Not that this kid had much left to leak.
CJ started chest compressions.
“They’ll take us to jail,” the friend railed. “I ain’t going to jail. This is your fault, not mine!”
“I said,” the brother warned, “shut the hell up.”
CJ tuned out the heated exchange. Focused on keeping the boy’s heart pumping. She had no idea how long he’d been in full arrest, but he didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving if—
Blood seeped from beneath the kid’s left shoulder, spreading ominously over the pavement.
Shit.
She stopped the compressions.
“What’re you doing?” the brother demanded. “Keep ...” He motioned with his free hand. “Doing whatever. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”
CJ didn’t answer. She carefully rolled her patient onto his right side. Her breath fisted in her throat, refused to fill her lungs.
Exit wound: left scapula. Major blood vessels, the heart ... all lay smack in the middle of the path the bullet had taken. The puddle of blood on the pavement indicated that every chest compression she’d executed had sent more of what little blood remained in his slim body out that exit wound.
“Do something!” the brother wailed.
Where the hell was that ambulance? “Did you tell them to hurry?” CJ shouted to the taxi driver.
He nodded frantically. “They’re coming! They’re coming!”
“Help him, goddammit!” the brother shouted in her face.
CJ flinched but kept her focus on the kid. She lowered him onto his back. “We need pressure on that wound!”
The brother obeyed the order and she resumed chest compressions. The kid would likely die anyway, but he would damn sure die if she didn’t try.
Just hang in there, kid.
“Don’t you get it?” the brother’s paranoid friend yelled. “The kid’s dead. Nobody loses that much blood and lives. She’s only doing that”—he waved wildly at CJ with both hands—“to keep you from freaking out. The kid’s dead, man.”
Big brother shot to his feet. “If you don’t shut—”
“Gun!” the taxi driver screamed. “He’s got a gun!”
Don’t listen. Don’t look. Focus.
The distant shrill of sirens accompanied the screaming between the three men.
“Tell him,” the friend shrieked at CJ, “that you can’t save the kid!”
“Is that true?”
She ignored the brother’s demand. Mentally marked the necessary rhythm.
He stuck his face close to hers. “Is that true?” he screamed in her ear.
“I’m doing all I can,” CJ admitted without looking up. She braced for his reaction but didn’t stop the only option she had available to help the patient.
“If he dies,” the brother warned, “you die.” He jammed the gun in her face.
Fear bumped against her sternum.
