End of Innocence
Chapter 8
Route 50, westbound
There were twenty miles of road between Cimarron and Montrose, where most of the medical facilities would be, and where most of the population around here would live. Shaw passed a couple of doctor's offices on the way but decided against stopping at any of them.
She needed a place with a better chance of finding everything she'd need in one stop – big enough to have what she needed, but smaller than a hospital, if she could avoid it.
Ah, she found it.
A surgical center right there on Route 50. And closed for hours by now.
Nobody in the parking lot. Shaw drove around the whole place in her car. Lights on inside the building, but dim, probably just security lights. No offices lit up inside, no cars in the lot, no one working late that she'd walk in on. And far enough away from the main city, that if she'd tripped an alarm, she'd have enough time to get in and get out before they'd get there.
Shaw pulled the hood of her parka up over her head and put her gloves on, then headed like a figure in black to a side door. Less security there than at the front or the back doors, she'd noticed. It's not like she'd come prepared to break into a fortified building, so finesse was out of the question for this break-in.
Shaw hefted a rock from a grouping near the parking lot – a little bigger than a softball, but smaller than a soccer ball. Should do the trick. She smacked it against the glass door, just below the metal crossbeam. It chipped the glass. So, she hit it again, a little harder. Spidered the glass that time. And no audible alarm yet. Tapped gently a few times, until a piece or two fell out. Worked on the hole then, tapping until it was big enough for her to get a hand inside. Turned the lock and held her breath.
A gentle push on the door swung it open. Still, no audible alarm, but Shaw didn't think like that. She glanced at her watch and gave herself eight minutes to get it done. Go.
Down the hall, into the first exam room she found. Opened all the cabinet doors and focused. Grabbed a cloth patient gown and spread it out on the exam table. Started grabbing for supplies and dumping them onto the top of the gown. Gauze pads, betadine, suture materials in different sizes, suture kits, gauze bandage, surgical tape. Anything else she thought she could use. Gathered the gown like Santa's bag over her shoulder and headed down the hall.
The sterilizer room was next, near the nurse's station. Drawers – that's where they'd keep the sterile stuff, she thought. One after the other, she opened them. Sterile scissors, forceps, needle holders, syringes, and IV catheters. Shaw grabbed two of each and a dozen each of syringes and IV catheters.
Then, the cabinets nearby. IV fluid bags, ordered by type and stacked on the shelves for easy access. She grabbed four, and now the 'bag' had weighed down. A cart – she spied a wheeled cart and dropped the bag on top, wheeling the bag along, while she completed her shopping spree. Three minutes to go.
Drugs. She needed some drugs to bring back. The good stuff'd be locked away. Thinking ahead about Reese, she'd brought some of her usual stash with her from New York. Any time she'd been working with Reese, she always carried meds with her. He never failed to need something.
In another cabinet, she found antibiotics, small glass bottles with the powder inside, and the tiny glass vials of saline to reconstitute the powder. Why hold back? She pulled out an entire tray of vials and bottles. Done.
One more minute to roll the cart down the hall, all the way back to the door. She lifted her 'bag' and bumped the door to swing it open. Took a look around, and then hustled for the car. Not a soul in sight.
Shaw left her headlights off and swung the car around in the parking lot. Rolled out to the highway, empty at this hour, and turned left out of the drive. Once she checked her mirrors, and no one was coming up on her, she floored it again.
It's a good thing she'd been in the car with Chase that first time. So, she knew what to look for at that turnoff for Reese's cabin. Then back along the narrow road leading back to it. As she drove the last hundred yards or so, Shaw thought about the one crapshoot in her whole plan. Would Reese and Chase still be there when she got back?
Found herself holding her breath, until she'd rounded a curve in the drive. And there was the truck – still there – parked in front of the cabin. So now, the only thing that could make things complicated would be if she walked in and found Reese in charge, instead of Chase.
She left the car door open while she moved to the front door. Didn't knock. Pushed the door and it swung inside.
Chase, sitting on a chair next to the couch. He glanced up at her. No panic in his face, no warning that things had gone wrong.
"How is he?" she asked.
"Stubborn." She smirked at him and nodded.
"Got that right," she said.
"Needed to have a little talk with him to get him out of his wet stuff. Dried him as good as I could and then got him in some dry clothes. Don't know how long they'll stay that way. He's sweatin' up a storm," he said.
"I'll be right back and we'll get started. Just have to get my stuff." Shaw disappeared back out to her car and lifted the bag of supplies. When Chase saw it, he looked confused.
