blood on our hands - a + m
Oct 5, 2024 15:47:00 GMT -5
Post by august vance d7b [Bella] on Oct 5, 2024 15:47:00 GMT -5
After spending a few hours at the ranged weapons station, my left forearm is marked with a glowing red stripe where the bowstring slapped my skin too many times. The instructor kept telling me I needed to keep a slight bend in my arm, but that made it harder to pull back the string. It’s more difficult than it looks. But in the end, I managed to hit the target a respectable amount of times.
I decide it’s a good time to rest a little, and brushing up on my first aid couldn’t hurt, so I make my way to that station. The trainer, a muscular man in his fifties with a prosthetic leg from the right knee down, is in the middle of explaining what to do in the case of a deep wound, like a bullet hole or a stab wound. He’s kneeling on the floor behind a naked, rubbery-looking dummy that seems to be hooked up to some kind of fish tank pump. The pump is sending fake blood squirting at short intervals through a hole in the dummy’s leg, just above his knee.
”Now, imagine you get stabbed in the leg like this dummy. The first thing you want to do is put pressure on the wound.” He demonstrates, placing his palm over the dummy’s wound and stopping the flow of blood. ”Then, you want to grab your gauze and start to pack the wound. Ideally you would sterilize it first, but the reality is that you might not have time. Boiling water would work if you have it on hand.”
The trainer reaches for a pile of gauze next to him, and begins to pack the dummy’s bloody wound hole with it. I realize my whole face is wrinkling up in disgust as I watch him, but it’s also pretty fascinating. The guy makes it look easy, and the wound stops bleeding within the minute. I consider clapping but none of the other tributes are doing it, so I just stand there and wait for his next direction.
After he shows us how to tie a tourniquet, he orders us to split up into pairs and practice on one of the dummies. The other tributes pair up pretty quickly, so I figure it’s best to ask the person standing next to me, one of the sporty-looking guys from Five.
”Maverick, right?” I ask. ”Do you wanna save a dummy’s life with me?”