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she-loves-resus · 6 months ago

Text

Weightless

No gravity and no heartbeat. M rescuer, M resus, suffocation, chest compressions, AED

Cohl fumbled to grab the straps on Yui’s suit. They were just out of reach. His body kicked like he was swimming, but he knew he was doing nothing but expending energy. They both tilted weightless through the station as debris floated between them. He couldn’t get enough leverage to reach him as his internal systems sounded an alarm, the visor of his helmet blinking red with warning. One of his life support systems was failing. Cheap fucking equipment, he spit internally. They’d scavved both suits from a small military post that had been pelted apart by a meteorite swarm. Both men figured the military would have half decent space suits. They were wrong.

Yui weakly clapped against his chest and throat, his body convulsing in the air with the overwhelming need to breathe. He could only stare helpless at the two red goose eggs on his HUD. Oxygen reserves: 0.0 percent. He looked to Cohl in a panic. The other man was trying to push himself closer in suspension, but he was moving so slowly, and there was nothing to help him gain leverage. Yui would pass out before he reached him. And even if he did, what then? The romantic idea that he would share his oxygen reserves was sweet, and more or less keeping with Cohl’s chivalrous swashbuckler persona. But if he stopped breathing, flooding his helmet with oxygen wouldn’t do much. His lungs would stop working before Cohl made it over, he was almost sure of that. Already blackness crept in around the edge of his vision and Cohl’s stricken expression and his useless wading through empty space were growing darker.

“Yui, don’t pass out,” he shouted over the comms. The jerky movements were getting fewer and farther between. Cohl was beginning to panic himself. His own helmet was throwing out warnings to slow his breathing, but he couldn’t. He racked his brain for some solution. He couldn’t just keep floating like a jackass and watch him asphyxiate. He scrambled to pull up his remote ship controls. He could see their vessel through the huge windows circling around the abandoned station, haloed by a distant sun. The cockpit was empty, he’d told the ship to hover and wait for their return while they harpooned the station and reeled themselves in. Now he woke its systems, and began manually operating it. He swiped at the controls and urged the little ship to ram the nearest support pillar braced against the outside of the station. Their Hawk was hardly a match for the size of the huge spinning top they found themselves aboard, but maybe. Maybe it could make a difference. Otherwise… he didn’t want to think of otherwise.

The station groaned as the Hawk rammed against it and the room they found themselves in lurched. Cohl found himself being shoved to the side and smashed his ribs against a wall that rushed up to him, but finally, solid ground. He looked up to see Yui poised above him, and his heart lurched when he saw he had stopped fighting. His hands weakly flexed against the seal of his helm. “No, no, hold on,” he murmured under his breath, voice distorted by his helm.

Yui watched Cohl maneuver his legs underneath himself and kick out like a gold medal swimmer in the 100 meter. His lungs wouldn’t fill. His throat worked and his brain urged him to breathe, but there was nothing left. The last shallow pull of stale carbon dioxide made it down his throat and then nothing. His lashes fluttered. Pins and needles prickled in his limbs. Through hooded eyes he watched Cohl shoot towards him, dimly aware that he had tackled him and now grappled him around the waist.

“Got you,” he heard his voice exclaim over comms, though his mind was going dim, and he was starting to hear less and less. “Pretty sure I snapped off the Hawk’s beak, don’t be mad.” Arms encircled him as Cohl, his captain, his plucky rogue who earned every story about himself, shifted him so Yui’s back pressed against his front.

He kept him pinned there as he fumbled to disconnect Yui’s useless oxygen system. “You really made me look like an idiot back there, treading water like that,” he laughed shakily, unclipping one of his own oxygen tubes from his suit. It hissed and sputtered little clouds in the dark station and he attached it to the other valve, tightening it. He heard the click and then the hum as Yui’s suit once more flooded with air. He cupped his hand over his chest. “There we go, good as new.”

But Yui didn’t respond. His arms hung limply in the absence of gravity, his head rocked forward. Cohl felt his skin tighten in goosebumps. “Yui,” he said with some urgency, rapping a finger against his helmet, “Breathe in, bud. Come on, take a breath.” The terminal on his wrist blinked and he snatched his arm, lifting it to see what other god damn warning his suit was issuing this time.

