# Life of a medic



## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." he shouted as the laser shots and bullets zoomed around him

Din ran through the field trying not to get hit by more than 20 rebels not to far behind him. All the shots were landing around him or zooming past him, he was lucky nothing had hit him or that he'd been taken capture. Most of the rebels wouldn't really given a damn about an enemy medic but he was the nearest thing to that particular group. As Din clutched his field med kit he nearly tripped up as a shot went between his feet. Din ran towards the nearest group of guardsmen using some rocks for cover to keep from getting hit by stray bullets and trigger happy rebels. He ran behind the rocks and once he got there he quickly grabbed one of two bodies that were once part of the squad and started to see if they were alive. He looked at the first one and saw that a bullet had ripped through his heart which would have killed him within moments of hitting the ground.

"He's dead." one of the guardsmen yelled at him as he looked at the other body

Din looked around for anyone else in the field that needed assistance. He spied a guardsman not to far away from the group screaming and calling out to him. Din ran out from behind the rocks, nearly falling over as one of the shots bounced off his shoulder pad. As he got about half way to the wounded guardsman a stray mortar round landed in front of him knocking him back. Din quickly got up and ran towards the guardsman who was still screaming for help. As he got to the man he got on his knees and looked at the wound. He had been his by a laser blast from a lasgun, the las shot had burned through his skin, and he was screaming as tears ran down his face.

"It burns, oh emperor it burns," he screamed

Din opened his med kit and pulled out a syringe and injected him with the pain numbing drug that it contained. He then started to work on treating the wound. As he worked he was being shot at by more heretics and they seemed to keep there attention on him instead of the people shooting them. Don't they have more pressing matters to deal with? he thought as a few more shots zoomed past him. As he finished working on the wound for the time he packed up his equipment, as the rest of the guardsmen were falling back and he needed to move the wounded trooper. Din then dragged the wounded guardsman towards two guardsmen who were hiding behind a piece of what was left of a sentinel.

"Can you guys take him with you? I need to see if there are any more wounded around," Din asked as he got towards them

"Sure. Common help me drag him to the field hospital," one of them said as they each grabbed a shoulder and started to drag him away from the battle field

Din looked through the field looking for anyone else who may be wounded. As he went from body to body the number of shots at him increased as the rest of the guardsmen ran towards the field HQ to mount a better defense with heavy weapons in support, leaving him one of the few targets left. Din ran towards a pit that had been created by a mortar shell and jumped in it, inside he found a guardsman who had been shot in the gut with a bullet. Din quickly opened his med kit and filled his syringe with a pain killer drug.

"He is still alive." the guardsman groned pointing to a body in the pit as Din gave the injection

Din went over to the body and saw that shrapnel was protruding out of his chest and he didn't appear to be breathing. Din then pulled off his back pack, which had field surgeon kit printed on it, he opened it and pulled out a some scanning devices and hooked up one of them to the seemingly dead guardsman. Din looked further and tried to see what exactly was the extent of the injury with his scanner, he could tell things were not looking good for this guardsman

"He has internal bleeding and I can't move the shrapnel unless I preform surgery and I'm not qualified to do that." he said to the other guardsman

As Din packed up and put his field surgeon kit he noticed the guardsman with the shrapnel wound started to regain consciousness. Din gave him three injections of a drug to get rid of the pain before he would start to scream, he then started to lay the guardsman down on his back in the hole.

"I have given you some drugs for the pain and you should start to feel a little loopy about now, just stay hear and don't make a sound, it should be easy for the first twelve hours but you need to stay quiet," he said to the guardsman

The guardsman nodded and Din went over to the one with the bullet wound to the gut and put him over his shoulders to cary him to safety. They could all hear the rebels approaching and they needed to get out and fast. Din got out of the shell hole and started to run. A group of rebels who had been just a few yards away started to move towards him and yelling for him to stop and to surrender. Din kept running and soon saw a few lasers fly past him and prayed that nothing bad would happen.

"Stop damn it!" one of them yelled before he threw a grenade at Dint

Din kept running until he could see the base was in sight. He ran faster and harder trying to avoid being captured or killed. He ran towards the base and as it became clear that he was safe he started to slow down. Din put the guardsman down and started to help him walk the rest of the way to the base.



