Kids from all over the Glade had stopped what they were doing the second that the bright lights had hit the sky. They had all stopped in shock as those lights meant nothing good. They were sign of distress.
"Was that a flare."
"Shuck. Who do you think it was?"
"Florrie, a flare!"
"I know, Slintheads." Florrie yelled, as she stormed out of the Med-Jack hut, "I'm going, get out of my way you shucking shanks." She went into offensive mode, like a soldier getting ready for battle: pulling up her hair and grabbing her emergency pack.
"Did anyone see what section it came from?" She asked, throwing on her emergency pack onto her back as she headed towards the doors closest to where the flare went off.
Alby reached up to rub the back of his neck, "I think it was in section seven, maybe down by the cliffs."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes he is, now go." Gally said, pushing her towards the west doors. "Bring them back here, hurry."
"Okay." She said, before taking off into the Maze, heading towards section seven. "Tell Nick I went into The Maze."
The Maze was dark. It was creepy. It was depressing. Florrie hated The Maze. She hated the endless corridors. She hated the never ending walls that shot towards the sky. But most of all, she hated the things that happened to the gladers inside the maze, when they got stung or injured.
Nick, Alby, Florrie, and Minho had all been sick and tired of losing Gladers to the Maze. They had tried many things to lessen the amount of Gladers getting hurt in it, but the ideas had run short. If they had runners run in packs of two, they couldn't cover the entire maze. If someone got hurt inside the maze, then they had to make it back all on their own and risk getting caught by a griever.
It was only when Nick made a comment about wishing they had a way to signal each other in the maze that Florrie had thought of something. Sky signals.
While things like smoke signals wouldn't work, as the smoke wouldn't be able to reach above the walls. She remembered fireworks. Fireworks shooting miles into the sky. Of course after talking with Minho and Nick about these, Minho's memory sparked and he had blurted out the words 'Flare Gun'.
The question then came, how would we get them back? Florrie, a runner at the time, suggested that since she was a med-jack before she became a runner that she would be in charge of getting to them and bringing them back. That meant that she would no longer be a runner though, as it wouldn't be time efficent to have her have to run from a completely diffrent section of the maze, no she would have to stay at the Glade, and a new runner would be chosen to run in her place.
Since her last day as a runner, she had only been in the maze a small handfull of times, and if she was being honest, even though she hated The Maze, she also kind of missed it. She missed the constant movement, the adrenaline rush that running gave her, and the time that she was giving to do nothing but run and think.
After running for a solid thirty minutes or so, Florrie had found out who it was that had sent up the flare.
It was Stephen. Shucking Stephen. Florrie had found him collapsed on the hard cement ground, curled into himself like a ball. He had been stung. Not once, but multiple times. It was obvious, his body was convulsing as the Griever venom had begun pumping through his veins, turning them a nasty shade of black with poison.
Stephen hadn't passed out yet, so that was a good sign.
It was also a good sign that he had made it away from the Griever, even if he had only gone a few twist and turns away from the shucking thing. There had been two or three Gladers who hadn't made it away.
"Stephen?" Florrie called out to him, moving in closer. As she came up to him, she was able to get a better look at him and his injuries.
Crouching down to his level, she was able to see that he had been stung about five times by the Griever: once in the back, twice on his right arm, once on his left leg, and once on his lower torso. He looked disgusting overall.
"Are you still with me there Stephen?" She asked.
He was able to lift up his head a little, but enough to make some eye contact with her. his eyes were dilated and slightly bloodshot.
He didn't say anything, just nodding in response. Then he groaned with the movement. his hands shooting up to grab a hold of his head.
Florrie quickly looked over Stephen, where she saw that beside the stings, he also seemed to have a swollen ankle, most likely from trying to get away from the Griever.
She was able to quickly grab his discarded backpack that had been dropped a few paces away and sling it onto her back. She needed to get him back to the Glade, so that he could get the Grief serum, and she knew that his ankle could wait till later to be dealt with.
"Okay, c'mon Stephen, let's get you back," she said. Grasping a hold of both of Stephen's arms, she was able to use all of her strength to pull him to his feet, and with him being semi-conscious he was able to help her a little bit, but not nearly enough.
