Blood Will Tell (3 page)

The young man was pacing back and forth on the side of the road. “She just ran out! Right in front of me! Where did she come from?”

Nick stumbled down into the ditch. He put his hands on the girl's boot. “We've got to get the bone to go back in.” He started to lift her foot, and the girl screamed right in Ruby's ear.

“No!” Ruby and Dimitri yelled at the same time.

Nick dropped it. She screamed again, but not as loud.

“The bone could be corking the wound,” Ruby said rapidly. “If you try to push it back in, she could bleed out—and you could do even more damage.” Should she be saying all this in front of the girl, now that she seemed to be conscious?

“Nick, please hold the C-spine.” Dimitri meant the cervical spine. He clambered down next to them. “Ruby, get a bandage from your pack. We need to stop this bleeding. Do not press on the place of the fracture, but above.”

“I know,” Ruby interrupted him, already ripping open a sterile bandage. “I'll try to find the femoral artery.” The femoral ran down the inside front of the leg. She was careful not to touch the wound. Even breathing on it could cause infection. She pressed above the tear in the girl's pants. Under her touch, Mariana began to squirm. Nick was on his belly, propped on his elbows and cradling her head with his palms, but he would be no match if the girl kept moving.

“Mariana,” she said, leaning closer. “It will be okay, but you need to stay absolutely still.” If the bone fragments got moved around, they could cut her. “So stay still, okay? Do you hear me?”

The girl's eyes were still closed. In the light of Ruby's headlamp, her lips had a bluish tinge. But then she made the slightest of nods.

“I am checking for the other life threats.” Dimitri ran his hands lightly over the girl's head, neck, and then her arms and other leg. She flinched a little at his touch, but Ruby kept murmuring to her that it was okay. And then Dimitri nodded and Ruby knew it really might be, except for the broken bone.

Nick was still holding the C-spine. His face was nearly as white and clammy as the little girl's.

It seemed to take forever, but it was only a few more minutes before two EMTs were sliding down into the ditch to join them. While one wrapped her in a cervical collar, Nick took hold of the girl's hand, murmuring everything would be all right. He only relinquished it when the other paramedic clipped a plastic oximeter to the girl's finger.

“The patient is seven-year-old Mariana Chavez,” Ruby told the EMTs as they worked. “Her pulse is 120 and thready. She has a compound fracture of the right femur, but no other observed injuries. We've been holding her C-spine since about thirty seconds after the accident.”

Her words were met by nods and a few puzzled looks.

But Ruby was used to that.

 

CHAPTER 7

LUCY

SUNDAY

EMPTY HANDS

“Wait! Lucy! Wait!”

Ignoring Cooper's shouts, Lucy somehow managed to make it down the three steps of the Last Exit's porch. It was hard to focus through her tears.

Just as she reached the sidewalk, he grabbed her arm and pulled her around. People from the bar had spilled out onto the porch and were watching them. Including Jasmine, who was dabbing at her coat with a handful of paper napkins.

“Just talk to me, Lucy!” Cooper's lips were pulled back. For a moment, she wondered if she should be afraid.

“You okay, miss?” a man's voice called out. Cooper threw a glance over his shoulder and then let go.

“I'm okay. Thank you!” she said, eager for everyone to leave them alone.

Looking as embarrassed by the whole scene as Lucy was, a young guy hurried down the steps and past them.

She turned back to Cooper and lowered her voice. “Why should I talk to you?” She couldn't stand the thought that her biggest humiliation was being witnessed by a dozen strangers. A dozen strangers and Jasmine, which made it even worse. She felt coldly sober now, not the least bit fuzzy. Everything felt sharp but also far away. “There's nothing to say. You're supposed to be
my
boyfriend. Instead you're in some bar kissing
her
.” She wasn't going to say Jasmine's name.

“Look, it was nothing. It was, like, an accident.” Cooper's beer-soaked head steamed in the cold, little tendrils of fog drifting up in the glow of the streetlamp.

“An accident!” Lucy hissed. “Don't give me that. It didn't even look like your guys' first kiss.”

“It's because you won't move in with me.” Cooper's voice was low and urgent.