CRITICAL CONDITION- RESPIRATORY ARREST DETECTED

He grabbed the collar of Yui’s helmet and turned it towards himself, urgently thumping his sternum with his palm. He called his name again and again, clutching at the second skin material of his suit as he turned to face him. He didn’t respond. Behind the glass, his face was slack, his eyes closed and mouth slightly agape. Blue was creeping into his lips. Cohl fumbled with his limp body as they tilted in the air. The stupid thing was supposed to have a failsafe for this, but it wasn’t triggering. He swore as he punched in the controls on the wrist terminal and the helm slid open. The light of the distant sun shone on Yui’s pale face. He probed his hand in around the edges of the helmet until he found the little nozzle tucked away to the side. He grabbed it, hooking a thumb over the bottom row of his second in command’s teeth and tongue with his other hand. He plunged the rebreather into his mouth and it latched, making a seal in his airway. Cohl once more wrapped his arm around the smaller man’s chest and felt his ribs flex as the thing breathed for him.

He looked at the readout again as his oxygen levels began to climb back up slowly. Too slowly. The fluttering little line of his heartbeat was quivering, hardly making spikes. Cohl closed his helmet again and wrapped both arms around him, braced against his midriff and across his chest. “Yui,” he pleaded again and shook him once, hard enough his helmet clinked off Cohl’s own. He made a fist and scrubbed his knuckles hard against his sternum, between the lithe muscles of his pectoral. The mechanical breathing swelled against his hand as the rebreather filled his lungs with the oxygen provided by Cohl’s life support systems. It forced his chest to expand and he heard a sigh crackling over their comms, expelling each breath given to him, his chest deflating in Cohl’s hands.

The terminal chimed and threw up holographic words. CRITICAL CONDITION- VENTRICULAR FIBRILLATION DETECTED. He knew it to be true. His heart was quivering into Cohl��s palm, shaking and uncoordinated, too fast to properly push blood through his body. He felt the nervous bird flitting against the cage of his ribs. He cursed softly and gripped him by the shoulder, spinning Yui around. There were four circular ports, two over the right side of the heart, near the shoulder, and two tucked up beside his ribs on the opposite side. He flipped the little latch beside these ports and the suit sucked closer to the skin, pressing itself especially firm in these spots. He watched as the little ports began to hum and glow brighter and brighter in the center of their circular, metal frames.

“Automatic external defibrillator engaged,” came a robotic voice from the terminal, “Select charge.”

If these things were worth anything, let them be worth this. Cohl tapped the 200j option blinking at Yui’s wrist. “Charging,” said the voice, the device whining. Yui’s muscles convulsed. Cohl had to grip him tightly by the arm to keep him from drifting away as the defibrillator discharged into his fluttering heart, making his whole body jolt. His head snapped back, his shoulders shrugging, back crooking. “Shock delivered. Analyzing rhythm, stand clear of patient.”

“Not gonna happen,” he murmured to himself, cupping the other man’s helmet to tip his head back towards himself. He only just looked over at the projected monitor when the voice piped up, “No pulse detected. Begin CPR.”

A flatline cut through the darkness of the lonely station. “No, you’re kidding me,” he hissed, cupping a hand over the center of his breast. Nothing. Weren’t these stupid things supposed to fix a fibrillating heart? They weren’t supposed to kill the person, right? His mind spun. CPR. CPR? How the hell was he supposed to do that? He couldn’t put any weight behind the compressions, definitely not enough to shove his heart against his spine. He gripped his shoulder with one hand and shoved the heel of his palm against his heart. He only succeeded in nearly shoving his body away from him entirely. He looped an arm around his shoulders and tried again; again, there was no way to get enough leverage for an effective compression. His eyes roved over Yui from head to toe, then their surroundings.

“Hang on,” he huffed, resituating himself behind him again. He slid both arms around him from behind, bracing a balled fist against his unbeating heart. Settling his chin against his shoulder, he thrust in against his ribcage, forcing it to bow in towards his spine. He’d never had to actually use the scarce first aid lessons he’d been forced to sit through, ironically at Yui’s insistence.

Something told him this was harder than normal compressions. He couldn’t put his weight behind it, or rely on the ground to help squeeze blood from his motionless heart. It relied entirely on the strength in his arms; those felt like they were ready to fall off with how hard his own pulse thundered through his limbs. He kept it up anyway. Yui’s ribcage shifted under his skin, bowing with each hard thrust and expanding with each breath. “C’mon,” Cohl grunted, “We’ve been through worse than this, huh? Huh? You’re gonna let-hngh- this shitty station- ungh- be where you die? Cause of a dumb suit malfunction?”

