Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

That’s the end of the second-guessing.

“Two of you stay in case I need to hold him down,” Frangie says. “The other two, take off, it’s tight in here.”

The matter is decided with looks between the four soldiers. One woman and one man stay behind. Frangie guesses they’re the two with the strongest stomachs. At least she hopes so.

There’s an artery, a big, fat glistening artery that ought to be pumping but is merely draining. There’s very little blood left in the captain. Frangie pulls out his dog tags.

“AB Negative? Jesus, I don’t have any AB anything. Ren, hang some plasma.”

It turns out the woman soldier has type AB negative, a rare bit of good luck. “At least it’ll be white blood,” she mutters.

“Pretty sure it’ll be red,” Frangie says, now feeling her way with bare fingers around the chewed meat that is the captain’s thigh.

Suddenly the captain shouts; at least he intends to shout, he’s too weak to make much noise.

“Morphine?” Ren asks.

“No, weak as he is it’d kill him for sure.”

“You, AB: pull that chair over here, sit down as close as you can get. Ren?”

Ren has learned enough in the last twelve hours to know where the needles and tubes are. He uncoils a plastic tube and fits a used hollow needle to one end.

“You, pressure right here,” Frangie orders the male soldier, only now noticing that he’s a senior NCO, and that he, too, is bleeding from the side of his face, bleeding but walking wounded, likely to survive on his own. “Your thumb. Right there.” He looks a little sickly, so Frangie adds, “If you need to throw up, don’t do it on my patient.”

She manages to find an artery on the female soldier, but the captain’s system is collapsing and she wastes precious seconds finding a vein. Finally red liquid surges through the piping. She stops it with a clamp. First she needs to sew up the hole in the femoral artery—no point pumping blood in only to have it drain out.

“You tell me if you get light-headed,” Frangie instructs the donor as she pushes the NCO’s thumb aside, clamps the artery, and places three quick sutures. They won’t stop all the bleeding, but they’ll slow it down.

She unclamps the transfusion and blood flows from the woman to the captain.

“Now, to—”

The tent flap flies open. It’s Sergeant Green. “Doc, orders: we’re bugging out.”

“Can’t,” Frangie says.

“Orders,” he says, insisting on the word. “They’re going to blow the tubes.”

“What?”

“We’re tossing grenades down the last few artillery tubes and skedaddling.”

This obviously gets the full attention of the man and woman who came in with Captain Schrenk, but they stay, though their body language telegraphs a desire to go.

Frangie hadn’t even noticed that the artillery was no longer firing. The only explosions she’s heard in the last sixty seconds have been muffled bangs—grenades.

“I have a patient,” Frangie says, now tracking smaller bleeders.

“Doc . . . Private Marr . . . that man isn’t even one of ours.”

“Well, he’s one of my patients, Sarge. Go, go, take care of yourself, I’ll catch up soon as I have this man stable.”

Sergeant Green looks torn. He takes off his wire-framed glasses to wipe them off with his shirttail, obviously considering his path. “Look, I would . . . But it’s no good, I have to stay with my men.”

“That’s your duty, Sergeant Green, this is mine.”

“God keep you safe, sister.”