Page 19 of Everything Changes

“I’m an EMT,” Jase answered, admiration for the man’s courage sweeping through him. “How many of them are there, do you know?”

“Three, I think. I saw the whole thing.” The man shuddered.

“Okay, this one is gone,” Jase said, tilting his head toward the boy on the ground. “If you have any blankets in your car….” The man seemed to understand instantly and nodded, seeming grateful to be given a task, and took off in a sprint toward his vehicle.

Jase stood up and ran to the next body on the ground, only to feel sorrow cramp his gut as he made the same assessment… dead, head injuries too severe. What a fucking waste, he thought sadly.

The helpful man ran up with an armload of large beach towels, and Jase stood, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder and murmuring, “Cover their faces, okay?” The man swallowed hard and nodded.

“This one’s alive! Oh God, somebody help!” Adrenaline surging through him, Jase grabbed his medical kit and sprinted toward the voice, which came from right next to the smashed vehicle. He reached the scene, then skidded to a stop and froze in horror. A young man with black hair, probably the driver, was sprawled right next to the car, obviously having not been thrown clear with as much violent impact as the others. He was unconscious.

A brown-haired woman with terrified eyes looked up at him from where she knelt next to the boy, her fingers pressed into his neck as if feeling for a pulse.

“He’s still alive! Can you help him? His leg!”

Jase’s eyes fell to the boy’s lower body, and he was suddenly trapped in a pit of molasses, unable to move, feeling like a million spiders were crawling over his skin. His breathing constricted, and he felt like he was sucking every breath through the narrowest straw.

“Help him! He’ll bleed to death, Mister!”

With supreme effort, Jase forced himself to kneel next to the boy and look at him, making his clinical assessment in seconds. The boy’s left leg was mangled below the knee, crushed by the shearing forces of the rolling car against unforgiving pavement. Bones, muscles, and tendons hung out of the torn flesh, the boy’s foot facing almost backward. His clothes were tattered, road rash showing through the torn fabric, blood pooling everywhere.

This isn’t Carey. Carey is alive. Carey is safe.

The bleeding was the biggest danger, and it had to be stopped.

Jase opened his medical bag and pulled on fresh gloves and then tore open a tourniquet kit. He handed the woman a pair of surgical shears, hoping she couldn’t see how much his fingers were shaking.

“Cut his shorts off, quickly.”

While she did that, Jase applied a blood pressure cuff to the boy’s arm and assessed his pulse and breathing, trying not to focus on the spill of black hair against the ground, the skin pale with increasing blood loss.

Shouts, gunfire as a small car ran the Marine checkpoint outside the firebase and barreled for the fence line. Carey had been helping to man the checkpoint, and Jase ran out of his medical hooch in time to see Carey step in front of the vehicle and fire directly into the windshield. The windshield shattered, and the car veered off at the last second, weaving erratically, the driver slumped over the steering wheel.

The woman finished cutting the boy’s shorts off, and Jase quickly applied the tourniquet to the pressure point in the boy’s upper thigh, twisting it down until the blood flow slowed from a steady gush to a trickle.

“Won’t that cause him to lose his whole leg?” the woman asked, her voice high with barely suppressed panic.

“No,” Jase said, taking the boy’s blood pressure again. It was dangerously low. He reached into his bag and brought out a saline IV kit, swiftly inserting the needle into the back of the boy’s hand and taping it down. He handed the bag over to the woman. “Squeeze that, get that fluid into him.”

“But what about his leg?”

“If I don’t stop the bleeding, he’ll bleed to death in only a few more minutes,” Jase said tersely. “I don’t have any other choice. And as long as he’s treated by a trauma unit within the next couple of hours, the tissue in his leg won’t die.”

Jase forced himself to look at the boy’s lower leg, knowing it was beyond saving, the bones and tendons splintered and mangled beyond recognition.

The insurgent car drifted almost to a stop. “Get away!” Jase screamed, and before his shout had even died away, the car exploded into flames and shrapnel, cutting down the men closest to it. Carey was in the back of the group, and Jase watched helplessly as his friend was thrown into the air and tossed to the ground like a rag doll to lie crumpled, unmoving.

Jase continued to monitor the boy’s vitals, and the fluid being pushed into him caused him to rouse briefly, his eyes fluttering open, his gaze unfocused.

“Easy, buddy,” Jase murmured. “You’ll be okay.”

Jase grabbed his medical kit and raced to the scene of the carnage, a horrific scene of body parts and burned flesh. Carey had been shielded from the brunt of the blast by the other men in front of him, but vicious shrapnel had shredded his lower right leg and it was hanging by the merest thread. Blood was pumping everywhere from wounds in both legs, and Jase had mere seconds to act. A tourniquet and clamps, hemostatic gauze, all of it as Jase frantically tried to save his best friend’s life.

The boy on the ground moaned, and the woman said, “Can’t you give him something for the pain?”

Jase tried to pull himself out of his memories and engage in the present. “Can’t,” he muttered. “I don’t know if he has any drug allergies, and a morphine allergy could kill him.” The boy thrashed weakly, and without any way to immobilize him, Jase did his best to try to soothe him. “Gotta stay still, bud. If your neck and back are hurt, it might make it worse.” Mercifully the kid fell into unconsciousness again.

“Rescue services are on the way.” Carey knelt beside Jase, looking at the bloody mess on the ground. “Fuck.” Jase could see him turn white.