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Maria
I had been waiting all night for someone to come up the elevator. I had called out to Dorothy, and I could hear the fear in her voice. Something had happened, and she refused to tell me, ending the call and saying that she would be up as soon as she could. I found myself pacing about the room, worrying about what was going on out there. I had checked the television previously, and there were no news channels available. Not that I expected to see him on the news.
I walked out to the balcony and looked out over the city, wondering if I could hear something through the noise, or pick up something from the cacophony of honking cars below. But there was nothing. After three hours of waiting, I went back to the sofa and sat, staring at the elevator doors as I waited. I desperately wanted to leave, but I knew this was the safest place for me for now. I fell asleep for a while but woke up at the sound of the elevator humming as it ascended. He was home, I told myself.
I dashed to the phone and called Dorothy downstairs, wondering why she hadn’t told me who had come in. The call rang for a while, and no one picked up. She usually would pick up on the first ring, but now she had not answered. My heart skipped a beat as I began to wonder what was going on down there. Had Vasquez sent his men to the building before we could leave? I quickly began to look for anything that I could use to protect myself, and then I remembered the room I had locked myself in before had a heavy door.
Just before I could rush to the doors of the room, the elevator panels parted, and I slowed for a second as the troubled face of Dorothy came into view, followed by two men who carried Angelo in their arms and were rushing him towards the bedroom. I watched in horror, and was certain that he was unconscious. There was a lot of blood across his lower torso and it had soaked through his shirt. They put him down on the bed, and Dorothy tapped anxiously at her phone again, pacing back and forth in panic. From the look on her face, I could tell that she was too scared to answer any questions I might have, so I turned to the men who had brought him in.
“What the hell happened?”
One of the men looked at me, and then at Angelo. I had seen him before, but I could not recall his name. “We got in a gunfight with Vasquez. Angelo… got shot.”
My instincts kicked in. I rushed over to his body and started to undo the buttons of his shirt. Dorothy looked at me agape.
“His doctor is coming. He’s thirty minutes out! He just has to hold out long enough for him to get here.”
“Why didn’t we just take him to aproperhospital?” I asked, looking around at them. I turned back to the wound and saw that the bullet had created an exit wound on his stomach but was still inside him. I grabbed a towel and began to soak up as much blood around the wounded area as I could.
“Because we have the police hounding us. If we take him there, the cops might start asking questions that we are not ready to deal with right now. The doctor is coming here.”
“I don’t think he has that long! I can help him out. I trained as a nurse, but we need to get the bullet out, it's causing him too much pain.” I paused and looked at everyone, seeing the confusion on their faces. “I know what I’m doing! I can help!”
Dorothy pointed to the wall, “Mike, there’s a medical kit behind that photo.”
Mike turned around, moved the photo to the side, and brought the kit over. I grabbed some of the hand sanitizer and cleaned up my hands before putting on a mask and gloves. I grabbed some of the whiskey from the table and sanitized the scalpel and tweezers in the box. I got Mike to get a large light over the wound to make things clearer for me, and the other man used his steady hands to keep the wound open with one pair of tweezers for me, as I had instructed.
There was a lot of bleeding, and I had no idea what his blood type was. Angelo would certainly need a transfusion. First though, I would have to stop him from losing any more blood. I disinfected the area around the wound and took the tweezers away from the other man, asking him to stand back so as to give me some room. The entire procedure was taking place on a bed that we had had sex on multiple times, and I was sure Vanessa would have had my head if she saw me carrying out such a delicate procedure in a place like this. But there wasn’t much choice, not now, not while his life hung on the line.
Using the tweezers, I reached into the flesh of the wound, moving around gingerly until I felt the bullet. A small part of my heart sunk as I wondered what condition he had been left in. The bullet had to come out for certain, but I had no idea how bad the damage was beyond that. There was only one way to find out. I moved slowly but steadily until the tweezers had a firm grip around the bullet.
Then I began pulling the bullet out. Angelo groaned. Even while he was unconscious, the pain spiked through his body. I could see his face contort in agony, and I realized that I should have sedated him before I began. But there was nothing there to sedate him with. I shook my head and turned back to the wound. If I could get the bullet out, then the worst of it would be over, and he would be relatively safe until the doctor arrived.
I pulled on the bullet slowly, edging it out bit by bit until the bullet was free from the opening in the right side of his abdomen. I paused, looking into the injury for the first time. I spun quickly and dropped the bullet into the steel tray which Mike held out, and I dragged the makeshift overhead light closer to the injury to see into it. I had believed that taking out the bullet would save his life, but it had done the exact opposite. I moved as much of the blood as I could out of the way, looking through to see that the bullet had hit the splenic artery.
The hole that the bullet had created had also been coagulated with only minimal bleeding at the time. But now, as I had taken out the bullet, I had released the flow of blood inside him. I had to act quickly, I had a little over a minute before he would bleed out and die right there. I watched as my hands began to shake in fear; I couldn’t lose Angelo, not like this. There was just too much riding on him staying alive, and I had to save him.
The thought of losing him made me feel empty inside. The man who had locked me away in his castle for days on end. The man who made me feel in a way that no one else had ever, for better and for worse. This was the way I could pay him back, to show him that I cared for him just as much as he did for me, and that I was strong. I could express my feelings for him by keeping him alive. I spun around and knocked over the bottle of whiskey on purpose. I grabbed two surgical clamps from inside the emergency kit and thanked the heavens for whoever had the idea to leave a kit like that in the room.
I ran them through the spilled whiskey and rushed back to the injury. I clamped the left side of the artery, and then once more to the right. The bleeding stopped instantly, and I watched as the area cut off began to turn a pale purple color due to the lack of blood. I let out a breath as I tried to calm myself. There were not many options left, and without the proper tools, all I could do was keep him from bleeding out.
Just then, the doors behind us opened and the doctor arrived. Behind him were a few others with proper medical supplies, rushing in with pints of blood and a proper gurney that they hastily moved Angelo into.
I turned to leave, but Angelo reached up and grabbed me through the mask they had put on his face to take him under. He didn’t want me to go. Once he was knocked out, I turned to leave, leaving him to the doctor. But the older man stopped me as he put on his gloves.
“You did this?” He asked, and I was uncertain whether he would scold me.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Are you certified?”
“Yes, only a nurse though.”
“Well don’t leave now. I could still use an extra pair of steady hands to work with me,” said the doctor with a smile.
“Sure,” I replied, turning back to the table.
“Alright, we are going to need to sanitize the wound. Make sure that the wound area is free of any debris or bacteria,” the doctor began. He pointed at his bag, and I reached over, realizing that it was a lot bigger than I thought and not something I could just lift with a single arm.
