Leaving the operating table - landfall colony medical tents
Gawaadi from the medical bed waited among the wailing agonies of the other patients not so patiently, as he wanted to go see the rest of the place and had spent far too much time cooped up in the tent with other people whom did not seem to be getting much better. The smell in the air is repugnant, smelling of dried up blood tissue, rotting corpses, some presumably alien fungus and other such unpleasant odors, and Gawaadi felt like he didn’t know how much he could take of it. Gawaadi tries sitting up, but the pain in his arm spikes from the burn and he falls back down onto the bed making some weird shrieking noise that Gawaadi tried muting down into a whisper as to not disturb other sleeping patients since he did not want to know what the doctors would do.
Thankfully it seemed to Gawaadi the time spent on the medical bed was nearing a close, as Dr. Torres finally seemed to be getting around to Gawaadi, and instead of a cast like claimed earlier Dr. Torres held that looked like a thick strip of white, translucent tape of some sort. Gawaadi watched as the assistant doctor wrapped the tape around the arm of another patient, and ignorant of what the tool the somewhat Hispanic looking doctor whose coat was covered in dirt due to lack of ability to maintain, was using thought the tape’s nature was of duct tape. However Gawaadi, despite fearing the tape and contemplating how much it will hurt to take off when the wound heals cringes a bit in fear, but keeps silent to see the rest of the procedure.
After wrapping the tape around the other patient’s arm ten times the doctor simply told the other patient, a bald Caucasian man who looks like he is from a western earth country, “The gauze is administered. You are free to go.”
The bald man asked, “do you have any clothing?
The assistant doctor helped the patient up and looked at the bald man with a dejected face and said “I am afraid you’ll need to make do with the clothing on your back for now.”
“No clothing at all?” the bald man asked again with skepticism.
“Look at my jumpsuit.” Torres tells the Bald Man who scans the coat and sees that it is filthy. “I have to make due with what I have as well.”
The bald man just accepts this fact and is helped up and sent to another part of the slowly deteriorating, tarp floored tent presumably to check out.
The assistant doctor than with no hesitation moves straight to Gawaadi, and Gawaadi has a look of fear in his face when he sees the doctor with his increasingly filthy jumpsuit get out a abnormally white [in comparison to everything else in the tent, which was covered in dirt, some weird colored mold or a bit of blood] roll of gauze. Torres tells Gawaadi “Please lift your burnt arm.”
Gawaadi hesitantly lifts up his arm with the burn mark that runs down half his upper forearm and closes his eyes not wanting to see the pain as he shudders over the gauze tape.
“Please stop shaking.” The doctor tells Gawaadi.
“It-it isn’t going to hurt right?” Gawaadi stutters out for a bit.
“It won’t, it’s not sticky or hard on the skin.” The doctor assures Gawaadi, but Gawaadi remains somewhat unconvinced despite seeing the procedure done by another patient.
However the assurance was enough to allow the doctor to start wrapping the gauze around the burn mark. Gawaadi during all this kept his eyes closed and kept thinking of the other patients he saw who had way worse injuries than him. Yet the fear Gawaadi is irrational; it’s the simple constricting the gauze gave that scared Gawaadi, not any actual pain.
Yet after the doctor wrapped the gaze around half the forearm where the burn mark was, Gawaadi opened his eyes and found himself relieved that he could still feel his hands despite the constricting presence of the gauze on his forearm.
Unlike the bald man Gawaadi didn’t ask about the clothing since he overheard the conversation the assistant doctor had before, and simply asked Torres “am I free to go?”
The assistant doctor said, “Free enough to leave the table. You need to walk around and get used to the gravity of Invictus before you can be let outside, which shouldn’t take too long as the gravity on the world is only a tiny bit different.”
Dr. Torres helped Gawaadi out of the medical bed, and Gawaadi found himself at first a bit caught off guard by the much higher gravity of the planet, and lost his balance before almost hitting the tarp floor before the assistant doctor caught him and brought Gawaadi back up on his feet.
“A Martian I take it?” The doctor asks, finding the reaction Gawaadi had much worse than expected.
“Yes.”
The doctor than told Gawaadi “If so, you’re going to need to spend a bit more time adjusting to the gravity of Invictus.”
Gawaadi agreed, despite how rude it seemed to Gawaadi of the UN to pick a world where the gravity was much more like earths than somewhere in between.