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It meant blood loss.

I didn’t see him bleeding heavily, so it had to be internal.

Internal bleeding.

He could be dying.

My mind raced. We needed to get him stable and into the ambulance.

Shawn dove into his trauma bag, kneeling in a rivulet of metallic-smelling blood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Come on, fucker, you’re getting married! You gotta be okay!”

Sloan.

My heart pounded in my ears. “He’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine, buddy.”

I got out my pocket light, opened his visor, and pulled back his eyelids. His pupils shrank to small black dots. They were equal and reactive. Good. That was a good sign. He didn’t have brain damage. Not yet. We needed to get him to the ER before his brain started to swell.

I gulped air. I had to stay calm. Stay calm!

The ambulance pulled up, and Javier jogged to meet them.

“I need a c-spine and a gurney!” I shouted.

Jesus Christ, his helmet was fucked. Dented from the impact. Covered in skid marks.

She didn’t stop. The lady didn’t fucking stop. It was a forty-mile-per-hour zone. A forty-mile-per-hour impact if she wasn’t speeding.

And she probably was.

I pulled out my trauma shears and started cutting off his clothes. “Sorry, I know you like this shirt, buddy. We’ll go back and get you another one, okay?” My voice shook.

As I cut away fabric, more injuries bloomed over his body before my eyes.

I grappled to make sense of it.

Where the fuck had he been going? Why wasn’t he home with Sloan?

His tux. He had a final tux fitting today at 9:00 a.m. He told me about it.

Why couldn’t he have been late? Or early? Why didn’t he take his goddamn truck? Or a different street?

I cut his pants off. He had a break. Compound fracture, left leg. His femur pushed jagged through his skin.

I swallowed hard looking over his mangled body, and my brain ticked off injuries.

Serious.

Serious.

Serious.

I looked up at Shawn’s wide, frightened eyes. “We’ll have to log roll him onto the backboard. We can’t pull traction on this leg. Let’s get his helmet off,” I said quickly.

Javier ran a backboard over while Shawn kneeled and cradled Brandon’s head. I reached around and unclipped the strap, and we kept his neck stable while we pulled the helmet off. His brown hair was matted with blood.

Shawn was crying. “The bitch didn’t even fucking stop.”

“Keep it together,” Javier said calmly. “Look at me, Shawn. He’s a patient. He can be your buddy when this call is over. Right now he’s a patient. Do your job and he’ll be okay.”