Commotion out in the hall. Scrambling footsteps . . . low cursing . . . the occasional dull thud.
All the noise woke Manny up, and he went from out like a light to fully conscious in a split second as the parade of sound passed by in the corridor. The disturbance continued onward before it got cut off sharply, as if a door had been shut on the show. Whatever it might be.
Straightening from where he’d put his head down on Payne’s bed, he looked at his patient. Beautiful. Simply beautiful. And sleeping steadily—
The shaft of light smacked him right in the face.
Jane’s voice was strained as she stood in the lee of the doorway, a black cutout of herself. “I need another set of hands in here. Stat.”
No asking twice. Manny shot for the door, the surgeon in him ready to go to work, no questions asked.
“What we got?”
As they rushed along, Jane brushed at her red-stained scrubs. “Multiple traumas. Mostly knives, one gunshot. And there’s another being driven in.”
They broke into the exam room together, and God . . . damn . . . there were wounded men everywhere—standing in the corners, propped on the table, leaning down on the counter, cursing while they paced. Elena or Elaina, the nurse, was busy getting out scalpels and thread by the dozen and the yard, and there was a little old man bringing water to everyone on a silver tray.
“I haven’t triaged yet,” Jane said. “There’re too many of them.”
“Where’s an extra stethoscope and BP cuff?”
She went over to a cabinet, popped a drawer, and tossed both over. “BP is much lower than you’re going to be used to. So is the heart rate.”
Which meant that, as a medical professional, he had no true way of judging whether they were in trouble or not.
He put the equipment aside. “You and the nurse had better make the assessments. I’ll do prep.”
“Probably better,” Jane agreed.
Manny stepped up to the blond nurse who was working efficiently with the supplies. “I’m going to take over from here. You help Jane with the readings.”
She nodded briefly and got right to work taking vitals.
Manny threw open drawers and took out surgical kits, lining them up on the counters. Pain meds were in an upright cupboard; syringes were down below. As he rifled through everything, he was impressed by the professional quality: He didn’t know how Jane had done it, but everything was hospital-grade.
Ten minutes later, Jane, he, and the nurse met in the middle of the room. “We’ve got two in bad shape,” Jane said. “Rhage and Phury are both losing a lot of blood—I’m worried that arteries have been nicked because those cuts are so damned deep. Z and Tohr need X-rays, and I think Blaylock’s got a concussion along with that nasty gash on his stomach.”
Manny headed for the sink and started scrubbing up. “Let’s do this.” He glanced around and pointed to the mammoth blond son of a bitch with the puddle of blood under his left boot. “I’ll take him.”
“Okay, I’ll deal with Phury. Ehlena, you start getting pictures of those broken bones.”
Given that this was a field situation, Manny took his supplies over to his patient—who was stretched out on the floor, right where he’d collapsed earlier. The big bastard was dressed in black leather from head to foot, and he was in a lot of pain, his head kicked back and his teeth gritted.
“I’m going to work on you,” Manny said. “You got a problem with that?”
“Not if you can keep me from bleeding out.”
“Consider it done.” Manny grabbed a pair of scissors. “I’m going to cut off your pant leg first and ditch the boot.”
“Shitkicker,” the guy groaned.
“Fine. Whatever you call it, it’s coming off.”
No unlacing—he cut through the latticework at the front of the damn thing and slipped it off a foot the size of a suitcase. And then the leathers sliced easily up the outside all the way to the hip, falling open like a set of cha
ps.
“What we got, Doc?”