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spiderbunnifics · 4 months ago

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A Bad Situation: And A Worse Solution

Disclaimer: do NOT try to do DIY blood transfusions, I mostly made this to help me remember the steps of drawing blood for my phlebotomy class, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

“Oh well Steve’s doing it so he’ll be okay” HE ISN’T LIVING LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE SIDE EFFECTS.

“Alright, alright, I’m setting you down..” Claire sighs, finally kneeling on the concrete floor of the -- hopefully -- safe room; feeling the coldness of the material seep through the denim of her jeans and into her skin. She tentatively set the taller boy to the ground, letting him lean his back to the wall, sending ripples of chills and cold straight through his hair and to his neck. The light sprinkle of freckles on his face were much more distinguishable against the boy's pallid skin

He groans and shifts, head lolling slightly as Steve lays his hands on the ground. Adjusting how he’s sitting -- trying to keep from putting pressure on his tailbone.

Claire’s hands raced to ghost next to his shoulders, trying to soften the pressure between his back and the wall. Steve was already the most reckless person she had ever met; from doing (his version of) acrobatics to air-kick the undead to try and save Claire from a monsters grip, all the way to nabbing those twin guns, without even maybe taking in the fact that they could very well be booby-trapped.

He was a good kid. Sweet, even; But god he had less than zero survival skills.

When she leaned back and away from his crumpled form, Claire had to take time to find the injury again; she knew it was a seemingly small gash in his arm. Every time he unbent it, the gash seemed to open a little more, revealing the crimson of the deep cavity that the cage-trap had left him. Claire remembered how, before the pain had even registered, he joked about the cage leaving a ‘parting gift’, elaborating on the joke after seeing just how bad the injury was -- and just how worried the injury was making her -- in that usual trying-to-be-charming way.

Now that she thought about it, he had barely reacted to the pain, his body too frazzled by the copious amounts of adrenaline in his blood, pumping through his body.

Steve was lucky to only walk away with a gash, excessive bleeding and all; anyone else, and the falling cage would have severed his arm by the elbow, and he would’ve died from blood loss minutes ago in Claire Redfield’s arms.

Speaking of blood loss, Claire thought, we should probably find something to do about it.. There really wasn’t much she could do for the blood that had already left his system; now that most of it was caked on the dirty, decrepit floor, she was sure he wouldn’t appreciate it if she found a way to put that back in his system..

Claire looked from the door they had just walked through, all the way to Steve, who now looked much more dazed, staring off in her general direction, his blue-green-hazel eyes appeared glassy; like they’d been open for too long, like they’d been exhausted from numerous sleepless nights. His breaths were shallow -- so much so that she had to really squint to see the rise and fall of his shoulders, and Claire could see the faintest of bluish hues on his lips, the kind of hue that made Claire’s stomach churn like a witches brew.

“Steve..” she watches as his head lowers as if he was starting to fall into slumber, his shoulders slumped forward as he gives no answer, no acknowledgment.

“Steve!!” A shout, this time, firmer than she’d meant it to be.

This time he jumped, immediately wincing at the sudden, involuntary movement that made Claire's heart clench right away.

“What?? I’m up, I’m awake!?” He sount more annoyed than anything now; even if the sudden burst of energy clearly exhausted him more than he’d like to admit.

Well, they couldn’t just stay here like sitting ducks. Steve’s losing a lot of blood, and I’m not sure what herbs -- if any -- could help stop the blood, She thought.

She knew she was on the edge of talking to herself, as she always was when stressed, she’d done it throughout high school, did it at Raccoon City, and now she was sure she’d do it here, too.

After a few more blinks, Claire’s mind finally thought up a solution! It was … dumb, and likely would cause so many problems for Steve in the future, but it was a good solution when you were in a biohazard and had literally nothing else.

Claire remembered seeing on Steve’s prison ID card that he had blood type AB; yeah?

