Blood seeped between his fingers like black syrup as he held his gaping wound together. Leaning against the cold brick wall the figure dragged himself through the alley, upright only through sheer force of will. A trail of blood followed him in the night.
So this is what dying feels like.
There were many times in the man's life when he should have died, but if this was what finally took him down he couldn't help but feel disappointed. Chuckling, the man's knees buckled and he slid to the ground. Struggling to breathe, air seemed to be leaking out of his lungs through the hole in his chest, he wheezed, head spinning. Surprisingly the pain was minimal, his body felt light and tingly all over, likely from the blood loss, and his head felt cloudy. Thoughts slipped through his mind as if he were waking from a dream, or slipping into one. A distant ringing in his ears grew louder and the world around him faded into light… sensation left his body and he felt himself dissolve into the air.
'Blood?' thought a lanky, dark-haired man as he roamed the dimly-lit streets.
'Not surprising in this neighborhood.' The last train of the night didn't complete the route, leaving him to groggily walk through unfamiliar streets to get home. Feeling light headed from fatigue, the man found himself unconsciously following the drops of blood trailing along the sidewalk. He had just gotten out of a twenty hour surgery stitching up a kid who had been shot four times. The hospital shifts were brutal but he was confident in his work… now he only needed to get home to sleep. Home… which way was that again?
The surgeon turned into an alley and stumbled over something soft and almost fell, catching himself on a brick wall. Weary eyes focused on a large mound at his feet… clothing? A man. Dead? He studied the body, large, heavily muscled, a flash of red hair and a pained expression. Knife wound to the abdomen, knife wound to the chest. Cause of death, exsanguination? Wait, he has a pulse.
The surgeon was on autopilot. Before he had even realized that the mound was a man, his hands were searching for signs of life, and found it. The pulse was weak, unsteady, the man did not have long to live. The groggy doctor was gradually becoming more awake as the situation unfolded, adrenaline coursing through his body anew and he set to work saving the man's life. Thoughts were flooding into his head and and he ignored all of them, letting his expert hands do the thinking.
Staunch blood flow from abdominal wound. Vascular damage. Possible organ damage. Close chest wound. Possible collapsed lung. Clean the wounds.
Rifling through his knapsack he pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves, gauze, a few mini bottles of vodka, a caffeine energy shot, and a roll of duct tape. He always travelled well prepared.
The gloves went on first. Twisting off the cap of the mini vodka with his teeth, he peeled back the layers of blood-soaked clothing to expose the wounds. Gauze was splashed with alcohol and wiped over the injuries so he could see the damage more clearly. A lazy glut of blood was slowly pumping out of the abdominal wound. One firm hand pressed down with gauze to stem the bleeding while the other took the vodka back in hand. The surgeon downed the rest of the vodka with a wince, then downed the energy shot. He then ripped off a section of duct tape with his teeth and placed it over the chest wound to seal it. If air was allowed to pass through the wound into the pleural cavity the lung could collapse, if it hadn't already. Another piece of duct tape was ripped off and placed over the gauze on the abdomen.
Need to perform emergency laparotomy.
As it was, he had no way of knowing the full extent of the damage. It was too dark and dirty to operate here, he didn't have the necessary supplies. The man needed a blood transfusion. He needed a hospital. But the surgeon had no way to contact anyone, his phone had no reception in this area. Going door to door was an option, but he doubted anyone would answer a midnight call from a stranger in this neighborhood. Home wasn't too far. If the man could survive being dragged to the surgeon's house he would be able to operate immediately, or call an ambulance.
I'm too tired for this shit.
Reaching around the limp body and pulling a heavy arm over his shoulders, he hoisted the man up and began walking. Fuck. The man was big and heavy, and the surgeon was tired and not all that strong. The going was rough, and he asked himself several times why he was doing this, but the doctor had taken his Hippocratic oath and it was his duty to heal.
