The Vampire and The Paramedic (2 page)

“He’s a Lycan,” James said, grunting with the
effort of holding his friend still. “I’m afraid he’s going to shift
if he starts to lose consciousness again.”

“Okay,” the woman said. “Once I can get the
bleeding stopped, we’ll see what we can do to keep him awake and
lucid.” She watched the oozing end of Rudy’s arm and continued to
twist the windlass stick on the tourniquet until the bleeding
slowed and then stopped. She used the built-in clip to lock the
windlass in place, holding the tension, glanced at her watch and
wrote the time on the white tape stitched on the webbing next to
the windlass.

“Okay, Rudy, I think I’ve got that bleeding
under control but that tourniquet is going to hurt like a bitch
until we get you to the trauma center.”

James quirked an eyebrow at her frank
bluntness. Rudy merely nodded.

“I’m going to get some vital signs now and
get an IV started to try to get some fluids into you while I see if
we need to get your blood pressure up. You’ve lost a lot of blood.
Alright?” She watched her patient as he nodded up at her
grimacing.

She turned to James. “James you’re doing a
great job. Just keep him talking and awake while I get some things
going here to help him. You’re sure you’re not injured?”

“I assure you. I am fine.” He was surprised
at himself taking orders from this woman. She was impressive as she
took control of the scene and began immediately treating his
friend. It had been a long time since a human woman had impressed
him so, but then he didn’t associate with them that often. He
turned his attention back to Rudy, talking to him quietly while he
watched her work.

The paramedic applied a blood pressure cuff
to Rudy’s good arm, slid a probe over his finger and placed four
sticky squares to his chest to which she attached wires from her
monitor. She turned it on, pushed a few buttons and then began
setting up the IV bag and tubing. James could hear the other sirens
drawing closer, but they were still a few minutes away. She pulled
out a needle and slid it expertly into Rudy’s arm below the blood
pressure cuff. She then attached the IV tubing and held the bag up
to watch the fluid begin to flow by gravity into her patient.

As she did that, James saw two police cars
arrive on the scene soon followed by an ambulance that pulled up
next to Brynne’s SUV. Two more paramedics hopped out and jogged
back to get the stretcher out of the ambulance. One called over to
her as he did so. “Brynne, what do you need?”

“Nothing, just the stretcher right now.” She
called back. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, she said to
James. “They don’t know who you two are so we’re just going to play
it cool. I’ll ride with you and Rudy to the hospital and have the
second paramedic drive my unit behind us. If anything happens in
the back of the ambulance on the way, we’ll have to deal with it
ourselves, ok?”

“Agreed,” James responded.

Rudy looked around at the ambulance with a
look of startled fear in his eyes. “I’m not sure I want to go to
the hospital. I never liked those places.”

“It’ll be fine, Rudy,” Brynne assured him.
“I’ll call ahead and let them know we’re coming, and they’ll have a
team who know all about you and will keep things on the down-low
for you.”

The two new paramedics rolled up with a
stretcher and placed it next to Rudy. Brynne continued to maintain
control of the scene, speaking up immediately with instructions.
“Randall, you and Derrick get ready to help me load our patient
Rudy here up onto the stretcher. I’m going to ride with him to the
hospital since I started care. Once we get him loaded up, Derrick,
you can follow us in my SUV.”

“Your patient, your call, Brynne. You’ve been
doing this longer than I have, and that arm looks gnarly,” Randall
said with a grin.

The two paramedics helped her lift Rudy onto
the stretcher and then lifted the stretcher up to waist height
before rolling it over to the back of the ambulance. Brynne pointed
James to a bench seat in the back on one side and then climbed into
the ambulance ahead of her patient. Once Rudy was loaded, she
checked the vitals on the monitor, looked at her patient, then
Brynne buckled a seat belt across her lap as she sat down in a
bucket seat at the head of the stretcher.

“Buckle your seatbelt, please,” She said,
pointing at the straps on either side of where he sat on the padded
bench seat.