This is the first part of a story that I'm writing. Any comments or errors you would like to point out?


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## Nikolai (Mar 16, 2010)

Hey, I love the idea, really I do. You can take it so many places and I want to see a whole story. So I am going to comment on the things I picked up on reading it, there are a few but I don’t want you to take it too personally and be put off, okay…

We’ll talk spelling punctuation and grammar first. It’s easy stuff really. Proofread your work, use dictionaries and spell-check and thesaurus’s… all that good stuff, that’s why its there.

You tend to repeat words and phrases quite a bit and it just makes the sentences harder to read. The idea of being hit, is the worst example in your story, we understand that he is on a battlefield in the middle of a fire-fight, try not to tell use with every other line. Other big examples are words like, him, guardsmen and hit.

For the most part I just recommend reading your work back to yourself and reading it aloud. Consider if you can find other ways to say things or introduce ideas or find better/more appropriate words for your descriptions. That sort of thing really, it will make the story read more smoothly.

The big point is speech punctuation, now. Here’re the basics, normally when a character finishes speaking you use a comma and then lowercase after the speech marks. For example:

“Blah blah blah,” he said.

The same applies when question mark is used:

“Blah?” she asked.

There are only two exceptions, where speech is at the end of a paragraph. Then it’s a full stop in the speech marks. For example:

They were walking down the corridor until suddenly Name stopped saying, “Blah blah.”

And when the utterance ends with an exclamation mark, for example:

“…. oh shit!” He shouted.

Next: numbers or words? Generally words rather than numbers. There are exceptions so here it is.

Quantity = words, e.g. There are five of them.

When the number is part of a name = numbers, e.g. the 7th Armoured Brigade.

Time can be either, but the general for is, using a twelve hour clock = words, e.g. Six O’clock in the afternoon.

But the twenty four hour clock = numbers, e.g. 1800 hours.

In any other context it can be hit and miss but generally words are better.

Okay so there’s SPAG.

Two sections to cover the real content of your story, the idea and the scenario: ‘specialist knowledge & context’ and ‘general points of interest’.

General Points of Interest:

Description, use it, you have a lot of action but I don’t know this guy’s full name, what regiment he is with, whether the other Guardsmen are from the same regiment or a number of regiments, what planet they’re on, what that planet is like, the terrain the weather, what time of day is it, how do your characters feel about what they are seeing and hearing… all this kind of stuff really beefs your story out and paints a picture in the readers’ minds it is worth spending time to write it down. 

The story is about the life of a medic, but there is more to the life of any remotely human individual than their job description, so tell me about all of his life and the people in his life.

Specialist Knowledge and Context:



> He looked at the first one and saw that a bullet had ripped through his abdomen and hit his heart which would have killed him within moments of hitting the ground.


This wound could only have been caused by a bullet if that bullet was fired from bellow the man at a very sharp angle. Not likely unless the shooter was laid on the floor directly under the victim when the shot was fired or the victim was laid on his back and the shooter was prone or crouched some distance away, still not likely though. A mine, a grenade, or some similar explosion might cause such an injury but again he would have to have been standing almost directly above the explosion.

The man treated for a laser wound to the chest. The blow would have to have been glancing for the man to survive which would require him to be positioned nearly side on to the attacker, the ribs maybe, the shoulder but certainly nowhere near the centre.

The reason being that lasers fire highly focused energy of light and heat, chances are the wound would cauterise instantly so there would be no bleeding and if it when through the centre of the chest then it would almost certainly go through organs as well as the skin.



> Din opened his med kit and pulled out a syringe and injected him with the pain numbing drug that it contained.


Surely being a medic he knows the name of this drug, and since you are giving us his perspective, you should too really.

You have guys dragged around a lot, I aren’t saying that sometimes it would be necessary to move people like this. But you have to be very careful about whom you go dragging around, especially with people who are injured, you may make their condition worse and it is actually harder to drag than carry because of your posture.

Now the last section, part of this is specialist knowledge the other part is realism and my own opinion.

