Tomb Raider: The Awakening

Chapter 4: Triage

It was just a tiny hospital, used for the daily needs of that paradisiacal tourist area and not much more. And it was totally overwhelmed: pandemonium, a real mess. For days, massive groups of wounded and hungry people had arrived, fleeing war and crowded around by the hundreds both inside and out. Some arrived with terrible wounds, infections, mutilations. Frequently rape victims would show or bring an injured child in their arms. Within hours, the capacity of the tiny center supersaturated, the staff couldn't cope with all the work, and food and medicines ran out. Everyone panicked. The hospital staff wanted to call for help, but communications were cut, so they could only rely on the arrival of people from abroad, journalists, soldiers, watchers, but the days passed and nothing happened. Even the Legion had left the island.

On the fourth day they realized it was impossible to treat all the sick and wounded, so they began to separate those worth trying to save and those whose wounds were too serious or required a treatment way over the circumstances. On the left, life. On the right, death.

If only they could give them morphine, at least. But not a single dose was left.

In the middle of that living hell, there was a nurse who went back and forth between the cots or makeshift beds for the incurable and wounded people, trying to get some help with curing from any person able to stand on their feet. She'd managed to recruit some women and elders willing to help, also some children who weren't so terrified they couldn't move. Every pair of hands was essential.

Then, as she walked past an area of ​​newly arrived people, she noticed the soldier carrying a wounded girl. Both were Western, judging by their pale skin.

That caught her attention. There were no soldiers there, everything would've been much better with them. Then she realized he wore a camouflage suit and looked exhausted, but remained calm amid the mass of screaming and whimpering people. He even looked around occasionally, irritated as if this living drama annoyed him more than anything else.

Sure, a military man... but what about the girl? Overcome by curiosity, she approached them.

"What happened to the little girl?"

The aforementioned slightly raised her head and looked at her. She'd brown hair caked with dried blood and a thick patch on the right side of her forehead.

"Little girl?" She protested, glaring at her with beautiful blue eyes. Well, no doubt she was his daughter. "I am fourteen!"

"A blow to the head." Quickly answered the soldier, who, by the way, was really gorgeous. However, he kept looking around. Was he looking for someone?

The nurse gently took off the patch from the girl's wound and raised her eyebrows.

"You know how to stitch wounds far better than many of my colleagues."

"I was hoping you could scan her or something." He said, ignoring the compliment. "But I see this is a mess." He looked around once more. "Any place where she can rest?"

As a rule, she would've sent her to the left side, to life, to the mass of the whimpering with nothing serious enough to not to survive that night. A meager hole in the grass of the esplanade, amid a thousand more of wounded and sick. But she liked that soldier, and so the girl, who suddenly looked very serious while staring at that mass of injured people wriggling around.

"Follow me." She said, and led them into the hospital.

The smell inside was unbearable, even worse than outside. The vision of the floor splattered with blood and filth, used bandages, pieces of clothing and flesh, chamber pots filled with blood and worse, people huddled in corners, the living over the dead, the dead next to the dying. The most one could do was to pass between them trying not to step on anything or anyone, which was impossible most of the time.