James chuckled and held up a hand. “It would
take a lot more than another car crash to do me any harm, I assure
you.”

“Buckle up, please, sir. This ambulance isn’t
going anywhere until we’re all strapped in back here.”

“Alright,” James acquiesced. He was surprised
again a how quickly she took control of things around her. This
paramedic was a strong woman. He had not met a human like her for
many, many years.

She nodded and turned to the tiny hallway up
to the cab of the ambulance. “We’re good to go back here, Randall.”
The ambulance lurched into gear and with a roar of the diesel
engine and a blaring siren, drove away from the still-burning
wreckage just as the firefighters arrived to douse the flames.

By the time they got to the hospital, James
admitted to himself that Rudy’s color was better. He could sense
the strengthened heart beat inside his friend’s chest, too. The
female paramedic, Brynne, had done her job and done it well, all
the while keeping their secret from the other, unenlightened
paramedics and responders. The rhythmic beep of the backup alarm
told him they were pulling into the ambulance bay. Brynne gathered
the connected wires, tubes and the IV bag hanging above Rudy and
laid them on his cot so they could move him from the ambulance.
Rudy was groaning and appeared to be sleeping rather than having
slipped into unconsciousness.

“What do you think of his injury,” James
asked the paramedic quietly.

“I don’t know much about his healing
abilities as a Lycan, James. Is he able to regenerate lost
tissues?” Brynne asked. “If not, he might still lose that arm.”

“My experience has been that if it’s not
completely removed or amputated, it will heal. As long as the
injury doesn’t kill him right away, he will recover.” James looked
at his friend and then over to the woman who had saved his life.
“You made sure that didn’t happen, though. I didn’t even think of a
tourniquet.”

“You are a vampire, right?” She asked.

He nodded.

“You probably had the strength in your hands
to do what I did with the CAT tourniquet. Of course, you wouldn’t
be able to let go until someone else arrives. It’s something to
think about in the future if that type of thing ever happens
again.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” James said as the
driver, Randall, opened the back doors to start unloading the
patient.

“Ready to go, Brynne?” Randall asked,
gripping the release bar with one hand and the base of the cot with
the other.

“Yep, all set here,” Brynne replied.

Randall released the cot and carefully rolled
the rear wheels out the back of the ambulance, taking the weight as
they cleared the floor at the back doors. Brynne climbed down with
her clipboard of patient information. She waited as James climbed
out then shut the rear doors of the ambulance.

They wheeled the stretcher through the
automatic doors into the emergency room where a group of nurses and
doctors waited for them. He saw the elderly Doctor Spirelli leading
them. A nurse directed them to the first room to their left as they
wheeled in, and Brynne and Randall pushed Rudy’s stretcher inside
as James followed. There was a flurry of activity around him. They
proceeded to remove the rest of Rudy’s clothing, checking for
further injury while Brynne gave a verbal report of what happened
and what she had done. James stood in the corner unobtrusively
watching, using his innate ability to just blend in and disappear
in a crowd of humans. A hand on his arm jerked him away from his
fascination as he watched the trauma team in action.

“My Lord, perhaps we should get you somewhere
where you can get cleaned up,” a pleasant voice said. “You’re a
bloody mess.”

He turned to look at the speaker and was
surprised to see an Eldara Sister, an actual angel, dressed in
common nursing scrubs standing next to him. Her golden halo was
clearly visible to his enhanced vision. He looked down at his hands
and clothes and realized for the first time that he was covered in
his friend’s blood.

“Yes, Sister,” James said inclining his head
in respect. “I think that would be a good idea. Please lead the
way.”

She smiled and turned away, opening the door
and leading him from the room where his friend was being attended
to. The Eldara were known as the “Old Ones.” They had been here
longer than any of the other Unusuals. Some thought of them as at
the messengers of the gods. While they adhered to the loose
leadership governments of the Unusual community, they also lived
above it and most thought they followed the leadership of others
merely because they couldn’t be bothered to do so themselves.

