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“Yeah, and they’re taking their sweet fucking time. Is the bullet still in?” I asked.
“Look, just because you’ve fished a bullet out with tweezers and stitched the wound up with a sewing needle, does not mean you know anything about this.”
“How about you stop hating me for five fucking minutes, so I can help you with this woman who is losing too much blood?” I suggested.
Her angry gaze slid from me to the nurse, softening immediately before frown lines formed between her brows as she realized I was right.
She was losing too much blood too fast.
“Why aren’t you treating this?” I asked. “You’ve done it before.”
“When I had no other choice,” she shot back. “When people like you and your friends come charging in here, demanding treatment that doesn’t get the cops involved. This isn’t that situation.”
“No, but since the two of us both know that cops and paramedics are slow as fuck in this neighborhood, seems like you’re wasting time you don’t have on them.”
Ama hated being wrong.
The smartest girl—or person in general—in our whole neighborhood, she’d always been just a little bit of a know-it-all. And she did. Know it all. So she wasn’t accustomed to hearing someone prove her wrong often.
So she didn’t admit it.
And I didn’t expect it.
She just nodded down at her hands, waiting for me to move forward, then released the wound, so I could put pressure on.
Ama bustled around me, setting up a drip and gathering supplies.
“Okay. Let me look,” she said as I pulled the rag away, tossing it into the bin as she pulled up the nurse’s shirt. “I need to take it out,” she said, mostly talking to herself as I finally heard police moseying their way inside, casually stopping to talk to the useless security guard.
“Then do it,” I said, going over to wash my hands, then slipping on a pair of gloves. “Tell me what you need me to do,” I added.
“How far off are the paramedics?” she asked as a cop moved into the doorway, looking over the scene.
“Fifteen, twenty, it’s been a busy night. One drive-by. Another shooting.”
“Great,” Ama grumbled to herself. “Okay. I need you to hold her down,” she said, talking to me since the cop just stayed in the doorway, watching. “She’s out now, but pain can make people wake up really easily.”
“Got it,” I said, going to the woman’s chest and pressing my hands down.
“You know, you could make yourself useful too,” she snapped, talking to the cop. “Her legs need to be held down too.”
The cop made a grumbling sound, but did move in at the foot of the exam table to do as he was told.
“You know, they might come faster if I told ‘em it’s the nurse,” he said.
Which was the exact wrong thing to say, because Ama’s jaw went so tight that her teeth must have been aching.
“Right. Because her life is worth more than everyone else’s. Don’t tell them,” she added. “She, at least, has someone taking care of her.”
Ama had a temper.
It was one of the things I’d liked best about it.
Stupid people with too much attitude weren’t hot. But someone who could take you to your knees with a well-formed argument? That was hot as fuck. And I’d seen Ama do it countless times when we were growing up.
She’d been whip-smart as a kid, and only got more so as she got older. Obviously. I mean, the woman went to college at eighteen like everyone else but did some sort of accelerated program to become a doctor faster than everyone else.
“Ready?” she asked, looking up at me.
