'The Hunger Games' Helps Gloucester Girl Save Friend's Life
GLOUCESTER (CBS) – A passage from the popular book series "The Hunger Games" stuck with a Gloucester girl and helped turn her into a real-life Katniss Everdeen.
Mackenzie George was with her friends when she suffered a gash in her left leg that would take 48 stitches to close.
"I was really in shock," Mackenzie said.
In shock and bleeding profusely until 12-year-old Megan Gething turned a pair of denim shorts into a lifesaver.
"I tied it around the wound as a tourniquet," Megan said.
It was a sixth grade, birthday sleepover when the girls ventured out into the marsh behind the home. Things were fine until Mackenzie slipped on a muddy bank and hit a rusty old chunk of metal hidden below the water.
"I thought I just like hit it on something and I was like 'oh what the heck is that' so I pull it up and it's like a big gash on my leg," said Mackenzie.
There was momentary panic until Megan recalled a tourniquet she'd once seen.
"I knew how to do it from a book called 'The Hunger Games,'" Megan said.
That's right, she thought of the book-turned-movie hit "The Hunger Games" where Katniss ties a tourniquet on Peeta. Megan was foggy on the details but got the job done.
"Eventually I presumed it stopped the bleeding," Megan said.
It did just as the other girls summoned neighbors and called 911.
"I'm just thankful that she stopped the bleeding because otherwise it would have been way worse," said Mackenzie.
Doctors who closed the wound at Children's Hospital expect a full recovery.
"To see that level of response and heroism in a 12-year-old girl is just unheard of we're very proud of her," Mackenzie's father Gregory George said.
Heroism borrowed from a bestseller and which delivered a simple lesson to this young victim.
"Don't swim in a marsh," Mackenzie said.
