"Fuck!" Raph dove for the iron grating and lifted it with a heave. Phil collapsed behind his podium, anticipating more fire.
The Foot soldier was already gone.
Donatello just stared as the bullets ripped through her chest, trailing bright red tails as they erupted from her back. She looked at him as she fell. And somewhere in the back of his suddenly muted brain, he found it fascinating that she didn't look scared. Didn't look hurt. Just mildly surprised, as if she'd open her refrigerator and found pie when she'd been expecting cake.
Then she hit the ground and Raph was screaming.
"Donnie! What the hell do you think you're doing, man? Get the fuck over here!"
He snapped to attention and bolted forward, sliding beneath the metal grate. He jammed it open with his bo staff as he went, Raph close on his tail.
The girl on the ground tried to lift her hand to her shoulder where a bouquet of vermillion flowers bloomed across her sterile white coat. Her "New Team Member" badge had been shattered by one of the rounds.
"Hey kid, don't move," commanded Raph in a low, rough voice.
She chuckled, blood splattering her lips. "Why not, Raphael?" The burlier brother jumped in surprise at hearing his name on her lips. "I worked as an EMT long enough to know I'm already dead."
"Shh-shh-shh," Donnie muttered soothingly. He propped her head up on a plastic bin and tried to pull her jacket back.
She swatted at his hand weakly and mumbled, "Trying to get my clothes off, Donatello? We haven't even had our first date." She flashed a crooked smile at him and something in his gut wrenched. He peeled the tattered cloth away from her shoulder without further protest.
To his immense relief, she didn't seem to be bleeding out much. The major arteries in her chest had been missed, though it was likely that a number of ribs and her scapula were shattered.
"Phil!"
The portly man rose shakily from behind his podium, staring at them with as much fear as he'd given the Foot soldiers.
"If you have anything in this place that can be used as a clotting agent and pressure bandages, I need them now!" Donatello didn't look up, but he heard the man shuffle and skitter around the pharmacy behind them.
"G-got it," he stuttered when he came back, arms laden with a motley assortment of packages. He handed them off to Raphael; avoiding touching his hands like he had the plague. He cast his eyes down at his newest coworker.
"Are you gonna save 'er?"
Donatello pulled the shoulder of her shirt down and poured hydrogen peroxide across the wounds - four holes clear through - and didn't respond. She hissed a quick breath between her teeth and glanced at him again. He avoided her eyes.
"Raph, I'm going to need your help. When I tell you to, I need you to slide your hands under her shoulder and put pressure on the wounds. We need to stem the flow or she'll bleed out." Donatello was in clinical mode, all panic and emotion drained away in the moment of need.
"Phil," he said, "Why don't you go check on Ms. Sinclaire and see if there's anyone else in the store who needs help?" It was posed as a question, but the tone brooked no room for argument.
Nodding silently, the pharmacist shuffled away, barely squeezing under the gate in his haste. He was wan and pale, and he didn't look back.
Donatello sprinkled the package of quick-clotting formula over her wounds; the tiny, artificial thrombocytes working wonders on the surface. But there was something about the wet, ragged sound of her breathing that was setting off alarm bells in his head.
He flipped his goggles down over his eyes and flipped a switch on the homemade medical aide.
And swore out loud.
Raphael stared at him incredulously. The most mild-mannered of the bunch, Donatello was the last brother he'd ever expect to say anything obscene. But the string of expletives combined with the sudden scramble through his bags had Raph's nerves jumped even higher than they were before.
"Wha'? What the hell's goin' on, Donnie?"
"One of the bullets caused a pleural effusion and she's hemorrhaging into her lungs!"
"What?"
Donnie nearly shouted at his brother. "She's going to drown in her own blood long before she ever dies of blood loss!"
From the bottom of a bag, he withdrew a length of plastic tubing and a short metal shunt that looked like a sharpened wine aerator. With careful, probing fingers, he found the wound that most likely nicked her lung, and finally met her eyes.
He was suddenly struck with the realization that he was seeing her in full color for the first time. Her hair was a deep brown like pure Peruvian cocoa, frizzed out and matted with blood that was slowly congealing. Skin paler than it should have been, except for the high flush points across her cheekbones. Eyes that had seemed so dark from afar were closer to the color of a raw emerald, with narrow golden sunbursts at their center. His stomach flipped when she suddenly coughed and splattered fresh blood across the back of his hand. When she opened her eyes again, she looked almost apologetic.
"How bad is it, doc?"
His mouth set in a grim line. "You're bleeding internally. I've got to siphon some of the blood out of your lungs, or you're going to choke." He paused, waiting for the panic, but her gaze was steady.
"So what do I need to do?"
"Try not to move."
She gave the barest of nods and he turned his attention toward his brother, who was watching the conversation in wary silence.
'Raph, stick your hands out."
Donnie soaked his brother's hands, and his jerry-rigged tools, in the remaining peroxide before wrapping Raph's hands in layer-upon-layer of gauze. He was trying to form something like a cross between sterile gloves and a pressure pad.
"Okay, now I need you to press down on the front and back of her shoulder to slow the bleeding from the other sites and hold her steady." Raph nodded and slid one large hand under her shoulder, eliciting a gurgling hiss from their patient.
"Easy boys, no need to manhandle me."
He caught her eyes again. "I've never performed a thoracentesis before. I have no anesthetic and I don't know enough about the painkillers that are here to help you. It's going to hurt-"
"-like a motha' fucker," Raph interjected.
"I'm a big girl. I can handle it." There was a steely resolve in her eyes, a determination not to just roll over and die. To his surprise, he thought he could also see a small measure of trust. Though that could have been borne from having no other option.
