Page 64

Patch

I found her by the sound of her voice, running against the background noise of a room that had just finished being cleared. Bodies on the floor. Two men. Three. I didn’t count them. Brazil’s voice called clear from somewhere near the back doors. The logistics of containment happening around me without my participation.

Her voice ran underneath it all. Steady. Precise.

“Anterior pressure maintained. Posterior’s the one I can’t get enough on. Breathing’s fine. Somebody needs to tell me what my hands are doing because I can’t feel them anymore.”

I crossed the room in four strides. Didn’t stop at the edge. Didn’t pause.

I knelt beside her on the laminate. My knee hit hard. Her scrubs were dark with blood from hip to rib. Both hands pressed to her side. One anterior, one posterior. Her fingers were shaking.

My hand found her face. Left side. Warm. Blood on her cheek where she’d touched it and hadn’t noticed. My thumb pressed against the hinge of her jaw. Held there. The same grip I’d used the first time. Steady. Exactly the pressure needed.

Her eyes came up to mine. Brown. Wide. The clinical focus wavering for a half-second before it locked back in.

“Patch.” My name. Delivered flat. A piece of data added to the running inventory.

“Keep talking.”

She nodded. Her jaw worked under my thumb.

“Entry point left flank. Below the ribs. Anterior to posterior track. Depth variable. Superficial anteriorly, deeper posteriorly. Exit wound present.”

My fingers found the zipper on my saddlebag. Pulled. The leather gave. The kit sat inside. I hadn’t opened the kit. Not once in twenty years. Standard green plastic military surplus. The kind you bought when you needed something that would survive being dropped. My right hand moved to her scrubs. Cut the fabric without asking.

I looked at the rest of the kit. Gauze. Pressure bandage. Tourniquet. Tape. The ketamine vial at the bottom. One hundred milligrams per milliliter. I left it there. Didn’t need it. Needed the gauze.

I cut the scrubs wider. Her skin underneath was pale. The entry wound sat two inches below her left ribs. Ragged edge. Blood seeped around her fingers where she pressed. I peeled her hand back gently. Not off. Just enough to see.

“Deepest here.” Her voice had thinned. The clinical register holding but the volume dropping. Shock setting in. “Approximately an inch at the deepest point. Exit is larger. Tore more tissue.”

I packed the entry first. Gauze folded into a pad. Pressed into the wound track. She hissed. I held the pressure. Counted silently. One-one-thousand. Two. Three.

“Hold this.” I put her hand on the gauze. “Firm. Don’t lift.”

She held. Her fingers were shaking worse now. I reached behind her. Found the exit. Larger. Ragged. I packed it the same way. Gauze. Pressure. Her breathing went shallow. White around the lips.

“Pupils.” I reached for the penlight in the kit. Clicked it on. Held her jaw steady with my left hand. The light hit her right eye. Then her left. Both constricted. Slow but present. “Responsive. Equal.”

She kept talking. “Shock present. Compensating. Skin cool. Dry. Capillary refill less than three seconds distal.”

I packed more gauze. Anterior and posterior. Taped it securely with the medical tape from the kit. The tape was cheap. Left residue. Didn’t matter. Pressure mattered. I pressed both wounds with the flats of my palms. Her hands shook under mine. The tremor traveled up my arms. I held steady against it.

The verdict landed somewhere behind my sternum.

Twenty years. A kit restocked every spring and never once used. I’d hand the old supplies to Dread every year, and he’d take them without comment and use them on somebody, and neither of us ever said one word about what it meant that I kept buying more.

My hands were steady. Twenty years of not using them for this, and they still knew how.

The terror wasn’t that they might fail. It was that they wouldn’t. That they’d do the work clean, the way they were doing it now, and I’d have to go back through twenty years of standing at a gate and count up everything I’d said no to.

Her voice kept running. Lower now. Thinner. The clinical inventory continuing because stopping meant the shaking would win.

“Tell me what I’ve got.”

“You’ve got both hands full, and you’re going to keep them full.”

“That’s not a number.”