A 12-year-old girl is being hailed as a hero after she used a first aid technique that she learned from reading The Hunger Games series to help treat her friend's leg injury.

Megan Gething, Mackenzie George, and several of their other friends were playing in a Gloucester, Massachusetts marsh on Saturday morning when Mackenzie slipped through the mud and slashed her leg open on a piece of steel.

Remembering a scene in the Suzanne Collins novel, Megan quickly requested a pair of her friend's shorts so she could tie a tourniquet on Mackenzie's leg. As she applied pressure on the tourniquet, she calmly told one of the other teens to run and get help.

"I knew it from a book I read," she told the Gloucester Times, referencing the young adult book series. "I figured it was a well-known method of stopping bleeding."

Mackenzie's family members arrived a few minutes later and carried the injured youth back to their home where she was taken to the local hospital. She then underwent surgery to make sure that there was no bacteria in the wound. Since the injury caused no nerve or muscle damage, Mackenzie is expected to make a full recovery by the end of the month.

Paramedics say that the situation could have been much worse if Mackenzie had continued to lose blood - and it's all thanks to Megan's quick-thinking under pressure.

"Megan was the star of the show. Thank goodness she was there. Mackenzie would have lost a lot more blood, and it could have been life-threatening if she hadn't done what she did," the youth's father told the Gloucester Times.

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