Rue
Iswore as Gary hit a pothole hard enough to jar everything in the back of the ambulance, including myself and the patient I was working on. It’s not like his kidneys needed to stay in his body anyway. It was only the kind of situation where I could use a second set of hands, but it was just him and me until we got to the hospital. I’d just have to make do.
Placing the oxygen mask over the kid’s face with one hand, I kept the other pressed firmly to his chest. If I let the gauze pads go, he was going to bleed all over the ambulance and he’d die before we even got there.
I swore as blood soaked through the stack of gauze. The pressure wasn’t going to be enough. “How long Gary?” I barked out the question so he could hear me up front.
“Ten minutes out,” he called back.
“He’s not going to make it that long.” I shuffled around through my supplies and pulled a bag with packets of hemostatic agents out. Using my teeth and clean glove I opened the bag, then the packet. I couldn’t tourniquet his damn chest and I couldn’t control the blood flow from pressure alone. I usually left this for a last resort, but this was one of those times.
Removing my bloody glove from the kid’s chest, I poured the clotting agent directly into the stab wound. It was gnarly to look at. Someone hadn’t just stabbed this kid. They’d stabbed and rotated the blade. It was more like a hole than a slash. They’d used a big damn knife, too. Whoever had gone after him had been trying to kill him. They still might succeed.
I’d do my best to see they failed, but sometimes that wasn’t good enough. Shoving new gauze back onto the wound, I pressed down again. Between the two if I could keep the rest of his blood inside his body then he might stand a chance.
The kid’s breathing was shallow and strained. Not surprising considering how much pressure I was putting directly over his chest, but also the severity of the wound. I was doing my best to keep an eye on his vitals, but that was difficult to do with one damn hand.
“Time?”
“Almost there!”
Gary must have stepped on it ‘cause it hadn’t been more than six or seven minutes. But that was what happened when you worked together as long as we had. When I said the patient may not make it, he believed me and did as much as he could to get us there in time.
I swore and reached out to steady myself on the wall of the van as Gary squealed the vehicle to a stop. He opened the back doors and we got the gurney onto the pavement.
From there it was a mad dash to get this kid into the doctors’ hands and pass over all need to know information. It lasted a few minutes, but felt more like seconds.
“Good job,” Gary said, patting my shoulder as we watched them wheel the guy into an operating room. “Probably saved his life.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. He’d lost so much blood before we’d even gotten there. Yet again, an unknown kid, lying on the ground bleeding out. No one was willing to talk to us or the cops who’d been there. He didn’t have any identification on him. And he’d been found only a block away from where I’d confronted Ryan a couple months ago.
“You okay?” Gary asked, brown eyes worried as he watched me. “I know it’s tough getting calls from that neighborhood-”
“I’m okay,” I said, raising my hand to touch him, to reassure him. I stopped when I saw the blood smeared all over my glove. “I’m going to go wash up,” I told him.
“Shift’s almost over,” he said. “Take your time. Next crew will be here in five, then we can go home.”
Nodding, I headed toward the locker room, mind flashing between the kid in the OR and my brother. I was so damn tired of this. There were a lot of homeless people, and plenty of them were kids, in Phoenix. I didn’t know what the connection between them and Rhino was, but my gut told me there was one. I just couldn’t see it yet.
Dropping the dirty gloves into a biohazard trash can, I washed my hands in the sink as I stared at myself in the mirror. The black eye was only now starting to fade, six days later.
I’d been sloppy, getting caught by Rhino. I was very aware of how lucky I’d been to get away. Normally, if I thought there’d be trouble I went with syringes full of drugs that would knock out a big fucker like Rhino. And a gun, not just my knife. Not that night.
That’s not happening again.
I couldn’t allow it to or I’d end up dead. I wasn’t an idiot. Fighting my way out of a situation like the other night wasn’t something I could do. Sure, I could throw a punch, but against a guy Rhino’s size? Good way to break my hand. I had no hope. Hell, I would’ve struggled with just the second guy. I was five-nine and fit, but I wasn’t strong enough to take on even most average men. That was why I always evened the odds.
But the tracker I’d put on Teddy had started moving far sooner than I expected and I hadn’t grabbed my bag from my locker. I’d run off without it in my haste to catch up with my target. Stupid. It was a stupid mistake.
I bumped into Gary one last time before heading to my car and made a lame attempt to lighten the mood.
“I swear you always exaggerate to me how long we have to get to the hospital just to make yourself look good.”
“Well, yeah, obviously. I learned that trick from Scotty.” He beamed.
“Scotty?”
“From Star Trek. He’s a miracle worker.” He rolled his eyes. “He always exaggerates his repair times so that when he gets them done early everyone thinks he’s amazing.”
