Forcing himself to stand, he worked the pins and needles out of his legs and walked over to the closest bed. Graves was little more than an indefinable lump; only the tuft of hair sticking out from under the covers identified him as human. Blake knelt, pulling the blankets back.
Graves was pale, his lips white and chapped. But he opened his eyes and smiled weakly.
“Hey,” his voice was raspy, and Blake grabbed the cup beside the bed, moving the straw to Grave’s lips.
“Nothing like some boiled river water to wet your whistle,” Graves said when he finished drinking.
Blake smiled. He’d enjoyed Grave’s easy sense of humor. “Always tastes like ash.”
Graves looked around the dim room. “What time is it?”
“No idea,” Blake said, setting the cup down. “Are we still using BC, or have we started using another metric? Maybe BS?”
Another smile cracked across his chapped lips. “Don’t make me laugh. I’ll pull my stitches.”
Blake sobered immediately. He’d barely gotten the stitches to hold in the first place. Pulling back the blankets further, he gently extricated what was left of Graves’ leg. He wasn’t wearing any pants, the indignities of the injured continue—but he didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Graves stiffened as Blake gingerly began palpating the stump just above his knee.
It was a mess of stitches crisscrossing over red, swollen skin. The smell hit Blake the moment he unwrapped the washcloths they’d stolen from the motel in place of gauze. The terrycloth fabric caught on the uneven ends of the wiry sutures.
Rot.
He knew it was coming. It was inevitable.
Blake stared down at the stump, hands shaking nearly as badly as the day he’d cut off Graves’ leg. Tommy had handed him the axe—the blade was rusty; bits of wood still stuck in the handle from where Phin had been using it to cut firewood. The snow hadn’t even melted from where it had settled. It made the wood cold and wet when he’d clamped down tight enough to hide his shaking.
He had to do it. He knew he did. The leg was too badly injured. Blake couldn’t stop the bleeding. No one could.Just cut it,Irving had said, his voice calm, impassive even. Like cutting off someone’s leg was an average activity. Interchangeable with dicing a banana.
Hacking off someone’s limb wasn’t easy, but it was a hell of a lot easier than sewing up the stump. Especially when you’ve only ever practiced one night after a couple of beers, and your buddy in residency thought it would be hilarious to watch you struggle.
Tommy tried to stay. He valiantly stood by Blake’s side until he had to rip the blade from Grave’s femur. It had gotten stuck in the bone and wouldn’t give. His hands slipped in the blood. Someone screamed. Alvarez had lain across Grave’s chest, face green. Beaumont was the one who caught Tommy, dragging his gagging body out of the conference room.
No one caught Blake.
Flesh squelched as he pulled the axe back. Again and again. Until blood was running down his face, chasing away the chill from the room.
Graves passed out. The morphine Blake had given him didn’t hurt. Didn’t help, either.
Pushing away the memory, Blake nodded. “You allergic to any medication?” He pushed himself up and walked toward the back of the room, where heaps of medical supplies had been piled. Anything that looked remotely helpful was hurriedly collected by the teams. Blake ignored the blankets and the Band-Aids and pulled out a tackle box. It clinked when he pried the bent lid open to see the vials of medicine lined up. The glass was frosted, but he knew what the labels said even if he didn’t know what they did.
“Don’t know,” Graves answered. He was watching Blake with half-lidded eyes. His cheeks were rosy despite the cold. “Never been hurt before. Not so much as a broken bone.”
Blake huffed and pulled out a syringe and a bottle that ended withmycin.It was the only antibiotic they had, and they only had it because Judd was allergic to Penicillin, and he recognized the name as something his doctors had given him once. He’d pocketed it on his last outing and hadn't looked to see if there was anything else. Anything more. It never even occurred to him.
From a physician’s old desk reference, Blake knew the dosage. He grabbed the vial and a clean syringe.
As he pulled up the drug, he took a moment to consider Graves. He looked like an average guy. Someone Blake wouldn’t notice if he bumped into him on the street. Just a guy who had courageously run into a crumbling building to save another, only to have his leg crushed beyond saving in thanks. Alvarez’s team found him and brought him here, where Blake had spent a day trying to save his leg.
He was used to triage. They taught him that in school—red tags, yellow tags, green tags, black tags. That wasn’t easy, but he understood it. When time mattered, you saved who you could. Notwhatyou could. Blake had never been taught how to literally differentiate between life and limb. He didn’t have the knowledge to know when or how to amputate a leg. And he sure as hell didn’t have the equipment.
They should have taken Graves further north. Toward the Pennsylvania border. They’d heard of a bigger refugee camp there. Not one of the government-created ones, but a civilian camp that probably had its shit together.
But these soldiers didn’t understand the difference between a medic and a doctor. They thought the stuff they saw on TV was real, and that paramedics and doctors were as interchangeable as brands of batteries.
Especially Gabriel. Maybe it was because he’d seen combat medics save lives or because he had some kind of unwarrantedfaith in Blake, but he’d smiled when they gave him that white coat. Kissed Blake’s cheek and called himdoc.
Ignoring the coat in the corner of the room, Blake used an old IV line from when they’d had fluids to tie off Graves’ arm and gave him the antibiotic.
He disposed of the needle in an old soda bottle. It rattled with the rest of the used needles when he set it aside. Popping the thermometer in his mouth, Blake was a little worried to see he had a fever. The oral antibiotics he’d been giving Graves were barely enough to fight off a UTI, let alone this.