Well, the thing to remember about AB was that it was a universal receiver -- when it came to blood types --. If he did have AB blood, any other blood type would be able to properly mitigrate into his.

So, given all that, who’s to say she couldn’t … use the butterfly needle, syringe, and expired vacuum tubes she took from the room on rockfort with that undead analyticist?

Maybe take some of her O-type blood using the butterfly needle, connect it to the vacuum tube, get the syringe into the tube, and inject the blood into Steve’s wound? She could even use her own prison jacket as a makeshift tourniquet..

Right?

Well, it was …. Decently worth a try.

“Steve, you’re gonna have to forgive me.”

“Wha- why??- what’re you gonna d—”

“Something really, really stupid.”

He looked mildly scared now. Maybe he did have survival skills, after all..

Trudging through her satchel, Claire scrabbled a few items out; “Butterfly needle, vacuum tube, syringe… jacket.. Left luger..”

Now that the items were sprawled out on the floor (Okay, not the most sanitary, but this is prison. And a Biohazard.), Claire finally let herself concentrate; mentally going over the steps in her head; She wasn’t … exactly certified with this kind of stuff, per se.. She had taken half a course on it during high school, but even then, she barely listened..

“So.. what ‘Stupid’ thing are you … uhm.. Doing..?” His voice was small now, the bravado he’d kept tucked in the back of his throat; he trusted her, with his life, even, but he didn’t like it when she had no clue what to do. He needed her to know what to do.

“Well, It requires needles, and--”

“And you want to use me as a human pincushion.” His tone became hesitantly jovial, but it was cut off with a grimace; Claire could see his hand tremble very slightly.

“More or less,” Claire murmurs, a faint smile had begun to rear, “And somethin’ tells me you’ll happily let me?”

“I guess”

“Good boy.”

With a huff, Steve lays back, his back against the wall as he looks to the wall behind her.

Claire guessed that -- despite his bravado -- he didn’t care for needles, because his eyes stayed there, a thousand-yard-stare.

Claire quickly scurried to his side, gently taking his arm in her hand, her blue eyes trying to find the biggest vein in his arm. She didn’t necessarily need to know where it was immediately, but it was best to look for it while assembling the needle set.

Claire inhales deeply, shaking hands struggling to tie the tourniquet on herself properly,

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve's hands raise up towards her, silently offering help; but she shook her head, she couldn’t ask him to help her with it, not when he was already so weak, and certainly not as she could see his head tilted at an awkward angle, he looked too tired to keep it fully upright.

She somehow managed to get the tourniquet tightened on her arm properly, just a pointer-finger-length away from her inner elbow

‘Two inches above injection spot’

She winced at the feeling of the strange, stretchy material digging into the skin of her arm as it tightened.

‘Feel for the vein.. The tourniquet can only stay on for a minute…’

Claire picked up the opaque connector, securely screwing it to the right, unintentionally ignoring something -- probably something stupid -- Steve was in the middle of saying

She held the wings to the butterfly needle up, making sure the bevel was up

‘Fifteen-to-thirty degree angle…’

She angled the needle upwards to her vein ever so slightly; did she know whether it was the right angle? Absolutely not. No way. In no way did she know.

But she tries anyway, she carefully -- gently -- sinks the needle into her skin, wincing at the very mild sting that dripped onto her nerves.

Through lidded eyes, Claire sees the flash of red between the wings of the butterfly needle; Claire hurries to secure the vacuum tube into the holder; she was so focused on looking for a flash within the needle that she almost didn’t even react.

Her eyes raced to that vacuum tube, entranced eyes watching as her own blood slowly filled the tube, she knew she’d need a lot of blood for Steve -- though, hopefully not needing to take out enough to where she would pass out --

She …. Probably left the needle in for too long; not that she could really feel any difference.

Claire makes no effort to band-aide the spot the needle punctured, carefully pulling said needle out of her arm and discarding it to the side -- not the safest way of disposal, but this is Rockfort Island, after all. --

“Hey Steve?”

