Doing Alright ((Caine))

[C.T. Caine 0]

((This log is set more or less during the 4/29 sim, expanding on the situation a little bit.))

 

"Water...please..."

 

They were, by far, not the first injured arrivals to the base camp, but they were some of the youngest. The female was perhaps merely a year or so below the age of maturity, but the male was no more than a young boy. They were both far too young to internalize the sort of experiences they were undergoing with any equanimity. Caine watched over their thin bodies as they curled against the mattress of one of the stretchers and remembered other youths caught in such a disaster, not so long ago...

 

They were clearly family, probably brother and sister; both had short, mussed brown hair and squared-off builds. Caine guessed they were athletes by the way the muscles were concentrated in their shoulders and thighs. Their warm brown eyes were set deep in their faces, and the boy's were screwed shut. There was some dried blood on his left temple.

 

He was unconscious, but his sister had her eyes open and was looking around wide-eyed at the three orderlies and Caine from the stretcher, as they pushed it across the empty lot from the beam-in point to the medical tents. Caine was pleased to see the energy in that terrified gaze. Whatever had battered her body into its current state, it had not damaged her mind.

 

I'll have to see if we can find their parents...

 

Since the rescued earthquake victims had started rolling into the camp a few hours before, Caine had been kept on alert, moving between the tents, making sure personnel were distributed where they were needed, and helping the movement of the wounded to their appropriate tents. The injuries so far had been varied and numerous. The majority were very serious; her medical expertise was limited to first-aid but she knew enough to realize that when bones were sticking out and visible to the naked eye, it was generally a bad sign. So far the actual death toll was not terrifying, but every number added to it was more than she would have liked, one sign that her job and that of those around her were not being done perfectly. It was something of a relief to get the occasional minor injury, such as these two, something which could be handled quickly and with immediate results.

 

"Can I have some water?" the girl asked again, her voice a little stronger as the hover-stretcher floated along over the dirty lot where the camp had been arranged. The tone rasped in her throat.

 

One of the orderlies glanced back at Caine and gestured to the medical pack on his back. She reached over and withdrew a small bottle of water, which she offered to the girl.

 

"Here...drink it slowly or you'll get sick." She held the bottle gently to the girl's lips and watched as she sucked at the water thirstily, taking half the bottle before dropping back against the stretcher. She reached for Caine's hand as the Chief of Security walked along beside the stretcher, and her eyes flicked towards her brother. "Is he going to be alright?" she whispered.

 

Caine nodded. "Our field medic tagged you both as minor injuries...you're a little bruised up and your brother most likely has a concussion. You'll both recover."

 

The young woman looked relieved and sank back further into her stretcher, her dark eyes shutting, her body clearly exhausted. Caine squeezed the hand gripping hers, a quick supportive pressure. She would rather have been out with the marines doing the actual rescue work but there was no question that there was some satisfaction to be had in making sure that the medics and the victims had a steady, solid place to start the process of recovering and rebuilding. For now she was the bedrock. "What happened to you?"

 

The girl smiled faintly without reopening her eyes; Caine got the impression she was trying to put up a brave front, though her hand shook a little against the half-Vulcan's palm. "We'd just gotten home from school when the quakes started...went to the basement to wait it out. Our house has always been pretty sturdy but...it didn't hold up. Collapsed on us...the upper floors all fell in."

 

Caine stiffened almost imperceptibly at the mental image this called up. The young woman's eyes opened in surprise, feeling the subtle change in the grip on her hand. "Are you alright, ma'am?" she asked.

 

Caine was saved from answering by the low thump of paws next to her, and she turned her eyes sideways to see that Commander JoNs had fallen into step with the little troupe of stretchers.

 

"How we doing, Junior?"

 

A faint smile drifted onto Caine's features and she chuckled dryly at the mode of address she was still getting used to. The ironic callsign which JoNs had assigned her did more to amuse her than anything else, though she'd already had one security crewman wonder about her decision to accept the mildly diminutive nickname which was quickly spreading through the teams planetside. The crewman had seemed concerned on her behalf that the new chief had undermined her own authority, but Caine wasn't worried. If her authority over the department turned out to be of a quality that could be undermined by a single callsign, she probably didn't deserve that authority in the first place.

 

She had wondered, to the extent that she had thought about it at all, whether it represented a subconscious attempt on the young XO's part to bring the older, more experienced officer to her level -- if that was the case, it didn't bother her much. JoNs was indeed young, but she seemed smart, physically accomplished, energetic, and intelligent. Until Caine saw evidence against this, she would have respect for the Caitian's authority. That being said, she imagined that their relative ages might be intimidating to someone who, from what she understood, had reached her current position via battlefield promotion. So if the nickname was a subconscious leveling effort, that was perfectly fine with her, as long as the Cait continued her so-far admirable trend to let her officers do their job properly.

 

Caine had long since come to the conclusion that there was quite enough to be concerned about in her line of work without letting the unimportant things bother her.

 

"We're doing alright, sir," she said, nodding to the commander and then turning to glance down again at the young woman on the stretcher, whose eyes had once again drifted shut with exhaustion. "So far there's been remarkably few fatalities...mostly fixable injuries." Which was true, as far as it went -- it didn't do much to quantify the number of very miserable people currently residing in the base camp, but the fact was that things were going much better than they could have been.

 

"Good..." JoNs said. "Keep me informed."

 

There was the light touch of a paw to her shoulder, and Caine looked up again just in time to see the Commander zooming off four-legged into the crowds of milling officers and medics. "Will do, Commander," she said towards the retreating back, coming to a halt as her little party reached the minor-injuries tent. As she checked to be sure that the young woman and her brother were safely transferred to their new beds, her commbadge chirped against her chest.

 

"I found two more. They seem to be in fairly good shape. Dehydrated and scared to death, though. I'll send them your way."

 

"Understood, Buddha." Caine quickly about-faced, gestured a few more orderlies into step with her, and headed back to the beam-in point.