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“I just wanted to make you jealous.”

She found the flaw in his argument. “And just how was that supposed to work if I never found out?”

“Everyone who comes here is a big gossip. You would have heard.”

“That's ridiculous,” Lucy said, wondering if his version of the event could possibly be true. “I'm going home now.”

Cooper put his hand on her wrist and leaned close. Despite herself, Lucy still felt a flash of desire.

“Let me come with you.”

“No!”

Heels clacked down the stairs as Jasmine joined them. “Cooper's the one who brought
me
here,” she told Lucy. “This wasn't my idea. It was his. He's been asking to go out with me for weeks.”

“That's not true!” Cooper protested.

Lucy didn't wait to hear any more. She turned on her heel and set off at a determined pace, her head held high. But as she walked, her courage and strength began to leak away. The cold crawled up her sleeves and wrapped around her neck like a muffler. She must have left her scarf at the bar. Along with everything else. Her happiness. Her so-called boyfriend. Her blissful ignorance. She was crying in earnest now.

Her head was a balloon, and her feet didn't belong to her. It was hard to walk when you couldn't see through your tears. As she crossed the street, an old pickup had to stop short, but she barely saw it. A minute later, Lucy's foot slipped on a skim of ice that had glazed a puddle.

“Are you okay?”

She started and turned. A guy. She hadn't even heard him pull up across the street. He had just gotten out of the pickup that had narrowly missed her.

He lifted his empty hands in the air, palms toward her. “Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. It's just that I heard you crying. Is everything all right?”

“I'm fine.” With a sodden mitten, she swiped at her nose.

“Pardon me for saying so, but you don't look fine.”

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, she just shook her head.

“Can I call you a cab?”

She shook her head again, tears blinding her eyes.

He leaned into his truck and came up with a roll of white paper towels. Holding it ahead of him, he crossed the street. “Sorry I don't have a handkerchief. But how about a paper towel?”

The ridiculousness of it made Lucy half smile.

He stepped closer.

 

CHAPTER 8

ALEXIS

SUNDAY

AN OPEN WOUND

Alexis hurried over as Nick and Ruby climbed out of a police cruiser holding their backpacks. “Are you guys okay?” she asked as the cop pulled away from the apartment's parking lot.

She hadn't seen the accident or the aftermath, but all of them had heard it. Unlike a wilderness rescue, when only Base heard everything, tonight the teams had been close enough to catch each other's transmissions. Close enough to hear the wailing sirens of the ambulance and police cars when things went terribly wrong.

Alexis's team hadn't even made it back to Base before the ambulance had done a scoop and run. The guy who'd hit Mariana had also been taken to the hospital for blood tests to see if he'd been drunk or drugged. But it sounded like it had just been a terrible accident.

At her question, Nick shrugged, but his too-wide eyes, shiny in the glow of the streetlight, gave him away. “It was a little gory, but we handled it. Dimitri stayed behind to talk to the cops.”

“At least we didn't have to use the ten-code for a deceased subject,” Ruby said. The only clue that she had been affected by events was how fast she was chewing her gum. Deaths were one of the few times SAR didn't transmit in plain English. The families of the missing usually hung out around Base, meaning they were often within earshot of a radio.

From behind Alexis, Mitchell demanded, “How in the heck did you guys let a subject get hit by a vehicle? We're going to have to do a boatload of paperwork to explain it!” Even though he had been team leader for only a few weeks, Mitchell was fully invested in the role. He was an Eagle Scout who wanted to be a cop.

“There wasn't any time to react,” Ruby said as she stripped off her purple vinyl gloves.

Mitchell's eyes went from her hands to Nick's bare ones. “Nick, where are
your
gloves? Please tell me you were wearing them on scene.”

Nick winced. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“Let me see your hands.” Mitchell's tone was exasperated as he turned on his headlamp and leaned close. “If you have an open wound, then you just got exposed to a biohazard.”

“I didn't get any blood on me.” Nick held out his hands. They trembled in the beam of light. He made a show of shivering as if he were cold.

Mitchell pointed to the sleeve of his parka. “What are those wet spots?”

He hesitated. “Vomit. Um, my vomit.”