They were closer to his house than he had realized. The surgeon fumbled for his keys, dragged the man inside and lay him on the hardwood floor. No time to go to the table, he would operate here. Lights were flicked on, a fresh pair of gloves were donned, and the surgeon got to work.
He pulled an oxygen tank with a mask out of a nearby cabinet and set up a makeshift IV drip with sterile saline solution. Additional bags of saline solution were used to flush the wounds as he could now clean them more thoroughly. Antiseptic was applied to both wounds and he taped more gauze to the abdominal injury to keep the bleeding down. Pulling out a stethoscope he checked the man's pulse and breathing. The lung was partially collapsed. He closed and sealed the chest wound, took a scalpel to a lower section of the thorax and made a small, deep incision to insert a small tube to drain the fluids that had accumulated in the pleural cavity. The man's breathing became steadier. Now came the fun part. Or, it would, but the surgeon realized he should really call an ambulance at this point. He reached into his back pocket with a bloody gloved hand to pull out is phone. Glancing down, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest when he saw the man's face; his eyes were wide open, red and bloodshot.
"Hello," spoke the surgeon. He wasn't too confident in his bedside manner as his patients usually came to him unconscious. "Don't worry, I'm calling an ambulance."
The man's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
"Don't strain yourself, everything's going to be alri-"
"No hospital " the man choked out through the oxygen mask.
The surgeon frowned. Oh . He was one of those unlawful types. Figures. Well at least now he would get to do the fun part. The doctor had a wicked, unsettling smile.
"I'm afraid I don't have any anesthetic."
"No.. hospital, " the man insisted.
Setting his phone down on the floor next to him and picking up the scalpel, the surgeon began the laparotomy by making a vertical incision into the man's pale, muscular abdomen to gain access to all the little organs inside and qualify the damage. The man, fully conscious, lay there watching the surgeon put his hands inside his body, feeling everything. He gri his teeth and made great efforts to ignore the pain, it was so surreal, everything felt hazy. The doctor had dark, tired eyes and a dangerous smile.
"My name is Law.. I'm a surgeon," talking to trauma victims supposedly helped keep them calm and increased success rates, so the surgeon talked while he worked. The extent of the damage was moderate. Internal stitches would be required and drainage to remove bile that had leaked into the abdomen. Organ damage was present to the liver and outer intestinal wall. Law glanced periodically up at the man's face, fascinated. The red-haired criminal had a very high tolerance to pain, but was clearly struggling to endure the waves of agony that must have been growing now that the initial adrenaline rush from the attack had worn off. He liked watching the subtle movements in the body, little reactions to pain and touch. Law applied clamps to several severed blood vessels before stitching each one up.
The injured man watched the surgeon work. he average person would have looked away, but he was no average man, and he stared down at his open body as gloved hands attatched scissor-like clamps to part of his innards so that several of the silvery metal tools stuck out from inside him. The surgeon was strangely pleased that to have his patient also as his audience, watching the mutilation of his own body with great interest, apparently unphased by the body-horror of his condition. Law liked this man already.
Perhaps it was his closeness to death, but the patient felt waves of sensations and emotions wash over him like a roller coaster. Pain was momentarily pleasure, was momentarily sadness, and suddenly joy, and then nausea, and back to pain. The surgeon's face with his dark eyes floated in front of him, fuzzy, smiling a dangerous smile, dark eyes, dangerous smile, pain, pleasure, sadness, joy. Heart skipping a few beats, blood pressure dangerously low, he was tingly all over and and his thoughts connected with about as much logic as a dream.
When surgery was complete the man had passed out again but his vitals were steady. Law managed to pull off his gloves and throw them away, walk to the bathroom and strip before passing out in the shower. It had been nearly forty-eight hours since he had last slept, and the past thirty of those hours were performing surgery. Overworked and sleep deprived, he lay slumped over in the bathtub through the night and well into the morning, dreaming of a red-haired stranger and his beautiful broken body.