The first man has been shot in the gut with a solid slug, he is almost definitely bleeding internally; pretty much from the moment he was shot he had about half an hour. He needs immediate and intensive care that a simple field medic wouldn’t have the equipment to deal with. He is however the most likely of the two to survive.

The second man has shrapnel embedded in his chest, from your description probably at least one of his lungs has been punctured, basically he is a goner. As a field medic your man’s job is triage not surgery. He decides who can be saved and who can’t, this man can’t. He wouldn’t waste resources on him. This makes an excellent opportunity for you to put in some really emotional writing.

Now the part that is my own opinion: They are Imperial Guardsmen, they are fighting Heretics who have turned their faces from the Emperor. The enemy are advancing on your position, you can only save one of the two men you are treating. As a human being, would you leave a living friend at their mercy? Wouldn’t even euthanasia be preferable? Issues like that would be a great addition to your piece. Think about the nature of the 40k universe and the situation your characters are in. 

Like I said I really did love the piece, I think you can make a lot of it. Hope you don’t think I’ve been too harsh. Rep mate.


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## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

This is why I'm only good at making story lines.


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## waltzmelancholy_07 (Sep 30, 2008)

Well I was skeptical at first but you know your stuff...

Overkill in the tips and advice though...

Helpful nonetheless...

Cheers!....


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## Nikolai (Mar 16, 2010)

snarst said:


> This is why I'm only good at making story lines.


Hey, no worries, I started out that way, it took me ages just to find an idea I had the ability to finish. This is good, sorry if I went overboard, don't take it personally. I want to see this finished because it is a fantastic idea, research and a little planning and cosideration, that's it. You'll pick up once you get into the flow of it mate.


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## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

Ok first I'm going to start fixing the first post the next part should be posted next weekend. I dont know how quick I will be at fixing the first one.


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## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

OK this part is more dealing with his personal history.

After Din got the wounded man to the medical bay he started to think if he had made the right choice. The man he had left in the shell hole was going to live for who knew how long before he died. He had wondered if he could have killed him, that would have kept him from becoming a prisoner of war to be tortured or pressed for information before his death. He could have overdosed him, shot him with a lasgun if one of the two hadn't lost their own. He had to forget him because he couldnt do anything for him now, he was at the mercy of the emperor. He continued to walk down the halls towards to entrance and get ready for any push the rebles made on the base that had been set up by the imperial's just a few days ago. The base was a big metal building set at the end of a field and it's back came to rest on the wall of a small mountain with a landing pad on the top to take supplies and some fresh troops while at the sides of it were a plasma generator and some barracks acting as bunkers. At the other end of the field was the edge of a hill overlooking a road to the capital of the planet which had been lost a few days ago, this was the nearest outpost from the capital of the planet Luengin which had rebelled because of dissent within the government and the population, while most top government officials had remained loyal and called for help the planet was tearing itself apart with about half the planet's population supporting the rebellion and the other half fighting in heated battles with most of the planets PDF and other rebels.As Din exited he found an officer right in front of him who was organizing men into fire teams, he was a tall man with brown hair wearing the regimental standard issue green uniform. 

"Name, rank, unit," he asked Din.

"Din Rarter, 1st meidcal officer of-"

"Just get in a trench and try not to get hit," he told him before moving on to another solider.

Din got into the trench system that had clearly been dug not to long ago as a response to the rebels making a push onto their position. As he got settled his mind wandered to life back home, he had not seen it in months and he would never see it again, nor any of his friends. The day he was drafted was the worst day of his life, his father was sick and needed help with money and worst of all he had not wanted to have anything to do with war or the people that involved in it. The had joined the medical corps because he never wanted to get involved in direct combat, he had made a good choice because he was a very bad shot and he found he was not good at killing anything. His home world was Barchona, a small civilized planet that had fields, cities and farms and had a lot of wild life, a world that Din had enjoyed growing up on. His parents were middle class workers who lived in a town in the country side and worked in the nearest city, Anchor. He had loved playing hide and go seek in the fields with his friends, he remembered he and his best friend had once hid atop a small hill and lay their bellies on the ground so the tall grass would hide them and all day and nobody could find them. The best part was that they would call out the names of their friends who were looking for them and they would come running near the sight but they could never figure out where they were and he and his best friend Brentil would laugh quietly and when they all left the area they called their names again until all their friends had given up after hours of looking.

