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The doctor sticks the needle into a vein in Sam’s arm. He makes a sound that’s half moan and half swallow.
“Do you think she really likes him?” Sam asks. I know who he means. Barron. And I don’t know the answer, not really.
The doctor looks at me, then back at Sam.
“No,” I say. “But maybe you shouldn’t worry about that now.”
“Distracting—” Sam’s eyes roll back in his head, his body going limp. I wonder if he’s dreaming.
“Now you’ve got to hold him down,” the doctor says. “While I dig out the bullet.”
“What?” I say. “Hold him how?”
“Just keep him from moving too much. I need his leg to stay steady.” He looks across the room at Dean Wharton. “You. Come over here. I need someone to hand me forceps and a scalpel when I ask for them. Put on these gloves.”
The dean stands and crosses the room dazedly.
I move to the other side of the desk and put one hand on Sam’s stomach and the other on his thigh, leaning my weight against them. He turns his head and groans, although he remains out of it. I let go immediately, stepping back.
“Hold him. He won’t remember this,” the doctor says, which doesn’t comfort me even a little. There’s lots of stuff I don’t remember, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
I put my hands back in place.
Dr. Doctor leans in and presses around the wound. Sam moans again and tries to shift position. I don’t let him. “He’s going to stay semiconscious. It’s safer that way, but it means you’ve really got to stop him from moving. I think the bullet’s still in there.”
“What does that mean?” Dean Wharton asks.
“It means we’ve got to get it out,” says the doctor. “Give me the scalpel.”
I turn my head at the moment the point of the knife sinks into Sam’s skin. He writhes under my hands, squirming blindly, forcing me to put my full weight against him. When I look again, the doctor has cut a deep slice. Blood is welling up out of it.
“Retractor,” the doctor says, and Wharton hands it over.
“Hemostat,” the doctor says.
“What’s that?” Wharton asks.
“The silver thing with the curved tip. Take your time. It’s not my emergency.”
I shoot the doctor my filthiest glare, but he isn’t looking. He’s pushing an instrument into Sam’s leg. Sam moans, low, and jerks slightly.
“Shhh,” I say. “It’s almost over. It’s almost over.”
Blood sprays out of the leg suddenly, hitting my chest and face. I stagger back, shocked, and Sam nearly jerks off the table.
“Hold him, you idiot!” the doctor shouts.
I grab Sam’s leg, slamming myself down onto it. The blood pulses along with the beat of his heart, rising and falling. There is so much blood. It’s in my eyelashes, smeared over my stomach. It’s all I can smell and all I can taste.
“When I say hold him, I’m not joking! Do you want your friend to die? Hold him. I have to find the vessel I nicked. Where is that hemostat?”
Sam’s skin looks clammy. His mouth looks bluish. I turn my head away from the surgery, my fingers digging into his muscles, holding him down as firmly as I can. I grit my teeth and try not to watch the doctor tie off the artery or watch him root out the bullet or start stitching up the wound with black string. I hang on and watch the rise and fall of Sam’s chest, reminding myself that so long as he’s breathing and moaning and shifting, so long as he’s in pain, he’s alive.
After, I slump on the floor and listen to the doctor give Dean Wharton instructions. My whole body hurts, my muscles sore from fighting Sam’s.
“He’s going to have to take antibiotics for two weeks. Otherwise he’s at serious risk for infection,” the doctor says, taping the gauze in place and wadding up his bloody poncho. “I can’t write him a prescription, but this is enough for the first week. My answering service will contact whichever one of you called about getting more antibiotics.”
“I understand,” the dean is saying.