When he was back onto his feet, she placed both of his arms around her, one around her shoulders behind her neck and the other in front of it, and both of her arms were around his waist. To a stranger it would almost look as though they may have been embracing, but it was how he needed to be if she was to help him back.
So with Stephen in her grasp, Florrie began to make her way back to the Glade, before the doors could close for the day.
It had only taken Florrie a good thirty minutes or so to get to Stephen, but she was running then, and not carrying about a hundred and fifty pounds of semi-dead weight. So it was obvious that getting back would take her longer.
*~*~*
There was a group of Gladers waiting for her and Stephen at the West Door when they returned from the Maze. Nick, Alby, Minho, Clint, the new Greenie Jeff, and almost all of the runners who had returned for the day.
"You okay, Florrie?" Clint, one of the Med-Jacks asked as he looked her over quickly scanning her for any visible injuries, while the new Med-Jack, Jeff, took Stephen off of Florrie's shoulders and onto his.
"Not a scratch." She amended. "Now go help Jeff get him over to the Med-Hut." She was glad to have a new med jack to help out around the med-hut. it caused her to have less worries when she ran out into the maze, at least the Glade would be taken care off if she happened to get stung.
"On it." He said with a grin, going over to help out the greenie. Looking back at her over his shoulder, he added, "Also Newt's awake."
Newt. That bloody shucking boy. He had been sleeping for about three days, as it had been three days since his incident. It was probably a good thing that he had been sleeping all that time, seeing as he had sprained his right wrist, dislocated his left knee, and broken his left shinbone.
Now Clint and herself had been able to put his knee back into place, wrap up his wrist, but there was little they could do for his shin, aside from doing the best to force it back into place and place it in a splint. Although little was known about Newt's recovery, such as it he would ever be able to walk correctly again, it was most likely that he would be stuck with a limp for the rest of his life.
Now Florrie wasn't exactly a doctor, but she did know that he couldn't have gotten all of those injuries just running away from a griever and not getting stung. If someone had asked her, she would have said that he had fell from the lookout tree, but he had gotten the injuries in the maze, not in the glade.
"Any problems?" Nick asked, as Florrie headed towards the med-hut, following the others.
Florrie rolled her eyes, and glanced back to Nick as she walked past him, "How about I tell you after I finish saving his life?" She said with her usual amount of exasperation, walking on without even sparing him another look.
There were three cots in the med hut: two for patients and one for the overnight med jack. Florrie was usually the med-jack that spent the nights in the med-hut. There was plenty counters and shelving that span the whole inside of the hut. It was where they had their limited supplies stationed.
Gally had really went all out when designing this hut. It was probably a good thing that he and Florrie were such good friends.
"Place him down on the cot over there next to Newt."
"Is he okay?" Newt said, his voice drowsy as though he had only just woken up. Which she guessed was true.
"Not yet." Florrie said, not even sparing him a glance as she began helping Clint strap Stephen down to the cot, so when he woke he wouldn't be flailing around and hurt someone. "Jeff in the third cabinet over there," she said pointing out where she was talking about, "Grab one of the Grief serum vials and a syringe from the second drawer down."
"This drawer?" Jeff asked, pulling open the one that she had specified.
"Yeah, now get over here with it greenie." She said, moving out of the way.
"Florrie, what are you-" Clint had started to ask, but was quickly interrupted.
"Okay, now you will need to go ahead and slide the vial into the syringe." She began instructing him.
"What?" Jeff said, looking at Florrie with wide eyes.
"Just do it." She said, before she carried on as though he hadn't interrupted her. "And you will need to move around to where you can reach Stephen's neck. So move around."
"Ahhh.." Clint had finally figured out what Florrie was doing. She was making Jeff learn on the job while under pressure, Just like how she had taught him back when he was still in his first month. It really was a smart tactic. It taught them how to think on their feet and listen to advice in the heat of the moment, which were both important to being a med-jack.
"Well that was mostly anti-climatic." Newt commented after Jeff had finished administering the Grief surem.
"It won't be as soon as he wakes up." Florrie said with an exasperated sigh. "Nighttime will be horror around here, we may have to move you to a different hut for you to be able to get any sleep, and even then, but for now we should try to keep him knocked out."
[A|N] I started yet another story. Someone stop me.