He immediately started squirting her with the water gun again.
Some of the other moms and kids followed suit, until there was a semi-normal feeling among them as they realized there was less chance of upsetting the kids if they pretended everything was alright. Which meant they inadvertently calmed themselves as they maintained control of their fears for their children.
~~~
Findley hurried inside the house and just barely glanced at the group of males huddled around the formal dining room table as two of them worked feverishly to get Gwen’s blood pressure steady while the others helped here and there waiting to carry out any request they might need them to do.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. She’s dehydrated, hard to get a line started,” Feral said.
“I’m gonna get it! Watch me!” Frenzy growled as he withdrew the needle he prodded at her vein with, then extended her arm and slapped the bend of her elbow, then up and down the inside of the forearm, looking for anything at all in the form of a vein to stand up enough for him to slip the IV needle into it. He dropped to his knees beside the table, leaning toward her arm as he gripped the IV line with his lips, letting the needle dangle as he searched frantically for a viable vein. He slapped her arm again, in a manner that some would call too hard, but then he angled his head, his gaze so close to her arm that his breath blew across her skin. He held his breath and took theneedle in between his thumb and his forefinger. He laid his head almost on her arm to see the barely visible vein and slid the needle where he thought it needed to go.
“Check it,” he said.
Storm opened the valve on the IV line and she got blood. “Got it!” she shouted triumphantly.
Frenzy sat back on his ass and shook his head. “Woman! You got to learn to cooperate,” he said jokingly.
“Frenzy,” Feral said from the other side of the table.
Frenzy hopped up to see what Feral was showing him.
Feral was holding up the edge of a thick towel that had been tied around her ribs and her upper abdomen on her left side. There was a gash just beneath her rib cage and a flood of blood pumped through the wound every time her heart beat.
“Son of a bitch!” Frenzy said, then turned to Rance. “Did you know this? Did anybody know this!”
“Bonnie said Gwen told her she’d been injured but it was minor and would be fine. This ain’t fine!” Jack said angrily.
“How long has she been here?” Savage asked.
“Since about two this morning,” Jack said.
“She’d have died by now if she was bleeding like this the whole time,” Feral said. He carefully prodded her wound. “Looks like it’s healing around the edges.”
“Thoughts,” Frenzy said.
Hail spoke up. “Had something in there knicked. She turned the wrong way, picked up a kid, bent over or something just the right way and it tore just enough to start bleeding freely instead of seeping a bit here and there.”
“Makes sense,” Frenzy said.
“Where’s the chloroform?” Feral asked.
“You think you can fix it?” Savage asked.
“I’m going to see what it looks like in there. I don’t want her waking up while I’m doing it,” Feral said.
Hail opened a foil pouch and shook out a dampened prepackaged cloth, then walked around to the head of the table. She started to reach toward Gwen’s face to hold it over her nose and mouth, but Frenzy held up a hand.
“Blood type?!” Frenzy asked, looking at Rance.
“O positive,” Rance said.
“Hop your ass up here on the table and hold still while I get a transfusion line started on you. If necessary, we’ll be ready to give her some blood.”
“Isn’t your blood stronger? What if you gave her blood instead of me?” Rance asked.
“Want your mate to be Variant?” Frenzy asked. “Besides, I’m not O positive. I can’t transfuse everybody, you can.”
“If she’s alive, I don’t give a damn if she’s a penguin!” Rance said.
