Page 17 of Resuscitation

Chapter Fifteen

The ambulance roared through Eastfork as fast as Blake could safely drive in the harsh conditions with the wind and snow rushing in through the smashed windshield.

Blake shuddered at the cold as he passed the familiar boarded-up stores and, of course, no pay phones in sight for him to call in the emergency. Whose damned idea was it to take away all the pay phones and landlines anyway?

“How’s Alyssa back there?” Blake asked, loud enough for Thomas to hear.

“Stable, I think,” he rasped in reply.

“Fine,” came her voice, sounding refreshingly annoyed. If she had enough energy to be pissed at him and the situation, he’d take that as a good sign.

“Shout if there’s any change, okay?”

“Roger.” Thomas sounded as if he was enjoying the ride. Sometimes, adrenaline did that.

As Blake turned into the hospital drive, he flicked off the lights and slowed, inching along slower than he could’ve walked it.

When he saw the ambulance bay, doors open and lights on, he stopped and idled the engine.

Between the snow and the bushes that lined the drive, their ambulance was fairly obscured, he hoped.

The county SUV had been parked haphazardly in the bay, lights still blazing with one of the passenger doors open. An armed man lounged against its hood, smoking a cigarette.

Then two flashes lit up the dispatch window. Blake was too far away to hear any gunshots over the howling wind, but he was reasonably certain those were muzzle flashes from a pistol. The man in the ambulance bay also reacted, raising his rifle and racing to the EMS office, yanking the door open.

Blake watched as a second man appeared in the office window. He was a big guy with a mohawk, also dressed in tactical gear.

“Everything okay?” Alyssa asked.

“I think Wayne may just have been shot,” Blake said as he moved to the back of the ambulance.

“Oh, Jesus, no.” Thomas stared up at Blake, ashen-faced. “Are you sure?”

“Not one hundred per cent, but close.”

“So, those really aren’t cops?” Thomas whispered. “What’re we gonna do?”

“Not we,” Alyssa put in. “Blake, we need to call the cops.”

“From our last comms, they should already have folks on the way.”

“Twenty minutes, they said. To where the shootout was.”

Shit. That was a helluva long time when desperate armed men were involved. “Are they sending anyone here?”

A shrug was her only answer.

“Here’s the plan,” he told them. “I’m going to get you guys somewhere safe. Then I’m going in to find a landline, call for back up.” Maybe draw the gunmen away from the civilians, he didn’t add.

“Old outpatient clinic,” Alyssa said.

“Good, that will work.”

Far enough from the ER that no one would hear them, safe from the elements and the last place the gunmen would go. Except the former clinic had already been stripped clean, had no power or oxygen.

Blake checked his supply of oxygen canisters.

One more beyond what Thomas had. The ambulance had its own supply, but once away from it, both Alyssa and Thomas would need oxygen, and two tanks might not be enough if help was delayed.

But there was plenty of O2 in the ambulance bay, and he had to retrieve it.

Weapons. He needed weapons to make the next part work.

Blake had his multitool, a folding knife, and trauma scissors, but they’d only be useful for extremely close quarters fighting.

He grabbed the vehicle’s toolbox. Inside were a wrench, various screwdrivers, a hammer, and numerous other tools.

He chose a Halligan—an eighteen-inch firefighter entry tool with a pry bar at one end and a combo adze and pick at the other.

He hefted it in his hands. It felt good—his old M4 carbine would’ve been better, but at least he didn’t feel quite as naked.

“Where are you going with that?” Alyssa asked. He liked that she could breathe easier with the pneumoseal, but knew it was just a temporary fix. One problem at a time, he told himself.

“Gonna shop for supplies. Leave the motor running. I’ll be right back.”

“Be careful.”

He nodded and slipped out of the vehicle. The snow and wind made for decent camouflage, but he took no chances, moving slowly and silently along the shrubs that lined the drive. By the time he reached the EMS bay, both men had vanished. Gone. But for how long?

Blake crossed the parking lot in a low sprint, edging along the wall that led to the bay. He stopped and listened every few yards until he was crouched alongside the SUV.

There was blood smeared on the floor near the SUV. He glanced inside to the rear seat. One of them was injured—pretty badly, based on the amount of blood.

Using the vehicle for cover, he crossed to the dispatch office window and craned his head to look inside. Wayne was dead. All the gear smashed to bits, the landline ripped from the wall. Cell phone? No, the gunmen would’ve grabbed phones from the hostages first thing.

Back to his original plan, then. He turned to the racks of equipment along the side wall. A wheeled cart held four oxygen tanks. He debated taking the entire cart but worried it might be missed.

He grabbed a trauma bag to augment what he had in the ambulance and slung it over his shoulder. Then he filled his arms with two O2 canisters, fighting to juggle them and the Halligan without any clanging, hating that it took both hands, making him feel vulnerable.

Hurrying out of the bay where the lights made him an easy target, he’d just made it to the exterior wall when the door from the ER opened. Flattening himself against the brick wall, he inched as far into the shadows as possible, giving him an oblique sightline into the bay.

The man with the mohawk walked over to the parked SUV, searched inside each of the three compartments: front, rear, cargo. Then the guy slammed the door shut, locked the vehicle with a key fob, and leaned against the hood, lighting a cigarette as he looked around.

Blake held his breath. Would he notice the missing oxygen tanks? What was he looking for inside the SUV he and his partners had arrived in?

