“Don’t move, Bax,” I said, working to keep my voice calm. “We need to leave it in there for a hot minute, okay, bro? I know it hurts, but we gotta leave it in.”
“Why?” He spoke through gritted teeth, glaring at me. “Fuckin’ hurts. Get it out.”
“Can’t, not yet,” I said. “Might cause worse damage if we take it out. And it’s high up enough, it might be near your artery. We pull it, it could sever that artery, and you’ll bleed out before we can do shit.”
He was lying down on his back, struggling now and then to sit up and look at it, hands hovering around his thigh as if fighting the urge to just yank the shard out.
“Fuck, man.”
“I’m sorry, Bax. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“No shit, asshole.”
The blood, the pain in his eyes, the tension, the guilt…it put me back. “MEDIC!” I shouted forgetting, momentarily, that I was in Alaska, and not on a mission.
I heard commotion around me and looked up to see someone shoving their way through the crowd. “Lemme through. I’m a medic.” I heard a woman’s voice, with that brusque snap of someone used to being listened to. “Move the FUCK out of the way, assholes!”
People were shoved aside, and a woman stepped through the gap she’d created, kneeling beside Bax. I shifted aside to give her room, and she quickly took stock.
“Ah, not too bad. Not pretty, but you’ll be fine. Just hold still, okay?”
“I am holding still!” Bax whined. “You’re the one who’s wiggling.”
She glanced at me. “Pin his leg down for me.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, because she had that voice of authority, and I’m a soldier trained to listen to that. I grabbed Bax’s thigh up near his groin and his knee and pinned him down. “Now what?”
“Now I yank it out, and hope he hits you instead of me.” She said this with a lopsided grin that knocked the air out of my lungs.
Fuck, damn, and holy shit, this girl was gorgeous. On the shorter side, but curvy as fuck. Blond hair braided tight against her head, the tail hanging over one shoulder, bright green eyes the color of grass with the summer sun shining on it, and that grin, fuck, that grin. Lopsided, cute, confident, sexy, a hint of white teeth, her lips expressive and done in bright red lipstick. That grin knocked me the fuck out.
And she was handling this with the calm ease of someone who’d seen much, much worse.
“Won’t it hurt him worse if you take it out?”
She shook her head, the braid swinging against her shoulder. “Nah. Not where it is. No danger of nicking his femoral. Just muscle and blood in there. He’ll be fine. It’ll hurt him worse when I take it out, but it won’t damage him worse. Key difference there.” She glanced at Bax. “You need a belt to bite down on, big boy? Or can you take the pain?” She was baiting him, I realized.
“I can fuckin’ take it, okay? Just get it the fuck out of me,” Bax growled.
“Grab onto me, Bax,” I said. “Break something if you have to.”
“Oh I’ll be breaking something,” Bax snarled at me. “Just you fuckin’ wait.”
“I need you to keep his leg pinned down,” the sexy medic said. “So he doesn’t thrash and make things worse.”
“Gotcha,” I replied. I heard sirens in the distance, which meant someone had called 911. Keeping a firm grip on Bax’s leg, I braced for the moment she’d pull out the jagged shard of the bottle. Bax was braced too, teeth gritted, both of his hands clamped down on my shoulder, his grip brutally powerful. I deserved it, so I allowed it. But it fuckin’ hurt, and along with the cut on my ribs, which was still bleeding, I was in a world of hurt.
But Bax had to be hurting worse, so I pushed the pain aside and focused.
The medic shot me a look. “On three, all right? Ready? One… two…,” and then she yanked it out in a quick jerk of her hand, lightning fast. “Three.”
“Ha ha,” Bax grunted, sounding distinctly faint and unamused. “Very fuckin’ original. Oh fuck…fuck, it hurts.”
The medic glanced up at Brock, who was hovering over us. “You. Need your shirt and belt.”
Brock complied immediately, shrugging off his coat, ripping off the tie, and unbuttoning the shirt. In less than thirty seconds he gave her his shirt and belt. The medic wrapped the shirt around Bax’s thigh, keeping a thick wad of fabric bunched over the site of the wound, and then wrapped the belt around it and cinched it tight. The ambulance arrived and the EMS crew took over, the sexy medic filling them in, and then Brock was climbing into the ambulance after Bax who was on the stretcher. And then they were gone and I was left standing there, hand pressed to my side, with the medic next to me, her hands bloody.