APPEARANCE

Westlin was a short woman, five foot even, and stocky. She had coarse black hair, kept in an 80's "page cut", a "cupid's bow mouth", a button nose, and bright blue eyes. She had C cup breasts, a military exercise physique, and was often commented to be cute. In life she was always smiling and joking and seemed emotionally attached to Bomber and Stillwater.

After her death, she often appears to Stillwater, and later, Cromwell. It is unspecified whether or not she is a real ghost or simply a figment of their imaginations. She appears, whole and solid, during one scene in Dog Days of Summer, where she appears in Tauth De Aine's glade, confesses that she had a crush on Bomber and was a virgin.

After her death she either appears in her uniform, as it was when she died, or tight Levi denim pants, a blouse, and tennis shoes (usually Nikes). She sometimes looks as if nothing is wrong with her, but her voice gurgles and whistles from her punctured lung and sucking chest wound.

If she appears in uniform, it's usually wearing her helmet, LBE, and Kevlar vest. If her Kevlar vest is open, she'll soon begin to bleed and become horrific to view. It isn't uncommon for her to exhibit the wounds that killed her while dressed in civilian clothes.

Often she'll have a bloody circle on her shirt, surrounding a hole. She'll often begin to bleed from the wound, eventually coughing up blood so it's running down her chin and out of her nose. A scrape on her right cheek from where she went face first into the pavement begins to bleed. Her face is dirty, and often the only clean spots are from tears.

Occasionally she'll have a blue face, blood down her chin, and her shirt torn open from where Stillwater and Bomber tried to save her life.

HISTORY

Westlin was killed by enemy action at Atlas in 1984 when she is shot by a sniper in her lower left lung. She drowns in her own blood, slowly suffocating as the air being pulled into her chest cavity by the sucking chest wound crushes her from inside. Instead of immediately sending out a medivac helicopter, the hospital tasked with emergency medical care for Atlas tries to insist that she be moved by vehicle, or that they wait for an ambulance. The argument lasts for nearly a half hour before they reluctantly send a helicopter. Because of the lack of urgency stressed to the helicopter crew, they take their time leaving. By the time the helicopters gets to Atlas, Westlin is only semi-conscious and has lost nearly four pints of blood. She dies on the helicopter only minutes from the hospital.

Westlin's death is something that Stillwater never gets over. He and Foster both feel tremendous guilt over her death. Nancy Nagle begins reading every medical manual she can get her hands on in order to prevent it from ever happening again.

Her death was horrible and lingering. It took the helicopter nearly a half hour to get there, the whole time Westlin was crying and coughing up blood. When the helicopter got there, Westlin was barely conscious, every breath making her cough up bloody foam. It took her a long time to die, she was horrible pain the entire time, and died terribly, pretty much in Bomber and Stillwater's arms.

She only needed 20 minutes that she never got.

Westlin is a Storm Crow, arriving when something bad is going to happen, or while something bad is going down. Strangely enough, Westlin is the one person who stays with Ant throughout the entire series, becoming his constant companion.

The only people who see her after her death are Stillwater, Cromwell, Aine McCullen, and Brianna McCullen.

At the end of Forever Damned, make sure to rewrite so that Westlin joins in on the last desperate battle, her body not vanishing, and then recovered by Aine to be buried in the family plot.