He gave a sigh and smiled as he remembered his childhood on Barchona, his mind then drifted towards his first love, Stasha who he had been with the night before he left for training. She was one mean girl but she could be sweet when she wanted, to the day they met was at school and she was gotten into an argument of weather or not she could play with them and she gave him a black eye and two of his friends had also learned not to mess with her. It wasn't till they were teens that they had been close friends but they never got that close until Din was going away, maybe she wanted to just give him a gift to remember her by before he went off to his death. It didn't mater to him, what did mater was that this was his life was over and he had no hope of going home but at least he had memories, something to hold on to. Din was very isolated and never made any friends in the guards as of yet, he didn't want to get attached to dead men, they were all dead in his eyes and he was one of them.

"Hear they come!" shouted the lieutenant as he looked through his binoculars

Din got up and looked over the trench and saw the rebels approaching with an officer leading the way. He was like the other rebels, wearing a black uniform saying "independence army" on it's chest plate but his gold shoulder pads and well dress appearance with a helmet with a skull on it showing he was an officer, but in truth Din could only see the gold shoulder pads at that distance. He stopped and gave and order for his men to stop and hold position.

"Brave soldiers of the imperial guard! I you have fought well and with bravery, but now you are out numbered and have no place to go! If you wish to surrender, then you may, we will be taking prisoners!" he announced to them as loudly as he could

"Would you like to give them our answers?" the lieutenant asked an auto cannon gunner

"Gladly." the gunner said with a smile before firing at the crowd of rebels along with all the other heavy weapons teams

Din then got down and started to move through the trench system to the forward trench where there would most likely be the first casualties. As he got to the front trench the heavy bolters opened up on the rebels as they got closer. As Din looked over the trench he saw rebels advancing and three tanks were starting to move up in support and mortars were landing around the tanks in a futile attempt to do some damage to them.

"Are you a field surgeon?" Din heard from behind him

"What? No not yet, I just keep some stuff in this, one of the doctors is teaching me how to treat people and I hope that I can be a field surgeon soon." he told a guardsman behind him

A field surgeon was not very common because a medic was more effective and their wasn't much call for field surgery because you could usually stabilize a wounded man and just get him to a medical bay if he wasn't going to die.. Din had wanted to become a proper doctor but until he learned otherwise he was going to be a medic and maybe for a long time and maybe just a medic until whatever end waited for him.


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## Nikolai (Mar 16, 2010)

Even between these two short pieces it's easy to see an improvement. You are starting to think of your character as more than just a name and a job that's good and hopefully we'll get to know him pretty well. All I advise is more of the same, really. Your style will develop on its own as you write more.

The only thing I will advise against is something called "information dumping" this is were you use large paragraphs to talk about a number of different things or alternatively to talk about a single thing in great detail.

These kind of paragraphs are a little hard one the eyes.

So I would suggest, in fututre, just breaking them up, as a rule if you are moving to a new subject use a new paragraph.

For example, in the fifth paragraph. You talk about the Trenches, the day he signed up, his family and his best friend all in one go.

There is a lot of good information here but it could do to be broken up a bit and with each piece being given a fuller descripiton. It will fill out the story and make it easier to read.

Beyond that, proof-reading, there are quite a lot of little grammar and spelling errors. A re-read would catch the majority of them because they are simple typos.

A good improvement. I look forward to reading the rest.


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## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

OK thanks for the advice. I have been trying to get Microsoft word on my laptop so I can use that instead of word pad, which had no spell check. I cant tell you have stupid it is to have this list of words that I don't catch until I am about to post the damn part of the story.

As for "information dumping", I will try not to go to far on the descriptions. I have really never been good at telling stories and when I look at others they always have these big paragraphs so I always felt substandard in my descriptions.


