Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) (2 page)

My partner was already walking up with a bath blanket, an ice pack and a roll of tape.

I sent a small trickle of healing energy though my fingers, quieting the nerves a bit before we moved him. Not much, just enough to take the edge off. I wrapped a folded blanket around the joint, immobilizing it with some two inch tape. Better than trying to strap the thing to a rigid board.

He held his reaction to a small grunt as we lifted him onto the cot. One of the firefighters tried to grab the patient’s shoulders for Nique, but it made me proud to see her step in his way, cutting him off while appearing not to notice. Looking like she did, she could have completed an entire EMS career without lifting anything over ten pounds, while three cops and an engine crew would watch me carry a burning piano down a spiral staircase without comment. I respected Monique because she never abused that power. She didn’t make a big issue of refusing help, she just did her job well and efficiently and flashed that smile at anyone who might be thinking about getting offended and they’d just melt.

We got the patient in the truck and Nique got a quick set of vitals while I felt around his ankle. If we left it as is, he was looking at some serious surgery and about a half pound of hardware to fasten all the fragments together. ‘Hmmph,’ I commented.

‘BP’s 140 over 84, pulse is a hundred,’ Nique informed me. ‘Line and some morphine?’

‘Yeah, he’s real dislocated. I don’t feel any crepitus,’ I lied. ‘But I don’t have a pedal pulse. I’m gonna medicate and reduce it.’

‘You got it,’ she replied. Most partners would have questioned what I was suggesting, but we had built enough trust that we were beyond that; another reason I loved working with Nique. She quickly hung a bag of saline. ‘Toss me the narc keys and I’ll draw you up some Vitamin M.’

I spoke calmly to the patient while I assembled my IV supplies. ‘Sir? I’m going to start an IV and give you some medicine for the pain. Are you allergic to anything? Any other medical problems?’

‘No,’ he replied as I tied a tourniquet around his arm and looked over it, shopping for veins. I swabbed a likely candidate with an alcohol pad.

‘You’re gonna feel a little pinch.’ I held the skin taut and slid the needle in, seeing the flash chamber fill nicely. He was young and healthy and had nice veins, so I didn’t have to cheat to guide the IV, but I did let a little energy through my fingers to take some of the sting out of it. I quickly hooked up the line, let it run to check it and taped it down.

‘Your morphine, sir.’ Nique handed me a syringe. ‘There’s ten milligrams in here.’

‘Cool. I’ll give him four, then reduce it. If I need more post reduction, I’ll let you know.’

‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

‘Not unless you want to piss off your fiancé. Just a nice easy ride to the hospital.’

‘I could tell him you just asked me for a nice easy ride,’ she leered as she got into the driver’s seat.

‘He knows me better than that. I’d never ask for nice and easy.’

I opened up the valve on the IV tubing and let it run as I slowly pushed the morphine, flushing four milligrams in over about a minute. ‘You might feel a little strange,’ I told the patient. ‘That’s normal, but if you start to feel sick, let me know.’

I moved down to the foot of the cot. Keeping my balance like a sailor on a pitching deck, I knelt by his foot and unwrapped it. I laid my hands on either side of his ankle and concentrated.

First, I just quieted the nerves, helping to take the edge off the pain. ‘This is gonna hurt, but the morphine will help, and I need to get the circulation back. Ready?’

He nodded.

I carefully rotated the foot back into its rightful alignment. I coaxed the bone shards into place, and knit the torn tendons and ligaments, but stopped short of fixing it completely, since after that fall and that pain, something had to look bad for the ER.

I don’t know why I can do this, I just know that I can. I also learned early on that people distrust what they can’t understand, even a good thing they can’t understand, so I made sure never to fix anyone too much.

Do that too often and the villagers with pitchforks and torches show up.

‘There we go,’ I said, and made a show of checking for a pedal pulse. ‘Aaaand, we’re back. Damn, I’m good. How you feeling now, sir?’

‘Better... better,’ he replied, with a bit less grateful awe than I’m used to.

