SEVEN
His men carefully rolled Ranger off me and onto his back. He had a hand pressed against his left side, but blood still spurted between his fingers. I tried to stand up, but my head spun and I sank back to my knees, crawling to Ranger's right side.
"How bad is it?" Ranger grunted as Bobby cut away his black coat and t-shirt. I swallowed against the rising bile. So. Much. Blood.
"Can't tell yet," Bobby returned, digging through a medic bag. He pulled out a small white pouch and ripped it open with his teeth. The writing on the front read QuikClot.
Ranger hissed as Bobby dumped the powder on the wound, where it instantly congealed. From behind me, I heard Tank yelling into a cell phone, demanding EMTs at the subway station. Ranger's right arm jerkily bumped into mine, so I took his hand and tried to give a reassuring squeeze. I knelt in his blood. My coat and shirt were covered in it, sticking them to my body.
"Help me roll him," Bobby ordered Lester. "I need to see if there is an exit wound."
Ranger groaned as Lester gently rolled him onto his right side, while Bobby searched for a possible exit wound. He ripped open another packet of QuikClot and poured it onto Ranger's lower back. Lester gently returned Ranger to his back.
I gave Ranger's hand another reassuring squeeze. "You're going to be okay," I stated. It was only one bullet. I'd seen an entire clip emptied into him and he'd lived. "You're going to be okay." He had to be okay. But his grip on my hand slackened and his eyes no longer focused on my face.
"Bobby!" I yelled. "Do something!"
Bobby grabbed Ranger's face. "Stay with me boss. Keep your eyes open. Fight it." But Ranger's hand went completely limp and his lids closed.
"Tank, I need an ETA on that ambulance!" Bobby shouted, feeling for a pulse on Ranger's neck.
"Three minutes," Tank replied.
"Jesus, he's lost too much blood. I don't know if he can wait that long."
My head spun. This couldn't be happening.
"What's his blood type?" I gasped.
"A positive," Bobby responded.
"I'm O negative," I breathed as biology class rushed back to me: the universal donor. A very picky recipient. My mother had always been terrified the hospital would be out of my blood type if one of my clumsy accidents led me to require any.
"You want to do a field transfusion?" Bobby asked.
"Can you do that?"
Bobby nodded, pulling a short coil of transparent plastic tubing out of his bag, along with two terrifying needles. I peeled off my coat, held out my right arm, and closed my eyes. I winced at the pinch of the needle in the crook of my arm. Something got shoved into my hand and I opened my eyes to see a foam block in my palm.
"Squeeze it slowly, then release and repeat," Bobby instructed.
I did it, and the clear tube filled with red. I swallowed more bile and squeezed again, watching my blood rush into Ranger's body.
"Good, just like that," Bobby encouraged. He took Ranger's pulse again.
In the distance, a siren wailed. A pair of cops rushed down from the street, halting when they saw the carnage in the station. Tank immediately began explaining what had happened, with frequent interjections from Chantelle of, "they saved my life!"
When the EMTs finally arrived, I felt woozy from donating so much blood. They immediately put an oxygen mask over Ranger's mouth and nose and strapped him to a back board. Both EMTs seemed impressed by Bobby's field transfusion.
"Military?" one asked as they prepared to move Ranger onto the gurney.
Bobby nodded. "Army Rangers."
The second EMT, a young woman, helped me to my feet and steadied me. "Just hang on to the gurney. We can start a new transfusion once we're in the ambulance."
I complied obediently, sitting down on the bench in the ambulance heavily, but never stopping squeezing away and pumping my blood into Ranger's arm. As soon as the ambulance doors were closed, the EMTs cut away the rest of Ranger's clothes. One inserted a new IV into his other arm, attaching it to a bag of blood hanging from an IV pole.
"You can stop now," the female EMT said gently. She took the piece of foam from my hand and held a piece of gauze to my arm as she swiftly removed the tubing. "Put your finger on the gauze, press, and hold your arm in the air," she instructed.
The male EMT had a clip board and started asking me questions about Ranger. "What's his name?"
"Ricardo Carlos Manoso, but he prefers Carlos." The EMT scribbled it onto the paper.
"Date of birth?"
"Umm," I gave the EMT his age. I knew Ranger was two months older than me, but I didn't know his exact date of birth.
"Anything he's allergic to?"
I shook my head. Now I felt like an idiot. "I'm sorry, I don't know. One of his employees might know."
"You're not one of his employees?" the female EMT asked.
"No, I'm his…" I searched for a term that might describe my relationship with Ranger, coming up empty. "Friend," I finished lamely.
The ambulance doors burst open before we fully stopped in front of the ER. A group of doctors and nurses quickly pulled Ranger's gurney from the ambulance and rushed it into the hospital, speaking in a medical language I couldn't hope to understand. Within a few seconds, he disappeared from my sight.
The female EMT helped me out of the ambulance and into a wheel chair, explaining my situation to the waiting nurse.
The nurse wheeled me through two sets of sliding glass doors and into an emergency bay. Curtains divided each bed and I couldn't see Ranger anywhere.
"Is Ranger going to be okay?" I asked the nurse.
"They're going to do everything they can for him," she assured, pushing me up to an empty bed and pulling the curtains shut behind us. She helped me into the bed and began taking my vital signs, frowning as she released my arm from a blood pressure cuff.
"That bad?"
"How long were you giving him blood?"
I shrugged and the room spun. "Seven, eight minutes, maybe. No more than ten. I think."
She checked my arm where Bobby had inserted the needle, and apparently finding it satisfactory, put a Band-Aid over the puncture site. "I'll be back in a few minutes with one of the docs," she said. "Don't try to get up."
No chance of that happening.
A young doctor wearing light blue scrubs and a white coat stepped through the curtains a few minutes later.