He hummed, blinking a few times before his full attention went to her.

No words needed to be said, it would be better if they weren’t, even.

“You are …. Really not going to like this next part..” Claire’s trembling voice falters the words, but Steve doesn’t seem to notice, or, if he did, he hadn’t shown it.

The taller boy took a breath, grappling for the strength to start actually speaking.

It was, at least, a minute before he finally spoke again, his voice tinted with exhaustion:

“I… Don’t think I really have a choice, do I?”

Claire couldn’t help the chuckle she let out. “Nope.. But, uhm, listen: You’re losing a lot of blood, I don’t have the right …” a pause.

“Materials, the right materials to do this right.. So I’m going to try to redneck it.”

“Redneck it??”

“...Gonna try to work with what we have and worry about it later.”

After a few seconds, he nods, “I can handle it.. We’ve been through worse, right?” Some of that bravado came rearing to front, and she sees him smile as soon as he finished the word ‘right’

Nodding back, Claire recovers some of her fallen confidence, biting the side of her bottom lip as she grabs for the syringe previously set to the side.

She grabbed the medical wrap she stole from the analyst zombie earlier in rockfort, unwrapping it so she could tightly bind Steve's injured arm in the pink wrap (“Well that’s manly” Steve grumbled, Claire couldn’t really tell if he was joking or not, so she let it go.)

“Yeah.. been through worse..”

Claire dipped the needle’s tip into the vacuum tube, pulling up the plunger until all the blood from the tube was inside the chamber of the needle, she even checked the chamber once to make sure the blood was all … well, right-looking, texture-wise, not that claire could really tell what hemolyzed blood looked like.

“This is the part I was talking about.” she forewarns.

Claire was quick to sink the needle into Steve's upper arm, figuring it was better to get it over with than settling it into the large vein -- and being careful to not hit the vein wall -- with very little struggle.

“Alllll…..lmost done..” She holds the ‘l’ phoneme, initially unintentionally as she’s so fixated on focusing, the last thing she wants is to do this wrong, to burst a vein, or cause one to collapse.

Claire wouldn’t forgive herself if she had done any of those..

She moves her thumb, pressing down on the plunger of the syringe; and setting the blood inside the chamber on the path into the younger man’s vein. Claire’s blue-hazel eyes look up steadily at Steve’s face to check for any expression, softening as she sees him wincing slightly -- likely only at the syringe--, Claire quickly apologized with a murmur.

And then, finally, once the plunger was flush against the chamber’s edge, and the chamber was devoid of blood, Claire slowly pulled the needle out of his vein and skin.

She carefully wrapped the area in the stretchy medical tape, drawing it tightly as she kept pressure on the area with her left thumb.

“Is it over..?” Steve’s voice was small, still, as if he was afraid to speak any louder.

A simple nod is all the answer Claire needs to give him, because as soon as he seems to process her movement as a response, his shoulders untense, and he’s clearly brought to some sort of ease, by the way he finally rests and leans back fully against the wall he’s laying against; he breathes heavily for a few moments until finally letting out a “thank God”.

Claire’s lips turned up into a relieved smile as she set everything aside, not bothering to clean or sanitize -- because, well, it is Rockfort Island.

Claire leaned forward, lazily allowing herself to fold into Steve’s arms, as she sighed again, in relief: enjoying how Steve’s warmth emitted from his form.

“Claire..?”

“Yeah? what’s up?”

“We … we get to rest here for a while... Right..?”

Claire paused momentarily, “Yeah.., I mean, I was just gonna lay on you and make you rest, but I guess this works too..”

She felt him shake with laughter, his arm cradling her closer.

#cross posted on ao3 #ao3 fanfic #fanfiction #burnfield #don’t steal or else i’ll apparently eat your spine #Cleve #claire redfield #steve burnside #claire redfield x Steve burnside #resident evil #rebhfun #diy blood transfusion fanfic #disclaimer #do not do this #Mentioned blood #tw blood

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