Read Online End of Manners by Francesca Marciano - Free Book Online

took turns playing the casualties. Each one wore different gear—military jackets, Afghan caps, camouflage cargo pants, turbans—and mixed them together in imaginative ways that unapologetically suggested potentially aggressive ethnic groups. They also had a variety of latex pros-theses (the sort that might be used by a special-effects crew in a horror film), which were strapped to their legs, chests, arms in order to simulate multiple fractures, stumps, gaping wounds. To add verisimilitude they also squirted jets of blood with a little pump to produce arterial hemorrhages in large quantities.
    There were different themes, all carefully staged by invisible set designers. The first one we came across was a very realistic road accident—two cars had crumpled into each other, one driver slumped over the wheel, the horn blaring, the other trapped under the seat.
    On a different occasion we stumbled upon a refugee camp where a gas-cylinder explosion had caused third-degree burns to a group of crazed and drunken militiamen (for this one the set was dressed with tents, a campfire and guns stacked against a tree). On another occasion we encountered a shoot-out at a checkpoint, and here the victims were lying facedown in the mud by the barrier, in puddles of blood.
    We were usually split up into small groups. We always ventured out with the same hesitant gait, expecting the worst. Invariably, after only a couple of minutes along the country lanes, all sorts of explosions, loud bangs and catastrophes would be sprung on us, followed by piercing screams. This was the signal that some disaster had taken place and our help was needed.
    We would run to the site of the incident, shouting (rule number one: approach only if it’s safe to do so, always announce your presence, Roger had recommended), and rush to help the victims. There was no time to determine who was the most seriously injured, or to pick the victim who presented fewer complications. It was pure chance that threw rescuer and casualty together.
    With his seasoned Viking air, Obelix was, out of all the Defenders, the one I had begun to nurse something akin to a feeling for. During our daily scenarios I’d happened to pick him as my casualty more than once and this—unknown to him—had made him strangely familiar to me.
    The day of the car accident, I rushed to the crumpled car and found my casualty slumped over the wheel, his face and hair spattered with blood, his foot planted on the accelerator. The horn was blaring and the engine was roaring, racing, lending a distressing urgency to the scene.
    It wasn’t until I approached, yelling at the top of my lungs, “I’m here, everything’s going to be all right now. I’ll get you out of there,” that I recognized him. His hair was caked with blood—clearly a head wound.
    On this particular occasion Obelix was drowsy but awake (during the exercises the Defenders had the option to decide whether to remain conscious, pass out, or die in the arms of their rescuer, depending on the gravity of their wounds and the efficiency of the rescuer’s assistance).
    “Don’t panic, this is only an exercise, try to think,” I kept repeating to myself as I felt the adrenaline pumping and panic seizing me by the throat.
    First off, I cut the engine (rule number two: check for any danger to yourself, the injured person or others around you). I grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him off the horn. He fell back against the seat, his head slumping against the headrest, and silence descended at last. I checked to see if his airway was clear and he was breathing. I also made sure that the head wound was only superficial and quickly stanched it with a bandage before the sight of all that fake blood could make me faint. Then I inspected the body for other wounds, while he kept moaning in a slurred chant that everything hurt and he was surely going to die.
    Roger had taught us that you had to feel the torso, running your hands under the