"Do you know how Ranger is?" I asked instantly.
"The man you came in with?"
I nodded, making the room begin revolving again.
"He's in surgery."
"Shouldn't you be in there helping?"
The doctor laughed lightly. "I assure you, he has the best trauma surgeons in the city working on him. You, on the other hand, are stuck with me."
He took my blood pressure again, and still finding it unimproved, warned that I'd have to get some IV fluids. I made a face but couldn't find the strength to argue. Soon an IV sprouted out of my left arm. A clear bag of liquid dripped through the tubing into my body.
Just a few minutes later, I felt better. At least the room had stopped spinning every time I moved. But a sick feeling inhabited the pit of my stomach over Ranger.
When my IV bag grew empty, the nurse took my blood pressure again. "Much better," she said. "We can take that IV out now."
I winced as she pulled the small tube from my arm and bandaged it. Then she handed me a tray with a glass of red liquid and a packet of vanilla sandwich cookies. "Get some sugar into your system."
I gave her one long incredulous look. "Really?" Doctors usually frowned upon junk food. As did Ranger. My stomach flip flopped.
"You've never donated blood before?" the nurse asked.
I shook my head. I wimped out when it came to needles. If I knew they gave you free junk food at the end, maybe I would have tried it. The only reason I knew my blood type was because I was such a klutz as a kid, my mother made me wear a bracelet with the information on it.
I nibbled on the cookies and sipped what turned out to be Kool-Aid. After another half hour, the doctor reappeared, checked my blood pressure one last time, and declared me fit for release.
I barely got past the discharge station when I found myself a victim of a massive bear hug. Looking up, I saw Tank's worried face.
"Bombshell, you okay?"
I nodded. "Have you heard anything about Ranger?"
Tank shook his head. "Last update was that they'd rushed him into surgery. That was an hour ago."
"Is there someone we should call? An emergency contact?"
"I already called his parents. They are wintering in Florida. His mom will be on the next available flight, but that might not be until tomorrow."
Peeking past Tank's massive shoulder, I saw the rest of the Merry Men sitting in the waiting room. I joined them, trying to ignore the caked blood coating my clothing. I knew I should go back to the hotel room to change, but the thought that an update on Ranger might come while I was gone kept me glued to the seat.
The interminable hours ticked by. A weary doctor in blood stained scrubs finally walked into the waiting room a few minutes before five AM. He said something to the triage nurse, who pointed toward us. I immediately elbowed Tank, who had nodded off in his chair. He jumped awake.
The doctor made his way over, face unreadable. "You're friends of Carlos Manoso?" When we nodded, he continued, "Carlos is out of surgery and in the ICU. The bullet clipped part of his kidney and renal artery, but we found and stopped the bleeding. Which one of you treated him in the field?"
Bobby raised his hand and the doctor reached out to give him a hand shake. "You saved his life. If it weren't for the QuikClot and the field transfusion, he would have bled out before he got to the hospital."
"When can we see him?" asked Tank.
"Unfortunately, the ICU has very strict rules for visitors. Family only. If his condition improves in the next few days, you'll be able to visit him once he's moved out of the ICU."
I couldn't handle the thought of Ranger lying in the ICU all alone. "I'm family," I blurted.
The doctor raised an eyebrow and looked me over. With no way to sell my white ass self as Ranger's sister, I went with the only relation I had any hope to pull off. "I'm his wife," I lied.
Please, oh please, don't make me prove it.
I saw the doctor glance at my left hand. "I don't wear my rings when I'm on the job," I explained hurriedly.
"I'll go back to the hotel and bring you a fresh set of clothes and your rings," Tank suddenly offered. I tried not to let my mouth fall open.
That seemed to sell it for the doctor. "Alright, Mrs. Manoso, I'll show you to the ICU."
Shaking slightly, I stood and followed the doctor back through the ER's double doors. I risked a quick glance behind my shoulder and saw Tank grinning at me. Lester gave me a thumbs up.
The doctor led me to a set of elevators requiring a key fob and we took them to the eighth floor. The doors opened to an immaculate lobby filled with a large circular nurses' station. The smell of antiseptic hung heavy in the air and a myriad of beeps droned from the many patient rooms. The lights were all dimmed to help the patients sleep.
"Please sign in, Mrs. Manoso," the doctor instructed, leading me to a clip board at the nursing station. I shakily wrote Stephanie Manoso under 'name', and wife under 'relationship'. Then the doctor led me to one of the glass fronted rooms.
"I warn you, we have Carlos heavily sedated and on a ventilator for now. His vitals have been erratic since leaving surgery. We won't be able to wake him unless they stabilize."
Despite the warning, I still couldn't hide my gasp as I got my first glimpse of Ranger, prone in the bed. Tubes seemed to be coming from everywhere, and the thick one running down his throat seemed especially terrifying. A heart monitor beeped in a corner of the room and multiple IV lines hung from two sets of poles on both sides of the bed. A thin white sheet covered Ranger up to his chest. Only his arms, poked full of needles and tubing, remained on top of the sheet. An automatic blood pressure cuff circled his right bicep. My Batman seemed so weak and helpless.
The doctor put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I'd love to tell you that he'll make a full recovery, but he's not even close to being out of the woods yet. How his body responds to the trauma over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will be crucial. If he has other close family, you may want to ask them to come sooner than later."
The doctor left and I pulled a chair over to the head of Ranger's bed. Careful not to bump any of the tubes, I took his hand and gave a gentle squeeze. Then I did something I don't do often. I prayed. Not that God had any good reason to listen. I've been pretty lax at keeping up with my end of the deal, seeing as I don't go to church and bounce between the beds of two different men like a pinball. Still, I prayed with a fervor I could only hope made up for all that.