I looked up from his foot and noticed something in his eyes, some hint of suspicion, like he knew something was wrong. Or not wrong enough.

I felt that dry-mouthed falling sensation that comes when someone with a more aristocratic accent than you tells you to fix bayonets and advance across an open field toward some heavily armed and ill-disposed foreigners. To hide my concern, I kept up my banter. ‘Have you at the ER in two minutes. They do good work. Probably be in a cast or a brace for a few weeks. How’s the pain? Need any more morphine?’ Maybe he’d chalk up the suspicion to the drugs, or even forget it.

‘No, thank you. It is much better.’

‘You sure? I’m just gonna throw it out. Lotsa lucid kids in China would kill for this,’ I joked.

‘Again, no,’ he replied. ‘I prefer to keep a... clear head.’

Something in his tone made my hackles rise.

Was that the sound of a mob? Was that smoke?

* * * *

We dropped the patient at the ER and I tried to shake off my premonition. There’s a fine line between vigilance and paranoia. I reached for my rapidly cooling coffee.

‘P-20. Paramedic 20,’ the radio crackled. ‘Respond to 300 Haverhill St, outside in the alley for the stabbing. Ambulance 34 is on scene now. They’ll update.’

‘20,’ I answered. ‘300 Haverhill. Meet the BLS outside for the stabbing.’

‘Ambulance 34 is Katie and Tina today,’ said Nique. ‘So at least we have competent EMTs.’

‘If there aren’t too many uniforms around for Katie to keep her concentration.’

Nique shrugged. ‘If it’s serious, she’ll focus. If it’s not, who cares?’

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

We drove through the city toward the call, just around the corner from where we’d picked up our friend with the twisted ankle. ‘Busy part of town today,’ I observed.

‘People probably saw all the red lights earlier and got jealous. All the cool kids are going to the ER.’

‘Early in the day for a stabbing,’ I said.

‘If it isn’t some guy who cut his finger on a beer can and called 911 with broken English and dispatch screwed up the call.’

‘So young and yet so cynical,’ I said.

‘I learned from the best.’ She smiled back.

We pulled up on scene behind the BLS truck. About ninety percent of our calls can be handled by Basic Life Support: Emergency Medical Technicians who can splint, bandage, give you oxygen and drive you to the hospital. As medics—Advanced Life Support—we can start IVs, give medication or fluid and use the cardiac monitor, so if the guy was stabbed badly we might need to step in. Stab wounds can be deceiving. You get stuck in an organ or an artery gets cut and you can bleed out internally without showing much, and act perfectly normal until blood loss gets critical.

We pulled out our bags and walked over to the alley. The fire engine was just pulling up, a police cruiser already on scene.

Down the narrow alley, the dirty snow strewn with broken bottles and crushed drug vials, the victim sat on a stoop as the two EMTs checked him over.

He was completely out of place here. A fortyish white guy wearing an L L Bean barn coat over a hideous sweater, the kind only a WASP would be seen wearing in public. Relaxed-fit khakis and topsiders. Probably drove his BMW here from Hamilton. Katie was checking his blood pressure while Tina bandaged a cut on his face.

Two burly cops stood just behind them, waiting to interrogate the victim. I was impressed by the fact that they were waiting instead of stomping all over the EMTs’ questions, until I recognized Carlos.

Carlos had worked with us years ago on the ambulance. He’d fought in Iraq, then gone on the truck, and finally, utterly unsuited for any kind of civilized job, gotten into the police department. He understood that our job came first. Once we had stabilized a patient, then he could slap them around all he wanted.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Mr Foley here was minding his own business, not buying any drugs whatsoever,’ said Carlos, ‘when he mysteriously got cut.’

‘I hate when that happens.’

‘They’re probably all set with you guys. It looks like just a shallow cut on each cheek.’

‘Somebody trying to send him a message?’

‘He’s too scared to tell us anything. I think he’ll swear he cut himself shaving.’