Again, Yui’s heart began to quiver in his chest, shaking the space between his ribs. “Shock advised. Stand clear of patient.” “Yeah, no, I’m good here.” Again, the ports whined and began to glow. The display showed the shaky line of his heart struggling to beat, beneath that the line marking the device as it charged to 250. Cohl instinctively wrapped his arms around him in a tight embrace. His breath was noisy in his helmet. “Come on, come on, come on…”

Yui’s body bucked, knocking against Cohl’s chest as his limbs seized in the current. His muscles tensed and loosened, his helmet clanging hard off Cohl’s own. “Shock delivered-“ “I know the stupid thing delivered the stupid shock,” he growled, pressing his palm flat against Yui’s heart. “Is he alive or dead?” “No pulse detected. Begin CPR.” “Fucking hell-“

He started the compressions anew, harder this time, if he could even do them any harder. He beat his second in against his chest, sweat tickling his brow and neck. His entire focus, his entire being, was centered on the man dead- not dead, no, he couldn’t be dead. He was destined to die in some awesome, awe inspiring way on a distant planet. Crushed in a salt avalanche, fucked to death by some charismatic mantis alien, shot in a card game with interstellar pirates. This was undeserving of him. This was how rookies died. They weren’t rookies. Cohl and Yui were wanted criminals, their faces graced holo posters in three different systems. Haruki Yui was not suffocating in an abandoned research base. He was not dying while Cohl still had breath.

As he shoved against his sternum, listening to the quiet “Huff, hff, haa, hff” as he forced synthetic air from his still lungs, he wasn’t paying attention to their surroundings. The quiet atrium might as well be a distant star. He didn’t notice the wall the two of them were floating towards until his back bounced off hard metal. Cohl kept bending his battered ribcage and craned his neck to look; his eyes widened. Gravity engine- the OFF button burned red in the dark. Life support systems- OFF.

“Jesus, yes, yes,” he gasped and flicked both switches on at once. The station groaned in protest as ancient motors whirred to life and air began to sigh once more through her vents. Cohl hardly had time to roll in midair and brace Yui in his arms before they were once more leashed by artificial gravity. It sucked them to the ground, slamming them both to the metal grating of a small platform. Something in his side cracked and the air squeezed out of Cohl’s lungs. He soundlessly wheezed, arms in a vice around his second.

His body hurt even worse with gravity weighing him down once more. His arms and legs were jelly. His muscles ached. It took him a moment, and he cursed every second of that moment, to roll Yui’s body off and push himself up on his hands and knees at his side. He tore off both their helmets, drawing in as deep a breath as he could manage. Stale air stuck to the sweat on his skin and he’d never been more grateful for it. “Okay, we can do this. C’mon…”

He descended on Yui’s chest, stacking his hands as he began to pound against creaking bone. At this angle, it was easier to feel the fractures he’d split through his second’s sternum, bone rubbing against bone. His head rocked, each compression causing a tide to roll from his shoulders to his fingertips, his feet. His belly bulged against the tight skin of his suit, snapping up as Cohl snapped down against his heart. Was he too late? Hell, had he even been doing any good before? These compressions felt more violent, going much deeper, and he couldn’t stop the little voice nagging that Yui was gone. Would he already be back if he’d found the damn switch earlier?

His hands sunk into the center of Yui’s heart again and again. He might have been saying something, but he wasn’t even sure. He was getting light headed from the rush of air and exertion. Even so, his entire body jerked as the robotic voice once more spoke, “Shock advised. Stand clear of patient.”

This time, despite how badly he wanted to just scoop him up into his arms, he sat back, staring down at his second’s moon white face. The suit’s oxygen system forced his chest to rise at regular intervals, even if the breath left his lungs, unable to stick.

“Charging,” it announced. The display flashed 360j. It emitted a few rapid beeps as it reached the end of its charge. Yui’s chest was pulled into into the air with a sharp jerk, his head snapping to the side, arms convulsing from the shoulder and then falling limp again. “Shock delivered. Analyzing-“

Yui’s throat came unstoppered and he drew in a rattling breath, loosing a moaning exhale. Cohl was at his throat in an instant, hooking his finger between his teeth. He took hold of the rebreather and it slid back, coming loose from his trachea with a wet gurgle.

“There he is,” Cohl almost shouted, cradling his neck, “There we go, deep breaths! Christ alive…”

Yui croaked something that might have been, “Captain.”

Cohl pressed his forehead to the other man’s temple, nose pressed to his cheek, stuck between laughing like a maniac and breaking down in sobs. Instead of doing either he huffed, “This scavver shit isn’t for us.”

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