“It
was
pretty gross,” Ruby said. “Compound fracture.”

Alexis was very glad she hadn't been on scene.

Mitchell blew air out of pursed lips. “That is
so
against protocol. We're going to have to debrief tonight.”

Ruby stepped in front of Nick. “His skin appears intact, which means his risk is very low. Especially given that the victim is a seven-year-old girl, which means she's probably not infected with hepatitis or HIV. And it's not like he suffered a percutaneous injury with a large, hollow-bore needle.”

Alexis nodded at Ruby's words, even though part of her was thinking:
Who even talks like that?

*   *   *

An hour later, everyone who had responded to the callout was seated in a circle at the sheriff's office, listening to Dimitri try to explain what had happened.

“The girl, she hid in bushes.” Dimitri was rolling his
R
s and hacking up his
H
s even more than usual.

As he sought the right words, Alexis shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Jon had said this was an informal debrief. Still, a lot of people looked tense, and Jon had begun by saying there would be a chaplain available to talk to them. Search and Rescue was supposed to help people. To find an uninjured subject and then see her get hurt while she was being rescued was unheard of.

Dimitri slowed as he sought the words. “First we saw a cat. Then Nick saw girl and called out. Before we realize what was happening, she ran to us.”

Alexis had volunteered for SAR because she was determined to have a better life, a life that didn't include food stamps, thrift store clothes, and Medicaid. To do that, she had to go to college. But her guidance counselor had said that if she wanted to snag a scholarship, being poor wasn't enough, not when her grades were unexceptional Bs. Alexis needed something to make herself stand out. And it wasn't like she was a left-handed bassoon player.

So she had joined SAR and then promptly regretted it. Sure, the outdoors was pretty, but not so pretty when you were freezing and your thrift store boots were rubbing your heels raw. Not so pretty when you were crawling inch by slow inch through a muddy field, looking for evidence the cops thought a bad guy might have discarded. Plus there had turned out to be a lot more math than she had expected.

But when Alexis had helped find a hiker lost in the mountains, her feelings had done a 180. The guy—his name was George—had been on the verge of hypothermia. If SAR hadn't found him, he could have died. When George had hugged Alexis, pressing his wet, cold cheek against hers, she had realized it was all worth it.

Now Dimitri made the fingers of one hand run in midair. “At the same time, the pickup came around corner”—he balled his other hand into a fist and bumped it into the running fingers—“and hit girl. Her leg, it was broken. Nick held C-spine, Ruby stopped bleeding, and I checked the life threats.”

Jon held up one hand. “And who was responsible for stopping traffic?”

Dimitri, Nick, and Ruby just looked at one another.

Jon spoke into the silence, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Your first responsibility is your own safety.”

Nick kicked the carpet with the toe of his boot. “But it all happened so fast.”

“I'm sure it did.” Jon leaned forward. “The adrenaline rush usually makes people forget step one, which is”—he turned to Dimitri—“what?”

“Scene safety.” Dimitri looked down at his hands. His fist was still bumping into his two fingers.

“That's right. Our first instinct is to save. That's why we're all here. When you see something go down in front of you, you want to help, so you dive right in. But if we don't take steps to keep ourselves safe, then things could get a lot worse instead of better. We're just lucky we didn't end up with four injured people instead of one.” He looked at Ruby. “And what's step two after scene safety?”

Ruby straightened up. “PPE. Personal protective equipment.”

“Right.” Jon looked around the circle. “We'll be talking about this more on Wednesday, but we need to make sure that gloving up is second nature.” Nick's shoulders rose, as if he was waiting to be yelled at.

Instead, Jon said, “This is a learning experience. For all of us. Over the next few days, we'll be looking at what we did right and what we could have done better. What happened today, a subject getting hurt, was very unusual. Thankfully we are hearing from the hospital that the girl should recover fully. Still, we want to make sure everyone is feeling okay. We don't want you freaking out on the drive home when you think about what happened. So if any of you would like to talk to the chaplain, he's out in the lobby. We also have some free resources for therapy visits through the sheriff's office.” Jon looked at the back of the room. “And good, it looks like TIP was also able to spare us some folks.”