‘Tell him he should just get one of his dentist buddies to write him a script for Vicodin instead of trying to score in alleys.’

‘No point in telling him,’ said Carlos’ partner, Nelson. ‘You white folks don’t listen.’ Nelly was about six and a half feet and two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of muscle, a shaved head and skin the color of mahogany.

‘Sean ain’t white,’ said Carlos. ‘He’s just pale for a Puerto Rican.’

‘What does that make me?’ asked Nique.

‘You look that good, don’t matter what color you are,
chica.
’

‘So Carlos,’ I said, ‘you still keep your EMT certification up? I know you do, so you can get that stipend. Why don’t you pick up a few shifts on the truck for old times’ sake?’

‘Tried to. Said I couldn’t carry my gun.’ He smiled. ‘I just don’t feel safe in this town.’

Tina looked over at us. I raised my head.

‘Watcha got?’

‘Forty-two-year-old male, lacerations to both cheeks, no other complaints,’ she replied. ‘His vitals are fine.’

‘You guys comfortable with him?’

‘Sure. He just needs a ride to the ER for some stitches and a tetanus update. You guys can clear.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied. As I turned to go, I spotted something. A smear of fresh blood on a doorjamb off the alley, a crimson handprint on the stairway railing.

‘Hang on. I think we may have a second victim.’ I nodded toward the blood. Nique followed my gesture.

‘You guys take this patient to the hospital,’ she said. ‘We’ll go see if we can find another guy who needs to buy a safety razor.’

‘Hey, Trigger Happy,’ I called to Carlos. ‘We got a blood trail here.’

He moved quickly to the door, hand on his pistol. Nique and I stepped aside. Always let the guy with the gun and the vest go first.

The door opened into the hallway of an apartment building. Searching each apartment would take forever.

Fortunately, we could just follow the trail of bloody handprints up the stairs to a door.

Carlos and Nelly stood to either side, Carlos hammered on the door. ‘Police! Open up.’

‘No Ingles,’
came the reply.

Carlos rolled his eyes.
‘Policia! Abre la puerta!’

The door opened a crack. A young woman stood in the gap, a baby in her arms. ‘Nobody here—’ she began.

Carlos pushed past her. Nelly followed, gently but firmly steering a toddler out of the way. He scanned the room, then nodded to us and we walked in.

The blood trail led to the bathroom. Carlos strode to the door, ignoring a torrent of indignant Spanish from the woman whose home we invaded.

‘Policia,’
he said, knocking on the bathroom door with his nightstick.

The door swung open to reveal a wiry Hispanic man, pale under his dark skin, stripped to the waist, his shirt wadded up and pressed against his abdomen, trying in vain to staunch the seeping blood.

Nique swung the bag off her shoulder and I unfolded the stair chair. ‘Have a seat here, sir. We’ll take a look at that belly.’

‘I’m all set. I don’t need no ambulance. I don’t need to talk to nobody.’

‘You’re bleeding pretty bad—’ I began.

Carlos stopped me with a raised hand. ‘Look,’ he said to the victim. ‘I know you’re dealing smack. You know I know. And we both know that you and that scared shit white dude who was buying got cut by somebody who don’t want you dealing on this corner. You don’t need to tell me any lies, because we already know what happened, and that other guy is gonna sing like a bird just to keep his name out of the paper. So, you can sit on the chair and play nice with the paramedics, or I can ask them to step outside for a minute because you don’t have all your injuries yet.’

The man wisely decided to comply. Nique grabbed a pulse while I took the shirt away from his abdomen.

Three inches to the left of center, a clean slit two inches long oozed blood. The man’s flat stomach was beginning to feel firm around the cut, filling with blood. It was the wrong side for his liver, but maybe his spleen. That could bleed like crazy. I tore open a big gauze dressing and pressed it into place. I put some pressure on it, sending some energy through to slow the bleeding. I wrapped some gauze bandage around his waist to hold the pressure and cinched the strap of the chair over the dressing for good measure.