The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (49 page)

Sam answers with a simple,
“Yes.”

She rushes to the rear of the building
again and fetches a clear plastic hose and water bottle back to
him. He’s at the head of the bed, and Kelly is now holding down the
man’s shoulders. Simon injects a quick shot of lidocaine into the
man’s pectoral muscle.

“Quick, honey, give me a scalpel,” he
says quietly to her.

Sam slaps a metal blade from the tray
firmly into his latex-gloved hand. They are standing shoulder to
shoulder. She has no idea what he’s going to do with the scalpel,
though. And then she does fully understand, but wishes she didn’t
at all understand what he is about to do.

Simon pushes the point of the scalpel
into the young man’s chest muscle and then much deeper.

A commotion at the other end of the
shed alerts her that the second truck has arrived. Shouting adds to
the overall calamity. Someone is apparently very seriously injured
because she hears Reagan calling out fast demands to the men as the
sound of a truck skidding to a stop and spraying gravel comes
through the thin metal walls.

“Tube,” Simon calls for harshly as if
he’s said it more than once.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

Sam slaps it into his palm
in the same manner. A soft touch doesn’t belong in an
operating
room,
or a post-apocalyptic makeshift medical center. She’s learned
these procedures from Grandpa. She’d
been
much less aggressive when she’d
first started her nursing training with him years ago. It had led
to instruments being dropped or fumbled and deemed immediately out
of commission because of contamination.

Simon pushes the plastic tubing into
the man’s chest as Kelly holds the poor guy’s shoulders down with
his strong hands. She watches Kelly’s eyes slide away to focus on
something else. This is the most gruesome procedure she’s ever
witnessed. She doesn’t dare faint or vomit or even look away. Simon
needs her help.

“Easy, Andy,” Simon reassures. “You’ll
be able to breathe a lot better in a moment, sir. Try to
relax.”

His only answer is another
soft moan of pain or fear or something beyond Sam’s
comprehension.
His breathing is so
weak and diluted with a bubbling, raspy purr.

“Sam, bottle!” Simon grinds out
impatiently.

She quickly hands him the bottle of
water. She watches as Simon lowers it near the floor and sticks the
other end of the tube in.

“Now, Kelly,” Simon orders. “Get him
onto his side now!”

As soon as Kelly does so, a
steady stream of blood begins pumping out of the tube and down into
the bottle. Simon quickly replaces the bottle with a small bucket
that she hands him. Andy takes a deeper breath finally. The
pressure is subsiding from his lungs now that the blood has stopped
filling them. She’s so thankful that Simon is calm and
cool
under
pressure.

Grandpa is
at
their side in
the next second. He gravely shakes his head at Kelly’s cocked-head,
quizzical expression. Grandpa is letting them know that his patient
didn’t make it. He pulls on another pair of clean latex gloves as
Sam steps out of his way.

“Thoracotomy?” he inquires of
Simon.

“Yes, sir,” Simon replies as he
continues to work on Andy. “His lungs were filling with blood from
the bullet wound.”

“Good job, son,” Grandpa
praises and places a hand soothingly
on
Simon’s shoulder. “Let’s see what
else we’ve got here.”

He’s always so
calm.
Sam doesn’t know how he does it. His
patient has passed and here he’s helping them with another without
missing a beat. It’s also the middle of the night. Sam feels dead
on her
feet
as if the adrenaline of the gunfight against those men has hit
its crash-point. But Grandpa is wide awake, alert as ever. His calm
strength gives her a surge of fortitude deep down in her
gut.

“Is Gavin here?” Sam
inquires
because
she can’t stop being worried
about
her new friend. He’s so sweet and
kind.

“Just worry about what we’re doing,
Samantha,” Grandpa corrects her.

“Yes, sir,” she murmurs, feeling well
put in her place.

“This is going to be difficult,
Simon,” he says. “We need to treat that other wound, but he’s lying
on that side.”

“Yes, sir,” Simon replies
knowingly.

“Kelly, we’re going to need you to lay
him back just slightly and maybe prop him just a bit. We’ve got to
get that side wound stitched and now. He’s losing too much blood,”
he says very quietly.

“Yes, sir,” Kelly answers.

He gives his reply with the respect
that’s always in his voice when addressing Grandpa, Sam’s
noticed.

“Does anyone have Andrew’s blood type?
He’s likely going to need a donor,” Grandpa asks of this
patient.

He must know this man
from
town
,
but Sam doesn’t remember ever meeting him.

“O positive, sir,” Sam
relays.

“That’s good. We’ll have a donor
then,” he acknowledges.

He and Simon work diligently on Andy’s
side wound, each inspecting and sewing stitches and inspecting some
more.

“We’re going to need an ultrasound on
those lungs, Simon,” Grandpa tells them.

“I thought so, sir,” Simon agrees. “We
need to know where that other bullet is and if his lungs are
clear.”

“That’s right,” Grandpa says with
praise. “Good job.”

Everything is a teachable moment to
Grandpa. He’s a huge believer, in biblical proportions, of
furthering one’s knowledge of medicine. They are always in learning
mode. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t work with Simon, teaching
him new things, new techniques and passing on pearls of his medical
wisdom. They’ve grown so close over the years.

Their fingers work swift and
dexterously stitching the wounds.

“Cauterizer,” Grandpa asks
for.

“Yes, sir,” Sam says as she places the
wand in his hand.

Reagan’s shout of anger interrupts
them, “Damn it!”

Something is wrong over there. Sam’s
heart skips a beat and then begins pounding with fear.

“I need help!” she also calls
out.

“Simon and Samantha, go
now,” Grandpa directs. “I’ve got this now. Kelly,
stay
here and
assist.”