He contemplated taking the guy out, or maybe using his gear as a cover for infiltrating the ER. But that option had too many risks.

Mohawk crushed his half-smoked cigarette into the pavement and turned, facing the half-empty oxygen rack.

Blake tensed.

“Fuck this,” Mohawk muttered, turning on his heel to cross back into the ER.

Blake waited a full minute, but the guy didn’t return. Blake withdrew to the ambulance where Thomas was doing an excellent job monitoring Alyssa’s screens.

“No change,” the old man reported as if he were in charge.

Headlights off, counting on the storm to hide their movement, Blake drove around the building to the old clinic on the far side of the ER, backing up to a plywood-covered door secured with a padlock.

Blake switched off the engine and jumped out, grabbing a Maglite and the Halligan, which made short work of the lock just as it was designed to do. It was fast becoming Blake’s favorite tool.

He eased the door open to peek at the gloomy space within.

The abandoned clinic wing had been empty for months, but it would suit his needs—for a while at least. He slipped inside, using the Maglite to navigate.

There was no equipment left, only worthless trash: a couple of plastic chairs, some stray rolls of toilet paper and bundles of paper towels, a cracked empty red sharps disposal bin, an old wheelchair.

The hall parallel to the clinic held a series of interconnected, partially demolished offices that would be even more useless.

Satisfied there were no gunmen or threats waiting, Blake returned to the ambulance. He prepped Alyssa for transport first, hanging the monitor on the gurney railing, piling up the trauma gear, IV bags, and oxygen tanks on her lap and between her legs.

Wrestling the gurney out of the ambulance took more work than he’d anticipated—it wasn’t designed for one person to extract while a patient was on board.

But with a little huffing, he made it, although Alyssa obviously bore the brunt of his jostling, unable to silence her yelp of pain when the back wheels bounced onto the ground.

“Sorry,” he whispered, but she just shook her head and pointed to the door. “Yes, my queen, right away, oh supreme medic.”

She managed a weak smile but didn’t answer him, which was a bit worrying.

He got her inside, parking the gurney in the empty examination room closest to the exit, just in case they had to make a run for it. Once he had her on oxygen, monitor, and with trauma bags parked on the counter where she could reach them, he returned for Thomas.

Despite not being able to see—or maybe that was an advantage in the darkness—the older man had gathered up his IV bag and tubing, holding it on his shoulder like a pro, his other hand gripping his oxygen tank.

At least he hadn’t risked climbing down from the ambulance on his own, Blake thought as he helped him to the ground.

He hopped back up into the ambulance, grabbing a box of emergency blankets—the clinic wasn’t much warmer than the ambulance—three more Maglites, and any meds he imagined Thomas might need to supplement the supply in the med kit.

There wasn’t any medication that might help Alyssa. If she got worse, she’d need a chest tube, maybe a blood transfusion, a surgeon and an OR. None of which he had to offer.

He took Thomas into the exam room, parking him on a chair and hanging his IV from a stand he found among the debris in the hall.

One wheel was broken, but it worked just fine for his purposes.

Setting up a Maglite as a makeshift lantern, he checked Thomas’s sugar and electrolytes.

The sugar was stable but the potassium was creeping up; the old man needed his dialysis. Soon.

Then he turned to Alyssa. She already had IV supplies spread out over the blanket covering her lap and held her arm out to him. “Easy stick.”

“Easy for you to say.” He threw a tourniquet around her arm and she pumped her fist, making the veins in her antecubital fossa pop.

She was right, she was an easy stick—that and he had a good teacher.

He hung her IV on the pole at the head of the bed, then listened to her lungs. “Down a little on the right.”

She nodded. Of course, she’d know if her own breathing changed. He checked the chest seal. It wasn’t fluttering.

“Blood clot. I’m going to swap it out.” He grabbed a new seal from the trauma kit and reapplied, relieved when the valves began to move as she exhaled.

But the fact that the first one had clogged so quickly made him worry she might be bleeding into the area around her lung.

But her vitals were okay—not great, but okay.

“We’ve got two more seals.” He placed them where she could reach them, beside the other supplies. He looked around. There wasn’t anything more he could do to help them.

“Go,” Alyssa said.

“Yeah, don’t let them hurt anyone else,” Thomas chimed in.

“Hey.” Alyssa grabbed Blake’s arm. “First rule.”

He nodded grimly. “I won’t do anyone any good if I get killed.”

“Yeah, cuz we’d be truly screwed then,” Thomas added.

Blake rummaged through the trauma bag, grabbed a roll of duct tape, smashed it flat, and slid it into his inside jacket pocket where he kept his good luck charm: his grandfather’s old Zippo lighter that had never failed to light. Not even during his Afghan tour.

Wasn’t much else that might be handy when dealing with enemy combatants—scalpels were too flimsy as weapons, and IV tubing was too pliable to be good for anything other than a garrote.

If Blake was close enough to use a garrote, he could just as easy choke a man out himself.

Ranger School might have been years ago, but those skills were deeply ingrained.

He moved his Kershaw Drivetrain folding knife from his belt to his sock, sliding it out of sight inside his boot. The Maglite, he attached to his belt alongside his multi-tool. He grabbed his Halligan, turned one last time to Thomas and Alyssa, their faces ghostly white in the other Maglite’s LED.

“Good luck,” Thomas said.

Alyssa waved him off. “Later, gator.”

He stepped outside into the corridor. Within a few steps, he was plunged into darkness.