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He came back, and something was pinching his arm. “His pressure is low. He’s bleeding internally. I need to assess his condition. Let’s get him inside.” The backboard came and several of his teammates transferred him to it after the doc slipped a brace around his neck. “Let’s get him inside, and I can assess his injuries better.”
Gunfire suddenly cut across the compound, and everyone scrambled for cover. He was lowered to the ground, Bondo, Easy, and Brawler covering him with their bodies. He heard return fire close to them, and the once quiet crowd scattered with screams and shouts.
“Dr. Casey! Oh, God, no. No!” a woman shrieked as Twister tried to see what was going on. But his teammates were now running with him into the embassy. He was so woozy, he felt almost sick.
Once inside the embassy, he was taken to the clinic, the backboard set on a gurney. He heard a woman crying and Tex’s stern voice. “Pull yourself together. We have a wounded SEAL. Dr. Casey is gone. We can’t help him now, but we have my man in there bleeding to death.”
His teammates weren’t idle—they were removing his vest, careful of his shoulder, cutting off his uniform, and stripping him down to his skin. Easy was already preparing an IV, each of them moving with purpose and calm.
The woman’s teary voice strengthened. “I’m a nurse practitioner. I can’t operate.”
“What can you do?” Tex demanded.
“Assess his injuries, get an IV started, administer plasma.”
“Get to it.”
She came into view, a lovely woman, her skin dark under the bright lights. It was clear she was still upset as she realized most of her job had been done. Twister covered her hand and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, then her training kicked in. She nodded. “Thank you.” She took a look at his shoulder, then said, “It’s dislocated. It needs to be returned to the socket.” She looked down at him, then back at Tex.
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“Uh. Not real?—”
He felt someone nudge the stretcher and looked up into Tex’s glacial stare. “Just for a minute or two. I think. It was grayer—more fuzzy than black.”
“Pain medication can be dangerous with a concussion. But we have to realign his shoulder, put it back in place, and it can’t be done without it.”
Twister gritted his teeth, “Just go ahead, Doc, do it.”
“First, I’m not a doctor. I’m a nurse practitioner. My name is Melina. I’m not doing this without pain medication. It’s barbaric.”
Melina went to the cabinet and unlocked the drawer, withdrawing medication from a vial, then came back. “Who’s the medic? Doesn’t your team have one?”
Easy tilted his head toward the stretcher. “He is.”
Melina sighed, pointed at Easy, and hooked Twister up to an automatic blood pressure monitor. “You are in charge of making sure he keeps breathing. Just watch that. The number at the top monitors his respiration. If it drops below sixteen, tell me.”
She looked at Bondo. “You’re going to have to hold him and be extremely careful with his ribs.”
Bondo nodded and gently held him steady.
“No, that’s not enough. Both arms around his chest. Link your hands together and brace yourself. This isn’t going to be easy.”
She stood beside him on the side of his injured shoulder. She grasped his wrist with both hands, pulling his arm away from his body with a careful but tight grip, until it was at a ninety-degree angle. Then she moved his arm toward his head while also gently but firmly pumping his arm up and down. She kept moving until his arm was over his head, slightly rotating his shoulder.
“Fuck. That hurts,” Twister screamed as he jackknifed off the bed nearly pushing Bondo away.
“I said hold him down,” Melina barked and Bondo braced again.
One more rotation, and he felt his shoulder snap back into place. “Let him go.” She finished by bending his arm at the elbow and securing it to his body with an ace bandage.
“We’ll have to wait for a doctor to assess any other damage to the joint. I see bruising, but no swelling. That’s a good sign.”
Twister slipped into sleep, and the next thing he knew, he was in one of the clinic's beds. He could hear Tex talking to the nurse.
“...is he?”
