My nursing instincts are screaming at me to move. My terror for Luca is screaming at me to stay put. For about five seconds, the two impulses war with each other while I watch that man’s blood pool wider and wider on the ancient stone.
Then I make a decision and move. It’s not a wise or conscious one, but my body just goes, crawling on my belly through debris and broken glass, keeping as low as possible while bullets tear through the air above my head. Something sharp slices my palm and I barely notice. Something else catches my knee and I ignore it.
The wounded man sees me coming and his eyes go wide. He’s young, maybe twenty-five, with a face that’s already going grey from blood loss.
“Don’t move,” I tell him, my voice coming out steadier than I feel. “I’m a nurse. I’m going to help you.”
“My leg?—”
“I know. I can see it.” I’m already pressing both hands against the wound, feeling the hot slick of his blood between my fingers. The pressure makes him scream but I don’t let up. “What’s your name?”
“T-Tony.”
“Okay, Tony. I need you to stay awake for me. Can you do that?”
He nods, teeth gritted, tears running down his face.
I look around for something to use as a tourniquet and realize I’m wearing a belt. Perfect. I yank it off with one hand while keeping pressure with the other, then wrap it around his thigh above the wound and pull it as tight as I can physically manage.
Tony screams again. I ignore it.
“That’s good,” I tell him, watching the spurting slow to a trickle. “That’s really good. You’re doing great.”
“Am I gonna die?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
A bullet chips the stone about two feet from my head and I flinch so hard I almost lose my grip on the tourniquet. But I persist.
“You need to keep pressure on this,” I tell Tony, guiding his hands to the wound. “Press hard. Don’t let it go no matter what.”
“Where are you going?”
“There’s another one.”
Another wounded man, crawling toward me through the chaos, dragging a leg that’s bent at an angle. Legs shouldn’t bend like that. He’s broken a femur, I’m guessing. Either way, he’s not going to make it far on his own.
I crawl to meet him, glass breaking under my knees. Blood that isn’t mine soaks into my clothes. When I reach him, I can see he’s older than Tony. Maybe forty with a wedding ring on his left hand.
“Hey,” I say, trying to sound calm even though my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. “I’m Scarlett. I’m going to help you.”
“My leg’s fucked,” he gasps.
“Yeah, I can see that. What’s your name?”
“Dom.”
“Okay, Tony. I need to stabilize that leg before you can move. This is going to hurt.”
“Already hurts.”
“It’s going to hurt more. But you’re going to live, and that’s what matters.”
I find a piece of broken pew that’s roughly the right length and use strips torn from my jacket to bind his leg to it. Makeshift splint. Not pretty, not what I’d do in a hospital with proper equipment and a trauma team backing me up, but it’ll keep the bone from shifting and slicing through his femoral artery.
Dom passes out halfway through, and it’s probably for the best. I check his pulse, and find it weak but present, and I move on.
The next ten minutes are a blur of blood and screaming and desperate medical improvisation to help the men risking their lives to save my son’s.