“I was not aware an Eldara Sister was in Elk
City,” James said as they walked. Her hearing was at least as good
as his own, so he said it barely above a whisper to avoid the
mundane hearing of the human ears around them as they walked
through the emergency room. “I would have invited you to dine with
me and offered you a place to stay had I known.”

She chuckled. “I probably should have let you
know I was in town, but I wanted to see for myself this little
experiment you had set up here to care for your subjects. It is
impressive.”

“I’m glad you approve, Sister,” James said.
“I have to say that when I was approached by the human authorities,
I was skeptical. So far, though, it has been surprisingly
successful. I’m inclined to ask them to continue, especially after
tonight’s events. Their skills are quite respectable though nothing
compared to what you could achieve, I’m sure.”

“Please call me Ashley, My Lord. It is easier
when around the humans, and I don’t much like the formality,” she
said. They had arrived at a door, which she opened and directed him
inside. It was a break room of sorts with an attached bathroom.
There was a table, some chairs, a TV mounted in the corner on the
wall and a small refrigerator next to a counter with a sink. She
grabbed a scrub shirt and pants from the shelf next to her and
handed them to him.

He took the offered scrubs and said, “Then I
must insist that you call me James, Ashley.” He returned her smile
and went into the bathroom to change.

“There are red plastic trash bags in the
cabinet under the sink,” She said through the door. “Put your
soiled clothing into one of those.” He undressed and did as she
suggested. Using copious amounts of paper towels, he did his best
to clean up the blood from his hands and face. He was a mess. The
vampire leader was unused to not looking his best. He prided
himself on a certain sense of style. The scrubs he donned were a
plain pastel blue. He didn’t think he had ever worn something that
color in his long unlife. He carefully folded his black corduroy
sports coat, black skinny jeans, and charcoal gray dress shirt and
slipped them into one of the red bags, imprinted with a bio-hazard
symbol. He wasn’t sure what to do with them. He didn’t think it was
worth cleaning them, and he could easily afford just to throw them
away. He opted to tuck the bag under one arm as he opened the
bathroom door and went back out into the break room where the
Eldara was waiting for him.

“I’m curious, Ashley, how you came to work
here as a nurse, I mean given your prodigious healing powers,”
James asked as he left the staff bathroom. “I would expect it’s
hard just to stand by and watch these humans struggle with things
you could heal with a flick of your finger.”

“Being a nurse is the perfect job for me,
actually,” She replied. “Nurses are the profession of healers that
most reflect the Eldara approach to life, healing, and wellness.
They believe in a holistic approach to caring for their patients,
treating them mind, body, and soul, much as we Eldara do. You also
know that we are reluctant to meddle in the lives of humans. We
believe in letting all life take its natural course.”

“So you’ve done nothing, uh, shall we say,
‘extra’ in your time here?” James asked.

She smiled. “I’ve taken a few small steps,
here and there, to improve a person’s health, but I assure you that
no miracles will happen while I’m here.” Ashley held out a hand for
his bag of clothes. “You don’t want to keep those, do you? I’ll
take them and dispose of them if you’d like.

He handed her the bag of bloody clothes.
“Yes, thank you.”

“I’ll take you out to the waiting room where
you can sit while they treat your friend.” She turned and opened
the door leading out to the bustling emergency department of the
hospital. James followed her out the door and down the hallway past
a series of curtained ER treatment bays and around the nurse’s
station in the center. It was like the hole in a donut with all the
rooms and treatment areas arrayed around it. As he was passing by
the doors that led back out to the ambulance bay, they slid open
automatically, and he heard a voice behind him.

“You cleaned up. Good. I bet you feel
better,” the paramedic, Brynne, said. Then she chuckled. “Ashley
set you up with some fancy duds I see.”

James stopped and turned to see the paramedic
in the short hallway to the ambulance parking area, putting sheets
on the stretcher, preparing it for the next run. She was smiling at
him, and he could sense a twinge of humorous curiosity bubbling
around her mind’s edges. While he couldn’t truly read minds, he
could often detect moods and strong emotions at the surface.