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Fuck, that looked bad; it likely hit an organ.
I dropped down on my knees next to the man. They landed in the warm blood, and I tried not to shiver at my foreboding thoughts. My hand pulled his away from the wound, and I applied my own pressure to slow the bleeding.
Blood slipped between my fingers, and I knew the man was in extreme danger of bleeding out. He had minutes left to live unless we did something. I was trained in life-saving skills, but I was not a surgeon, and we were very far from an operating room.
I heard the cries of people surrounding us. There were sobs and curses, but no one approached us. He was either written off as a lost cause or they were too scared to help.
I needed to stop the bleeding to give him a chance at survival. I wracked my brain for something, anything. Then it was as if a lightbulb lit over my head. I remembered a trick that I saw in an online training course for emergency medical treatment and stabilizing patients in a battlefield-like environment. Tampons were good to plug bullet holes. Even better, I always had a spare one in my purse. My crossbody bag was still hanging from my side, but I couldn’t take the chance and remove pressure from the wound to grab it. I needed both hands on the wound to keep the pressure steady.
I looked at Adam, who had knelt down on the other side of the man, checking for more injuries.
“Adam, reach into my bag and grab a tampon,” I ordered. My voice was shaky, but I didn’t care. I’d never had to stabilize a patient in this bad of shape before. I was scared, and I’d own it.
It took a second, but I saw his eyes light up when he realized how I planned to proceed. Combat medics carried material similar to and inspired from tampons. The material soaked up blood and expanded to fill the size of the wound; it would help temporarily slow blood loss. Adam reached over the victim’s body. His face was close to my arm, and I could smell him from here, his scent mixed with the iron-like smell of blood. He opened my purse and pulled out a tampon. He removed it from the package at lightning speed, as if he was a woman who had used tampons for half her life.Why was I slightly impressed?
“On the count of three, move your hands and I’ll plug the wound,” he directed. I nodded quickly, eager for assistance. He may have actually done this before.
The crowd was still gathered, watching—but there were no sounds of sirens or emergency paramedics. Usually minutes after a shooting like this one, sirens could be heard in the distance, bringing with them a faint glimmer of hope. Yet the silence fell flat, along with my expectations of the wounded man’s chances of survival.
“Has anyone called for emergency services yet?” I screamed to the crowd.
“Yes,” a woman answered. Tears were streaming down her face, but the rest of her was composed.
“Ready?” Adam asked me.
I whipped my head back around to look down at our patient. “Ready.”
“Three, two, one, move,” he ordered, his voice calm and steady.
I raised my hands off the man’s side, and blood gushed from the wound. He wouldn’t survive all this blood loss. Adam immediately plugged the wound with the tampon and then kept firm pressure on the wound, giving the tampon the chance to absorb the blood and expand to the size of the wound.
“There, that buys him some time, but not much. If it’s hit an organ, he’s going to need emergency surgery,” Adam assessed.
“Which neither of us are specialists in,” I answered.
I looked down at the wounded man, who looked like he was drifting in and out of consciousness. His breathing was labored, and his chest rose and fell with sharp breaths. His eyes drifted closed and then opened quickly a few seconds later. He wasn’t going to make it.
I needed to keep him awake. If he fell asleep, he might never wake up. “Sir, can you hear us? We need you to stay awake. Can you do that for us?” I asked our patient.
He couldn’t speak, but he nodded, just slightly. It was enough to let me know that he was still with us. He hadn’t given up yet, and that was important. If he did, no one was going to be able to save him.
Keep him talking.
“Does anything else hurt, or is it just this wound on your side?” I asked, trying to assess the situation for the emergency crew who would hopefully be here any second.
The man didn’t respond. He just rolled his head from side to side and moaned in pain. We kept pressure on the area and made sure the tampon stayed put. I felt Adam’s eyes on my face, but I ignored him. It was not the time to make googly eyes at each other. He was going to have a bunch of questions about how I handled this whole situation. Most people didn’t run toward gunfire, and most fitness instructors didn’t have any idea how to plug a gunshot wound. I couldn’t tell him about my training from the Navy; he’d know I lied to him. I needed to come up with another lie. If I didn’t, my cover would be blown, and that had never happened to me before.
I hoped it never would.
CHAPTERTEN
adam
Abby’s hands were firm on the wound, and I was surprised by how calm and collected she was. Most women would have run away screaming in the opposite direction, unless they were a trained healthcare professional, trained in combat of some sort, or law enforcement. She was a fitness instructor. Something about her didn’t add up. Her hands had been confident, sure as she kept pressure on the wound. Her face was all too serious as we did our best to keep the wounded man alive.
The idea to use a tampon to plug the bullet wound was incredible and again hinted that there was more to Abby than she let on. She did all the things that I would have done if she hadn’t done them first. I might be strong and powerful, but she was light and quick. It wasn’t a race, but she had led the whole way to the crime scene. It was as if she was used to running straight into danger instead of running from it. Like she was made for this, like she was just like me. The thought made me proud for some reason, and also more confused.
I barely knew the woman, and she had me second guessing everything. She’d done so much to impress me, and I hadn’t known her for more than three days. The way she carried herself and the way she acted under extreme pressure told me more than it would the average person. She was lying to me about something—or at least wasn’t sharing the full truth. I tried not to think too negatively; maybe she was a nurse before she became a fitness instructor, who knew? I wanted to ask her more questions. I wanted to get to the bottom of who she really was. I’d never been this infatuated with another person so far, but the more I learned, the more I saw, the more I was determined to see everything. She made me want to break through all her walls and destroy anything she could use to keep me out. I wanted to know her inside and out. That was relationship type stuff, and also slightly stalkerish.