"I'm going to ask you questions during. I want you to stay conscious. Right now, you're the only one who can gauge how you're doing."
She nodded again. "Just get it over with, already."
Donnie grunted uncharacteristically. "Going in. Raph, hold her tight."
He slid the slip of metal through the bullet wound, eliciting a whining groan from the girl.
"So what's your name, kid?" Raphael started the conversation, allowing Donnie to focus on finding the right spot in the lesion.
He could feel the narrow, tattered gash on the lateral side of the right lung, just between the ribs, below the once-navy band of her bra.
She gritted her teeth so tightly Raph could hear them creak, but she managed a short, breathy answer.
"Aubrey."
"Weird name."
She glared. "You're one to talk."
Raph grunted but cracked a smile. "Where ya from, Aub," he queried, arbitrarily deciding to shorten her name. "No one 'round here's gotta accent like that."
She chuckled and then grimaced. The metal tip had found its way through the hole and Donatello was trying to attach the tubing without jarring her too much.
"Lincoln Parish, in Louisiana."
"So out in th' boonies?"
"You could say that."
"What brought you to New York?" It was Donnie's turn. He tried to ignore that he was asking the questions he'd wondered about for weeks, at what might be his last opportunity to ask them at all. His hands were soaked in fresh, warm blood.
Her eyes shifted from the red turtle to the violet one.
"Was going to school at LSU-" she wheezed as the tube finally slid home, and Donnie thought she might faint. Instead, she continued.
"They didn't have a pharmaco-," she panted, "-genomics program..." gurgle, "and I couldn't afford out-of-state tuition."
"So you put your education on hold?" He glanced up and was alarmed to see her shaking.
"Yep. Got a tech license and moved. Gonna be a bonafide resident." Aubrey's voice had become low and husky and her eyes glazed. Her breaths came in increasingly shallow pants, but she held his eyes until he looked away.
"I don't know if this will hurt-"
"Do it."
Gently, he put his mouth to the other end of the tube and sucked. Blood slid up in a thick, inky-red line until it reached his lips. Donnie detached his mouth at the last second and Aubrey's blood came dribbling out like a leaking faucet.
After a moment, she took a deep breath, but her shaking had grown worse, with gooseflesh creeping up her arms. Her eyes had slipped shut.
The sour tang of panic rose in his throat. He flipped his goggles down again and felt the bile rise into his mouth. Her heart was racing but her blood pressure was much too low. She was going into hypovolaemic shock.
This wasn't like the field triage he performed on his brothers, where the worst they usually experienced was cracked shells and stitches. This strangely strong and fragile girl was dying. She'd lost too much blood and her whole body was starting to fail, and without any blood to give back to her, or any way to slow the flow, there was nothing they could do to save her.
He sat back and placed his shaking fists on his thighs.
Raph stared at him, alarmed. "Donnie, what're you doing? Ya can't just stop!"
"She's dead, Raph."
"No she ain't! She's layin' right there, breathin'. I can feel her heart beatin'-"
"She doesn't have enough blood, Raph!" Donatello could feel his stress rising to the breaking point. His voice was raising higher as he spoke. "She lost too much blood. We don't have any here to give her. She's already passed out, and in just a few more minutes she's going to be dead." He groaned and flipped his goggles back up on his head, staring at his hands, where the blood was beginning to dry and flake. "She doesn't have any mutagen in her system like we do. She can't heal quick enough to save her." Donnie's voice had grown soft and despondent.
Raph was quiet for a heartbeat before he jerked his hands out from under her.
"Fuck that bullshit!"
Raphael ripped the makeshift gloves from his hands and with a flash of hidden steel, had sliced a gash across each palm deep enough to gush. Before Donatello could stop him, he'd already wrenched the tubing viciously from her chest and pressed a hand to either side of her bloodied shoulder. He squeezed his palms, forcing out as much of his own life force as he could.
"If she needs some mutagen, we'll give her some goddamn mutagen."
Donatello didn't stop him. Her short, ragged breaths had ceased, her heart still. She was gone. Instead, he stood slowly and turned his back towards the corpse. All around him, he could smell antiseptic, peroxide and blood. Her blood, all over him.
They'd come across bodies before - products of the violence that was present in every huge city in the world. Most of the time, they just left them where they were and followed the traces to the murderer. But they'd never been there when the corpse was made; when the victim, who had a life and dreams and a future cut short, became another nameless body. Another coin in the grave-diggers pocket.
He heard Raphael shift, cursing, and ease on to his feet. When he glanced back, he'd draped her lab coat over her face. A final tribute to the dead.
Against his will, Donnie cursed again. "Dammit."
Raph sidled up beside him and laid an equally bloodied hand on his shoulder.
"Hey man, you did all you could." His voice was soothing, forgiving. And Donatello wasn't having any of it.
He clenched his fists, tasting failure on his tongue like he'd swallowed a sharpened blade. "But it wasn't enough. She died anyway." He suddenly felt dirty, as if the blood soaking his skin was somehow staining him, marking him as guilty as her murderer. He resisted the urge to scrub it away.
Raphael's brows furrowed and he opened his mouth to respond, only to be interrupted by a rasping breath. They turned as one toward where the young technician lay in her bloodied veil.
"There's no way-" Donatello choked on his words as he saw another quick rise and fall of the jacket. "It's gotta be some kind of post-mortem twitch, or something."
He crouched down and carefully peeled back the lab coat. He place two broad fingers against the pulse point along the jugular and nearly reeled when he felt a faint, fluttering beat. He didn't trust his voice.
"Donnie?"
Without responding, he gently lifted Aubrey from the ground and sprinted through the wreckage of the store, Raphael hot on his heels.