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“Please don’t cry, baby.” I didn’t realize I was until he reached up with a shaky hand and tried to wipe away my tears. “I just needed you to know how I felt before I…”
“You’re not going to die! I won’t let you.” I looked over my shoulder at my brother. He was still on that bottom step, and he was holding his phone to his ear. “Please, Reno,” I begged, “help us. I love him so much, and I can’t lose him. I just can’t!”
Adriano came over to me and crouched down so we were at eye-level. “I am. I just called for help.”
“No.” Marcus struggled to sit up again. His voice was little more than a whisper. “I can’t go back to prison. Please.”
“I didn’t call 911,” Adriano told him. “I called my older brother. Dante’s sending a medical team as we speak.”
Marcus slumped in relief and whispered, “Thank you.”
But I shook my head and insisted, “We have to get him to a hospital.”
“In any other circumstances, yes. But he’s right,” my brother told me. “They’ll call the police for a gunshot wound, it’s standard procedure. And if he killed whoever he shot at tonight, he’ll go to jail for murder.”
“I can’t,” Marcus whispered, as his eyes slid shut. “I can’t go back to prison. Please, Romy.”
A sob tore from me as his body went limp. I quickly felt for his pulse, and when I found it I whispered, “Thank god.”
My mind was racing as I looked around. Even though I was trained for this, it was so hard to think clearly when the man I loved was bleeding out in front of me. Adriano was totally focused though, and he asked, “How can I help?”
Jack raced back into the foyer with an armload of towels and a first aid kit. I hadn’t even realized he’d left. I grabbed a towel and pressed it to Marcus’s shoulder as I told my brother, “Come around to his right side and apply steady pressure to this spot. He won’t make it unless we can stop the bleeding.” While Adriano followed my instructions, I asked him, “How far out is whoever Dante’s sending?”
“Less than five minutes. Luckily, they live nearby.”
“Are they equipped to deal with this type of emergency?”
“This is exactly what they do.”
“Who are these people?”
“One’s an MD who was also a field medic in Afghanistan. Dante said he’s helped the family on more than one occasion. He’s also bringing his husband, who’s a nurse.”
While we were talking, I replaced the blood-soaked T-shirt with a towel and checked Marcus’s pulse again. Then I leaned over to listen to his breathing. That was when I noticed a pool of blood seeping out from beneath his shoulder. “There must be both an entry and exit wound,” I said. “Help me raise him up, so I can wedge a towel underneath him.”
Just as we finished doing that, a bearded man in his fifties rushed through the open front door carrying a large medical bag. “I’m Doctor Pope. Dante Dombruso sent me,” he said, as he dropped to his knees beside Marcus and took off his overcoat. He was wearing pajamas underneath. “What can you tell me about this man’s injuries?”
While Adriano and I kept up the pressure on the wounds to try to stop the blood loss, I quickly recited what I knew. As the doctor pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, he glanced at me and asked, “Are you a paramedic?”
“I used to be an EMT.”
An Asian man in his thirties came in just then, rolling a large crash cart. He was wearing a trench coat over a pair of dark blue pajamas which matched the doctor’s, and he immediately went to work setting up the cart.
As Dr. Pope began checking Marcus’s vital signs, he asked me, “Do you know his blood type? With this much blood loss, there’s no question we’ll need to do a transfusion.”
I shook my head, but Adriano said, “I’m a universal donor, so you can use my blood.”
That surprised me, and I asked my brother, “Why would you want to help Marcus?”
“Because I love you,” he said matter-of-factly, “and you love him.”
Around dawn, after he’d been moved by stretcher to my room, I stood at Marcus’s bedside and held his hand. Sedatives and antibiotics dripped steadily from an IV, while a portable monitor displayed his vital signs. He was pale and had been through hell, but he was alive. It felt like an absolute miracle.
After a while, Dante came into the room carrying a chair. He and his husband had arrived shortly after the doctor, but I’d been so focused on what was happening with Marcus that we’d barely said two words to each other.
I thanked him and took a seat when he placed the chair beside me, and then I asked, “Where’s my brother?”
