Song of choice: Heal – Tom Odell

Elise's P.O.V

It took a few moments to sink in; Minho was hurt, and badly. A lot of the crowd had already begun to run their way towards us and I was still stood there, my mouth wide open as I struggled to comprehend the gravity of the situation. I came back into reality as he let out a scream, a struggled, choked yell that forced me from my spot to his.

I was the closest to him and so I reached him first, grabbing his shoulder and trying to get him to relax.

"Minho! Minho! It's going to be okay! Okay? You're going to be fine"

He looked up at me with a mixture of pain and despair as I clawed his hands away from his ankle.

It was bad. Really bad.

Alby was beside us at this point, Thomas and the rest of the Gladers forming a circle around us.

"Get back!" Alby yelled "We need some space"

Newt was the next one to react, yelling to a group of stronger looking Gladers "Go get Gally out of the slammer! Tell him to get a wide plank of wood so we can get him off of the floor!"

"It's broken in three places" I said quietly to Alby, who looked at me confused "His ankle's broken in three places but only one fracture has pierced through the skin"

"How can you possibly know that?" he said, looking from Minho back up to me. Newt was behind him, holding his back and trying to keep him calm and still

"You need to get him one of your medics now!" I said as loudly and assertively as I could without shouting. I didn't need to stress Minho out anymore at this point.

Alby looked at me panicked.

"Your medics! You need to get him there now!"

"We don't have any medics! We don't have any medics" Alby said as Gally rushed forward to scoop Minho up onto the plank of wood, death glaring Newt but helping the screaming Runner.

"How can you not have medics in a place like this? What do you do with your injured?"

Alby didn't reply and the whole Glade seemed to go into panic mode and I knew I had to do something.

"Get him to the kitchen!" I shouted to Gally who was carrying Minho with Thomas, Newt, Zart and Winston before I ran on ahead.

I cleared a workbench beside the cook, who seemed to be alarmed by the fact that I was sweeping all manners of food onto the floor to make room for an injured Glader.

"What the hell is going on?" Frypan asked, rushing from his stove to meet me.

I didn't have to answer his questions because before I could Minho was on the kitchen worktop, already passed out from the pain. It's like somebody had flipped a switch, I wasn't panicking, I was cool, and collected, and detached myself from the situation.

"Somebody needs to get me some bandages," I said calmly to nobody in particular "They need to be sterile. No dirt please, I'm making a cast and I can't risk him getting an infection"

I remembered seeing a box of plaster in the building workshop which they used to make pottery and bowls.

"I need some of the plaster the Builders use. Somebody get me the full tub! And a bowl of water"

Thomas and Newt were staring at me in awe, watching me work methodically to assess the extent of his injuries. Everybody, including Alby seemed completely and utterly stunned.

Frypan returned from the back of his kitchen with a damp clean dishcloth and bowl of water. It was closest thing to a cold compress I could get, so I wrapped it around Minho's ankle to try and reduce any of the swelling.

"Newt, I need you to hold his leg in the air. It needs to be higher than his heart if I've got any chance of reducing the swelling".

He nodded to me and began to raise his leg in the air whilst Thomas brought me a stool and helped me to stand on it. By now the random gladers I had sent on errands were back now, each with the items I had asked for. Some of the bandages were clean but there weren't a lot of them and there were plenty of older, slightly dirty rags amongst them. I took the cleanest that I could and wrapped them tightly around Minho's ankle, physically pushing the protruding bone back into place and stopping the bleeding.

I worked in complete silence

Thomas was already mixing the powdered plaster with water, handing me the rags he had dipped in the mixture so I could wrap it around the injury as well. Soon, Minho had an entire cast around his ankle so I lowered his leg down, giving him a drink of water before, Gally and the other builders lifted him back to a bed so he could rest.

"Keep his leg elevated!" I called to them as they lifted him away "And tell me as soon as he regains consciousness okay?"

In the end I ended up sat beside him until he woke up anyway, Newt and Chuck sat beside me to keep him company.

"I'm kind of responsible for all this aren't I" I said glumly staring at Minho who was still laid limp in his bed, his foot propped up in the air. "If it wasn't for that stupid competition-"

"This is in no way your fault, if it wasn't for you he would have been a much worse state than he already is. He's a competitive shank, it's just finally caught up with him" Newt said and despite his bruised and swollen face, his smile was warm.

" Cheer up, you're a natural born runner Elise! You're so fast! If I were Alby you'd be in that maze tomorrow" Chuck said, giving me a hug.

I smiled at him but then shot round to face New, expecting a forlorn expression or for him to try and talk me out of being a runner.

"Chuck's right you know. Alby's going to promote you to being a Runner. With Minho out of action they'll be down a man"

I looked at Newt. Then I looked at Minho. Then I looked at Minho's ankle.

"I'm not going to be a Runner" I said eventually.

"What?"
"What?" Newt and Chuck said at the same time.

"I said I'm not being a Runner,"

"But but I don't understand," Newt said "You were winning the race, you've protested everyday for the chance and now you-"

"I know what I've done but you guys don't have any medics! That's insane! None of you have any idea how to deal with injuries,"

"We've never really had any main injuries, only little cuts here and there which we just left to heal naturally. If we did have an emergency, the Glader was beyond help and it was too late anyway" Newt replied.

"Still you need a medic, especially in a place like this" I said getting up to move closer to Newt "And that's where I come in"

"What's a medjack? " Chuck asked which made me laugh.

"A medic Chuck," I chuckled "Not a medjack. A medic is like a doctor, they help out in emergency's"

"O-o-h" said Chuck "That makes more sense"

Newt let out a sigh of relief and wrapped in an embrace, pulling me closer to his chest. Although I was still a little mad at him for earlier, I not only let me hug me, but I hugged him back.

"So you're not going into the maze?" He asked as if me repeating it would make it permanent.

"I'm not going into the maze Newt. At least not any time soon, I've got a job to do"

He gave me a knowing look and I pulled him back into the hug.

"Can I help you out too? Can I be a medic too Elise?" begged Chuck, his eyebrows lifting with excitement.

"Of course you can Chuck. But we're not medics. We are Medjacks"

All three of us laughed and for the first time since I arrived I felt a sense of relief. I found the place where I fit.