“Yes, sir!” they all regurgitate like
a well-trained army.

When they get to the next station
over, John and Reagan are working on Gavin. Apparently John finally
found him. Blood is everywhere. He’s barely cognizant. She and
Simon rip off their blood-soaked gloves and pull on fresh pairs so
as not to spread blood-borne pathogens from patient to
patient.

Reagan immediately gives an abridged
summary of his injuries. “John said he was hit by a .9 mill round.
I’d say hollow point from the amount of damage. We’ve got internal
bleeding.”

Gavin’s wound is deep, to
his mid-section, and still spilling copious amounts of blood out of
it in a slick trickle down his side where it
plops
in red blobs onto the
cot. Reagan is digging into the open wound, causing Gavin to cry
out in pain.

“Hit him with morph, Simon,” she
orders. “Sam, clamp this.”

She’s indicating toward a bleeding
artery with a pair of surgical scissors. Sam grabs a hemostatic
clamp from the tray near Reagan’s elbow and pinches the bleeder.
They work a moment longer when Reagan declares that he’s going to
need surgery.

They are very ill-equipped
for an actual
surgery
, the sterility of the room being
the most lacking, but they have no choice in the matter.

“Run me an IV, Sam,” Simon requests as
he assists Reagan.

“Yes, sir,” she answers and starts
unfolding the tubing and bag of saline.

It takes her a moment to
get the stick
in
his arm because he keeps writhing in pain, even
though John is doing his best to hold him down. She tapes it down
and starts the drip going at a steady rate. Reagan can administer a
local anesthesia to block the pain and hopefully put him into a
twilight state of being instead of fully awake. The overhead lights
flicker, and that’s when their real problems start.

Sam’s eyes jump to John’s.
The lights flicker again and go out
completely
.

“Damn it, somebody
get
the genny
running,” Reagan shouts. “Sam, load that anesthesia. Two
mill
, tiny amounts
at a time, kid.”

John and Kelly sprint out the door to
the rear of the shed. Sam can hear them rifling and shuffling
around in the tiny, attached shed where the generator is kept as
she sorts with a flashlight through the small refrigerator where
pain medicine and anesthesia is stored. She searches for the right
one. There are only a few bottles left of what they need, but Sam
grabs the first one, Naropin.

Kelly and John are still
creating quite a racket getting the generator going. They rarely
use it, but the solar power is not built to supply the draw of
machines like cardiac heart monitors,
ultrasounds
and cauterizing tools. The
solar
power
can handle light bulbs, the hot water tanks in the house and
minor appliances. Apparently spotlighting those men has drained
their solar
power
.

Simon holds a weak
flashlight so that Reagan can work. Sam shakes the tiny glass
bottle and inserts a needle into the rubber stopper. She draws back
enough to get the job done of numbing Gavin before Reagan digs
around on his insides. Then she administers the dose into his IV.
She hands another stick loaded with lidocaine to Reagan, who
administers
a dose
to three different sites around the wound. Then she shoots him two
more times inside of it. Sam and Simon hold flashlights for
Reagan.

Her mentor swears under her
breath a moment before the lighting comes back on. The
low
hum of the
generator running at full blast is coming from the rear wall of the
building. Reagan swears again, gaining Sam’s attention.

“Simon, clamp,” Reagan
says.

“I see it,” he answers and squeezes a
bleeding section closed.

“Sam,” is all he says to
her.

She knows what he needs.
She takes over holding the clamp tightly while he quickly
sews
the leaking
artery closed.

Reagan works at a feverish pace on the
other side of the small cot. She has managed to cauterize two areas
and sew another. She’s the fastest stitch maker in the family.
Simon is much slower and more dedicated to precision than Reagan.
She works on patients like she moves: fast. Reagan only knows one
speed.

“We’re losing him,” she mutters to
Simon.

Sam looks
toward
the
heartbeat monitor, which has slowed considerably. The anesthesia
may have done some of this, but he’s lost too much blood. They
don’t keep a supply on hand
like
a hospital would have in the past.
This isn’t even a hospital. It’s a pole barn shed with a cement
floor out in the middle of nowhere on a farm. If Gavin needs blood,
or any others, one of the family will have to donate. Then the
monitor makes that tell-tale, solid beep, letting them know that it
cannot detect a heartbeat anymore.

They begin CPR on Gavin.
Sam performs chest compressions as Simon blows into the man’s
mouth. His heart has stopped, likely from blood loss and internal
bleeding and damage. They continue to work on him while Reagan sews
his
internal
wounds closed. Sam risks a peek and sees that most of
the
bleeders
have been
stitched
and that blood no longer splatters onto the
bedding. Unfortunately, Simon isn’t able to get his heart started
again. Reagan just about has his wound sewn shut. They work longer,
even though it’s been almost a full minute that he’s stopped
breathing. Reagan injects something through a syringe into Gavin’s
IV line. Sam believes it is
likely
adrenaline or something similar
to stimulate his heart. She gently pushes Sam to the side and takes
over the chest compressions.

“Oh my God,” is
being
repeatedly whispered
behind them.

Sam turns to look and is horrified
that Talia is standing nearby watching her friend die. She quickly
strips her gloves, goes to her and takes the other woman’s hands
into her own. Grandpa has now joined the melee. The three of them
work diligently for another few minutes until Grandpa finally calls
it. Talia collapses against her in a weak ball of tears and nerves.
John comes over and escorts Sam’s fragile new friend from the
building. Reagan places both hands on the top of her head and holds
them there in an act of frustration and helplessness. She is
swearing prolifically and kicks the wall of the shed with the
bottom of her red Converse clad foot. Simon is just standing there
looking at his own hands and shaking his head in
confusion.