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## snarst (Aug 22, 2009)

Ok before you yell at me I was in the hospital and I have been trying to keep up with school and turning late work. The thread is not dead yet. (unless no one is reading)

Din moved from the right to the left side of the trench, which was not a good idea because that put him closer to the tanks that were heading towards them. As he moved towards the left side of the trench he passed several guardsmen on firing steps and some soldiers sitting doing things from eating a ration bar, panicking to trying to get hold of someone on the voxcaster. The rest of the regiment was some place else and they had very limited communications because of the rebels interfering with their broadcasts. The guardsmen on the firing steps had started firing their lasguns and grenade launchers at the rebels who were starting to get close. Though their advance was swift the heavy weapons had forced many to run from obstacle to obstacle or get mowed down. The enemy tanks were also advancing and acting as a wall for troops advancing from the left while taking most of the hail of fire without any damage. Din reached the left side of the forward trench as some rebel soldiers had gotten close enough to attempted to return fire to the guardsmen on the firing steps. Din looked out at the rebel army heading towards them he started to realize that this might just be that last battle he saw. They were outnumbered and surrounded while the rebels had tanks. It wouldn't be long before they breached the trenches and then pushed them back to the HQ and then capture or demolish the building.

Din saw a guardsman jump off the firing step and started screaming for everyone to be ready and that the rebels were about to breach the first trench. As he got back up on to the firing step a laser hit his face killing him instantly. Din quickly started to move towards the right side of the trench where the path leading to the rest of the system was located, wanting to have an escape root. As he moved rebels jumped into the trenches and started to fight hand to hand with the guardsmen, some of them were just people that had just been supporters who had been given a weapon and thrown at them while others were ex-PDF troopers in their new uniform. As the hand to hand fighting started to overtake the trench more rebels were free to jump in without taking any fire from the front trench.

Din tried to move without getting involved with the fighting but everyone was within inches of him and even wrestling with each other if not stabbing or shooting each other at point blank. As Din moved towards to trench passage way a rebel soldier tackled him and before he knew what hit him he was on his back. The rebel had a knife in his hands and was trying to stab him, Din reacted as quickly as he could to what had happened and grabbed the rebel's hand that was holding the knife to keep him from stabbing him while he used his left hand to cover the rebels face as much as he could. The struggle didn't stay in that spot as in just a few seconds they started to role and Din found himself on top, then the rebel on top, then Din, then the rebel, then Din, then the rebel then Din once again but that time they stopped rolling. At that moment Din kneed the rebel in the shin but only got a grunt, before being bitten in the hand as a response. As Din screamed in pain the rebel shoved Din off and got on top of him while he held Din's left hand down and simply overpowered him and the blade began to slowly fall towards his chest.

"No, please." Din pleaded with the rebel as the knife got closer to his chest

The rebel shoved the knife closer to his chest but before he could penetrate his chest Din gave out a yell and with every last bit of energy he had he lifted the knife away. The rebel punched Din to make him yeald, the first punch stunned him but his arm wouldn't let the rebel thrust his knife into him while the second punch knocked his head into the Dirt. After the second punch hit Din, he used his free hand to punch the rebel and ended up hitting him in the upper groin. The rebel stopped for a second with a yelp and Din the elbowed him in the face, causing the rebel to fall back with blood gushing from his nose. Din jumped on the rebel and started to push the knife the rebel was still holding towards his own chest. The rebel found himself on the other side of the fence as Din was now the one pushing the knife at him.

"No, please. I have family. I have children." he shouted in gothic

Din glanced at his hand and saw a ring, and empathy entered his mind. Din had yet to stop thinking of the enemy as human, in short he might have been a pacifist if the universe wasn't such a slaughter house and his religion demanded the death of heretics. Din punched rebel several times again and again until he seemed unconscious and then fell over exhausted and started gasping for breath. Within moments the rebel jumped on him and once again tried to kill him with a knife. The rebel put the knife on Din's throat and put his other hand on Din's mouth.

"I'm sorry." he said before a stray laser hit his arm allowing Din to push him of him and jump on top as a result of the

"No I want to live!!" he screamed as Din grabbed his knife from him

"So do I!" Din shouted back before stabbing him several times in the face


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