More of these mobsters already?
My head threatened to spin with the constant of violence around here. Talk about an extreme of civilization. With the rate of these Mafia men shooting up the city, they reduced New York to something like a dystopian hellscape.
“Are you kidding me?” I muttered as I hurried forward to help the two men dragging another in. Flanked by the pair of strong-looking suited men, the older guy hung his head. Short blond hair was matted with blood as he was dragged in limply, clearly unconscious.
“He was drugged and shot,” the man on the left reported. “Gunshot to his right arm.”
I nodded curtly, understanding the process of triage would be shifted here. Collecting information would end up being a broken-up and backward process, but it would have to wait.
Stabilizing a patient came first, and that was what we prioritized. With the charge nurse, an older woman instead of Fatima today, I ordered a couple of nurses and techs to assist me with getting the wounded and unconscious man wheeled into a room.
Stethoscope in hand and calling out orders to those around me to better equip me to assess this man, I worked quickly. We all did. In the systemic flurry of movements that was standard in this environment, we hustled to inventory what we were working with.
“Lots of bleeding down here,” the nurse reported, cutting away at the open gash in his pants. Torn apart from something that had cut him already, the fabric gave way and we collaborated as a team to remove his clothes to better assess his injuries.
“One of those guys handed over this,” a tech said as they joined the efforts. She dropped a baggie with a tranq dart in it. It sat on the counter of the small space, and I frowned at it.
“He was tranq’d,” the tech said. “Looks like something used on horses.”
I nodded, compressing the open wound while preparing to debride it and clean it out. Keeping my hands busy to slow the blood loss, I called out orders for blood work and labs. A tox screen would be most accurate to tell us what he was given, but I agreed with the tech. The dart was something used on horses, and I’d know it because of my childhood of riding lessons and being in the stables near vets.
For two hours, we worked on the man. He didn’t wake once, but my confidence grew that he would be fine. His vitals were tracking well. Even though he looked older, perhaps in his late forties, he was fit. Muscled. Rugged. All that taut skin and those sinewy tendons proved that this John Doe took care of himself.
But not so well that he’d avoid being shot and drugged.
I kept my judgment to myself, oddly intrigued about this man. Even though he was unconscious, a dangerous aura emanated from him. As though in sleep, he wasstilla force to be reckoned with.
Why do I feel like I’ve seen you before?
I furrowed my brow, checking his vitals and reading the lab results that had just been sent in. A nurse left the room, leaving me with the patient as he rested comfortably. Stitched up and physically set up to recover from whatever he’d endured to get here, he lay still on the bed.
His heart thumped steadily, and his respiration cycles evened out. Everything looked good in the labs. Not a single thing worried me in terms of the blood loss, any signs of infection, or anything else that could be a concern with a gunshot wound to his upper arm and what looked like a grazing of a bullet on his inner thigh.
I glanced at him, taking in another look of his masculine face, all those taut lines and sharp angles that made him seem like he’d been chiseled from stone.
You’re lucky that shot didn’t get you another inch over…
My cheeks heated up with the indecent thought. Making an offhand and inappropriate joke to myself about his not woundingthatappendage wasn’t like me. But something drew me toward this hulk of a man, this dangerous and strong patient I needed more information from.
The two men who’d brought him in had left. Without a word. Without any contact information, it was like they’d dropped him off and dumped him here.
But we needed to know more. His medical history. What happened.
Deep down, I warred with a personal curiosity that shocked me. Maybe it was just because he’d been shot with a tranq dart and was vulnerable. That could be why I was reluctant to leave his side. Or perhaps it was because he seemed like such an enigma, a stranger with no ID at all. That wish to make sure he didn’t feel alone when he woke up peeved me.
Who are you?
I lowered the tablet, satisfied with the results of the lab work. Peering at him instead, I strained to figure out why he seemed so familiar.
Was he here last week after that bombing?
Do all of them just look the same?
It wouldn’t be smart to assume anything about a man like you.
Why do I care?
Furrowing my brow, I grew uneasy with why he was intriguing me this much. I saw and met so many people in my line of work. So many different people came in and out of my life, but this man was in a league of his own.
