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“Dex, I need your help,” I called, reaching down to press my own hand into his side, feeling the sticky warm blood coat my palm.
“On it, Doc,” Dex said, already wheeling over our one ancient gurney. The damn thing sputtered and shrieked the whole way. “Here. I’ll pull him on from behind,” he offered, grabbing Seeley under the arms, pulling him away from me.
The shock made me react a second slower than usual, following them both, and pressing my hands back into his side.
“Let’s move,” I demanded.
Then we were running through the clinic, heading into the last exam room because it was the largest. It actually used to be two separate rooms that I’d had someone combine into one because, well, we needed something that as closely resembled an actual surgery room as possible.
Because this wasn’t my first of these situations at the clinic.
Hell, it wasn’t even my fifth. Or tenth.
It was alarming how many times I’d needed to treat someone who otherwise would have died because they refused to go to the hospital and deal with the possible questions from the police.
Was it likely borderline unethical of me? Yeah, sure. But I figured I had my oath as a doctor. I had to help. Even if they should have been at a hospital.
“I, ah, you know me, Doc,” Dex said, backing up, looking a bit gray.
“It’s okay. I know you can’t do the blood,” I said, giving him a nod. “Just rush Michael in here when he gets back. And tell anyone who comes in that it is going to be a while, so if they need emergent help, they’re going to need to go to the emergency room.”
With that, he shut the door and I sprang into action.
“You’re going to be okay, damnit,” I told him, hearing the frantic edge to my own voice, knowing this was exactly why you were never supposed to work on someone you knew. You lost your focus.
Yanking over the rolling kit, I reached inside to get the scissors, cutting off his shirt.
I’d like to say I didn’t notice anything but the wound on his side. Wounds.
But that would be a lie.
It had been a long, long time since I’d seen Seeley without a shirt. And back in that day, he’d been almost on the scrawny side.
He was still lean, but time and some sort of physical activity had etched some muscles into him.
And the tattoos were both expected, yet surprising.
“Focus,” I hissed at myself as my gaze moved to his side where the wounds were.
Yes, multiple.
Not bullets.
Stab wounds.
Which, in my personal opinion, were almost worse at times. Depending, of course, on what caliber the bullet was.
But bullets had relatively clean wounds if they didn’t fragment and splinter off into various organs.
Stab wounds, though, were almost universally gnarly. Because even if they went in straight, they often didn’t stay that way, and almost never came out that way.
“What did you get into?” I murmured to myself, realizing it was a form of self-soothing since I didn’t usually need to talk to myself so much while working on any old patient.
This wasn’t any old patient, though.
This was Seeley.
“You couldn’t have put on a little pudge, huh?” I asked as I pulled down the light to see better. “Getting stabbed in a little bit of fat isn’t as bad as muscles.”
