finally cracked and started laughing into the breeze.
‘A trial by fire, a lesson in misery.‘
He’s not sure what possessed him to stray from the main search grid - be it whim or perhaps there was something that caught his attention on the subconscious level - but Leonard did stray, around a shelled building of some kind still smoldering and puffing thick smoke. Behind what was left of the building was something from a nightmare.
Twelve little bodies littered the ground outside a blackened hovel. A white fence, broken and peeling, marked off what looked to be a small play area with melted toys and twisted metal shapes just to the left. There was a large body just inside the crumbling doorway. He could see the bones of an intact foot and the charred flesh of another from where he stood; the stark white against black was chilling.
Leonard was a doctor, though, and had been trained to desensitize himself to the trauma suffered to the human body in order to treat the patient and to move on to the next when it was clear there was no life left in which to save. But he was also human and far more sensitive than people seemed to believe him capable of. He might be damn good at his job, one helluva doctor, but he was still a man, and every man had his limits.
He moved sluggishly forward, unable to stop his feet from carrying him over the ash covered ground, towards the first body. It looked to be of a boy but only because the body was wearing long shorts - The head was missing. Troubled eyes cast about but there was no sign of the skull. He moved on to the next and continued moving, cataloging injuries and gender as he could until he was at the last.
This body was of a little girl with polished sandals on her little feet and a basket clutched in her tiny hands. It was so strange to see a body so intact where all the others missed more than one distinguishing feature but here she lay there in her dirty white gown and horrific halo of blood and bone; a perfect little angle without a face.
He closed his eyes against the sight and opened his mouth to howl in outrage, in terror, in anguish but nothing came out but a ragged croak. He didn't open his eyes against until he was on the ground, his legs having given out, landing him on his ass in the dirt and ash and debris both human and otherwise.
It was no mercy that his mind continued to function whereas his body refused because he knew, with clarity, that he was going into shock and that he'd not called in his location to the other searchers. He would be forced to sit here until either someone found him - that could be hours from now given the devastation - or when his body jump-started itself and allowed him to move. But until then he would be left to stare at body of the little girl...
Leonard shut his eyes tight when the child's blond hair started to morph into familiar brown and started reciting passages from medical texts he'd long ago memorized, diseases and their cures, quotes from favorite books, anything to keep his mind occupied and far, far away from a little girl with pigtails in a white gown laying dead on the ground in front of him.
Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to months; time stretching and became indistinguishable. A heavy nothingness settled on his shoulders and clouded about his head, muddling his thoughts and drowned out his thoughts. It was like he had been plucked from reality and settled into a gigantic void where nothing, not even sound, permeated.
But that couldn't be right because there was a soft sound whispering in his ears. Leonard's brows drew close in his confusion as he tried to decipher what it was. It rose slowly and broke suddenly - a shushing sound. Like waves crashing over sand then sweeping the remains back out to sea.
Now that he identified the sound he noticed that he was warm too and that when he breathed, and breath deep he did, there wasn't a hint of acidic smoke or stale blood coating the air, just warmth and salt. It startled him so badly that his eyes snapped open of their own accord and all he saw was blue-green ocean and sand along the shore.
It was then that Leonard believed he'd finally cracked and started laughing into the breeze.