The van drove off into the night. Nina sat in the back alone, she felt the tears coming down her face and was shocked. She wiped them away quickly before anyone saw them. She now knew how Jack felt when he lost Teri, she thought to herself. Had she loved him as much as he loved Teri? Could what they had be considered love, or just two people with great chemical attraction acting on it? Or was that love? She thought this over as the van drove back to the house. When they reached the house they stopped long enough for Nina to get out of the back. She walked to the house with her head hung. She was angry with herself and her boss for making her kill Jack.
James came out of the house to greet her and asked, "Where's Jack? What did they want with you guys?" When he noticed Jack wasn't there he shut up and looked like a sad little puppy.
"I'm sorry James." Nina said walking to the house.
James unable to control his emotions screamed at her, "How could you I thought you loved him?"
"Kid there is no love in this business. You'll learn it eventually. Whatever side you're on you have committed yourself to a world of loneliness and if you try anything different it never will work out because people will always hurt the ones you love first to get to you." She said standing at the door before she opened it. When she walked inside she could smell him, and she managed to close the door behind her before she fell on the ground sobbing. She knew what Jack was talking about when he told her how empty he felt after he had killed the person he felt was her. Her ultimate enemy was gone. Even when he was on her side she could still fight against him in a way that made sense only to them. It was all gone now, her life no longer had a ultimate purpose because she had killed it. What was bad without good? Or the yin without the yang? Nothing because you need both opposites ends of the continuum to have meaning to each side. You can't have day without night, or life without death, or joy without sorrow. None of it would have a meaning because you had nothing to compare it to.
The campers heard the gun fire and the scream of pain. The quickly hid as if the people could see them from their camping area. When the van left the man ran quickly to where he thought he saw the woman leaving. He tripped over the injured person hearing a groan of pain escaping the man. He pulled his flashlight out, he was to worried that the people might return and see the light and know there were witnesses. He shined the light on the man and saw the two bullet holes in the mans back. He quickly pulled his shirt off ripping it in half he applied pressure to both wounds causing the man to scream out in pain.
His wife joined him a few minutes later trailing behind in the dead sprint to the man. He saw her and said, "Honey I need you to keep these here. Put as much pressure on them as you can. He's going to cry out in pain, but you need to apply pressure or he might die. I need to turn him on his side to see if the bullets exited."
His wife pushed on the mans back as he slowly turned him onto his side. He didn't see an exit wound for the highest hole. He did see a exit wound and blood bubbles from the bullet wound to the mans rib cage. He silently cussed to himself, the mans lung had collapsed. He tried to think back to his medical school days. He had never had to fix a sever collapse like this without surgery, but if he didn't fix it now the man would die. The man was already struggling to breath. Than he remembered looking at his wife, "Where are your needles?"
"For my insulin?"
"Yes." He said excited.
"In the car."
"I'll be back with the car." He yelled back while running again at a dead sprint, "Keep the pressure on those wounds and keep him turned on his side."
The woman held on tight to the man she didn't even know, pushing on the wounds as hard as she could even as her hands began to cramp. The man had passed out a long time ago and stopped screaming out in pain. She felt the warm blood warming her sweaty cold palms.
She saw their car come speeding through the sand. Her husband stopped a few feet away from them and got out with one of her needles in his hand, a knife, and some duct tape. He ran over to them and said, "Help me push him onto his stomach."
The struggled to move Jack onto his stomach. The man cut the cuffs free and than moved him back on to his back. "Hold his head up I don't want him to choke on blood. I know there is some internal bleeding but we have to get him breathing right again or he'll die before we can even think about getting him to the hospital." He broke the plastic plunger/liquid holding area off the needle. He aimed for where he thought the lung was collapsed and plunged the needle in. He heard the air hiss out of the needle. He quickly taped up the needle so it would stay stuck in the man, and than had turned the man on his side having his wife hold him as he moved around to block of the hole in his rib cage with duck tape. He quickly rolled the duct tape around the hole hoping to make it close to air tight. When he finished he struggled to pull the man to the back seat of the car, he knew he had to get the man to a hospital and an ambulance would take to long if they could find them, and that was if they could call for one. "Honey I need you to drive fast. We need to get him to the hospital and it's twenty miles away. Drive as fast as you can. I'm going to stay in the back and try to keep him alive during the ride. Can you do this?" He asked her.
"Yes." She said not very confident but ready to try for the stranger. She took off through the desert when she reached the rode she increased her speed to a hundred. She turned the bights on the car so that she could see the road at the speed she was going a slight pot hole could send them into a tail spin.
She was doing fine until she saw the lights of a cop car and the sirens behind them. She didn't know what to do keep going or stop. She decided to keep going until the cop ran along the side of them threatening to ram them. She slammed on her breaks before he did, she knew that might cause the injured man problems in the back. The cop commanded her to get out of the car. When she did he pulled his gun seeing her covered in blood. "Sir we got a man in the back. He's been shot. We found him we were out camping."
"Lay on the ground and cross your legs and put your hands on your head." The cop commanded. The woman followed his orders hoping he would at least look in the back. The cop cautiously approached the door as he saw one man in the back. When he looked in the back seat he saw the other man and blood.
"get up ma'am." He said knowing this was not the time to get to the bottom of things. "Follow me." He ran back to his car and got in front of her car. He drove them at a hundred and ten all the way to the hospital with the sirens and lights on.
When they reached the hospital the doctors were already outside ready for them, the cop had called it in. They unloaded Jack from the back of the car. The man that had helped him originally giving them a general overview of how the man was, and what he had done to help. The took Jack quickly into the emergency surgery room. Pulling out the needle they stuck a ventilator in him, IV's and prepped him for the emergency surgery he would undergo there. They turned him over and began to work on the worse of the two wounds. The one where the bullet had not exited. They worked frantically against time as the man was leaking a lot of blood, and there had been a great amount of damage.
A nurse ran into the room with blood to start pumping into the man. They everyone was working around him frantically trying to stop the blood loose. "We're gong to loose him hurry up and fix the leak." One of the doctors called out.
"Give me a minute."
"He's crashing. Come on."
"Give me a minute."
"He's flat lined." There was no reason to say it they could hear the annoying sound of the machine. The quickly flipped the man and started to shock him. After two shocks they had a faint line back. The flipped him quickly and the doctor finally got the blood lost to stop. He couldn't' find the bullet and assumed it was fine to patch the man up to go into x-rays to find where the bullet had logged itself.
