Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 72: I Was Nothing If Not Smart

Chapter 72: I Was Nothing If Not Smart

Ye Yao Zu and I once had a long discussion on the idea of ’do no harm’. It was one of the days that he, Si Dong, Fan Teng Fei, and Cheng Bo Jing were just lounging around the house, waiting for Bai Long Qiang to come back from the base.

Those days seemed to happen several times a week to the point where I looked forward to them. They were the only friends I really had in this life.

Anyways. I thought it was pretty straightforward: ’Do no harm’ meant don’t do anything to cause the person in your care any harm.

Ye Yao Zu argued that the phrase meant that the doctor needed to do what was in the patient’s best interest, whether the doctor agreed with it or not.

Case in point: setting a dislocated shoulder or a broken bone caused the patient to experience more pain, but when the treatment was over, they would be better.

I pulled the gun out of the small of my back and pointed it at the woman begging me for help. It took less than half of a second to put her out of her misery.

"One," I said softly. Si Dong stressed that it was essential to know how many bullets you fired. That way, you would never find yourself out of ammo when you needed it most.

The woman was still staring at me, her eyes turning glassy and white as death took hold. I walked up to the car and gently closed her eyes. This had to be done before rigor mortis kicked in, or you would never be able to get them to close until it passed.

"Go in peace," I whispered to her. This was my definition new definition of ’do no harm’. I would stop her suffering before it became worse. A quick death was always better than a slow one.

I turned my back on the scene and walked away. I had a lot of ground to cover before nightfall, and I knew without a doubt that I wouldn’t make it to the cabin before darkness came.

The song Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson started playing on repeat in my head as I continued down the street.

It looked like I was in the middle of a war zone, sans soldiers and tanks, but still a war zone.

Cars were discarded everywhere. Some of them were wrapped around light posts while others had driven straight into buildings like the drivers lost all control.

The worst places were the intersections, where the cars became so mangled I couldn’t actually count how many there were.

And yet, not a single person.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I continued to walk through the abandoned streets.

I could see puddles of blood and drag marks from bodies being taken away, but that was it.

There were no more whimpers of people begging for help or screams of people in pain. Nothing.

"Caw!"

My gaze shot up as the sound of a crow shattered the silence. I looked up and stared back at the giant bird looking back down at me.

"Caw!" it cried again as if it was trying to talk to me.

"You know, if this is an attempted at a murder, you are failing spectacularly," I said, chuckling at my own joke. The bird cocked its head to the side, almost like it understood what I had said.

But that was impossible. Birds might be more intelligent than most give them credit for, but the last time I checked, they didn’t speak English.

I swerved around another car that was blocking my way forward, my eyes still on the bird over top of me, when I heard a crunch under my boot.

Stopping for a second, I looked down and saw a severed hand.

"Male," I grunted as I stared at it, my brain automatically cataloging it. "Nails neatly trimmed, no dirt underneath. Might be an office worker or something."

I picked it up, not squeamish in the least. It looked to have been ripped off from where the carpals articulated with the ulna and radius. Must have been painful.

"Hey!" I shouted, looking up to see if the crow was still there. "You hungry?"

I didn’t wait for a response before I threw the appendage up into the air toward the light post.

The crow let out a happy cry and took off, snatching its dinner out of the air before it could land on the ground.

"Enjoy," I muttered, wiping the almost black blood on my pants.

----

I had been walking for the past two hours, and I was a little less than halfway to my destination.

After I realized that not a single car was moving, I walked up the ramp to the highway and started to jog down it.

While I had yet to come across a moving vehicle, the ones that were left behind were burning. The heat and light made it even easier to find my way in the darkness.

I knew I could take out my light in order to see, but I knew that would be like painting a target on my back.

No smart person wanted to be in the light while their enemies lurked in the darkness. And I was nothing if not a smart person.

Not breaking my stride, I reached into one of the side pockets of my go bag and took out a small bag of Skittles and an energy drink.

I knew that this wasn’t the healthiest thing I could be snacking on. I had a bunch of other things in the big pocket of my bag, but I didn’t want to stop to get them. Besides, my body needed the shot of sugar so that I didn’t finally shut down due to shock.

I could feel it coming, and there was no way I could prevent it. Anyone that had experienced something like this would be in shock.

Hell, I would be willing to bet that when this all blew over, the amount of people getting treated for PTSD would be astronomical.

But I still had two and a half hours of walking to go before I could relax enough to let my body do what it needed to do.