"You thinkin' about workin' on him here? Like this?"
Shaw nodded and got busy setting up a place to work. She dragged the kitchen table out next to the couch, and emptied everything from the bag on top, organizing the parts in a specific arrangement. Chase watched her work. She turned to him.
"You ever do any of this in the Rangers?"
"Nothing fancy. Only those clotting pads to stop the bleeding, a tourniquet or two, some burn gel."
"Okay, good. Nothing fancy here, either. You're gonna have to assist." His eyes widened and he looked back at Reese, lying there. Shaw told him not to sweat it.
"I'll tell you what I need, and you'll just hand it off to me. Okay?" He looked a little spooked.
"I – I guess so," he said.
"Go roll your sleeves up and wash all the way to your elbows, twice," she said to give him something to do to steady himself. Meanwhile, Shaw checked on Reese. She'd brought a few medical supplies with her from New York. She could take a set of vitals on him: blood pressure, pulse, temp. And she had a few meds: for pain, and something for 'hostile behavior'.
She'd gone down this road with Reese before. When he got like this and woke up out of a stupor, not knowing where he was, he tended to fight first. She'd need to control him or they'd all be at risk if Reese got up like that.
When Chase came back, she went back to grab her luggage case from the car and then pulled out some of her equipment. He watched her take vitals and write them down next to the time of day on a piece of note paper. All very orderly and efficient.
"You look like a doctor," he said. She didn't plan to talk much about the past with him.
"Got some training along the way," she said. He watched her stage supplies on a layer of blue paper she took from inside a deep, white plastic tray with a tear-off cover. She handled the blue paper by the corners, as if she didn't want to touch the rest of it, and then she carefully opened a bunch of packages, one after another, dumping the contents in different parts of the blue paper.
"This is a sterile field," she said, looking up at him. "All the sterile stuff stays here, and we don't touch it with our hands. Only with sterile gloves, okay?" He nodded.
When she'd finished with that, she dumped a few syringes out of their wrappers, into another space on the paper. Then, she headed for the sink to wash up.
"We're gonna need a better light over here," she said. Chase glanced around and pointed to a floor lamp near a chair. Shaw agreed, and he dragged it over where she'd pointed.
"And I'm gonna need something tall to hang an IV bag." They both looked for something with a hook or bracket to hang a heavy bag of fluid. An old wooden coat tree should do. Chase walked it over to the couch near her. Shaw had pulled on some gloves, and started to set up one of the IV bags.
There were covers on the end of a run of tubing and on the matching port of the IV bag itself. She tore those off and then spiked the point of the tubing into the port to attach them together. Then she lifted the bag and let the fluid run down through the tubing until it completely filled the tubing and ran out the open end. A plastic clamp stopped the fluid from running for now.
Chase lifted the IV bag up to one of the hooks on the coat tree and hung it there. Shaw draped the tubing over the hook until she was ready to use it. On one of her medication bottles, Shaw snapped the top off, and drew up some of the solution inside a syringe. She looked over at Chase.
"Okay, this is where things might get a little touchy," she said, looking him in the eyes. He frowned, not getting what she meant.
"I'm gonna give him some medication to keep him calm."
"Looks pretty calm right now," he said.
"He's been known to take apart a room. I don't wanna take any chances," she said.
"What do ya want me to do?"
"Be ready. I'm gonna inject this, and he might react, so just be ready to grab him if he gets feisty."
Chase moved in closer.
Shaw wiped his arm down with an alcohol pad and watched his face for any reaction. His eyebrows went up, like he'd wondered what that feeling was, and he turned his head toward her, but he didn't make any move to stop her. She looked at Chase and mouthed the word "now."
The needle pierced his skin, and deep into the muscle. Not much reaction, until she started to push the medication. Then his eyes shot open, and he started to lift up and reach for the thing that'd stabbed him. Just a reflex – it was clear he didn't know where he was.
Chase stopped him. He pushed a meaty hand against Reese's chest and the arm coming after the syringe. Reese struggled against him, while Shaw dropped a knee on his other arm, where the syringe had gone. If she'd had to do this on her own, without Chase there to help keep Reese down like this, she was sure one of them would've ended up, unconscious, on the floor.
Judging by how little fight he'd had left in him, Shaw guessed how sick he had to be. She felt him struggle against her, but then the fight dropped lower and lower as the medication kicked in – until she sensed he wasn't a danger to them anymore.
"I think you can let go now," she said, and lifted her knee off his arm. Chase raised his hands a few inches, and then when Reese didn't fight, he backed away.
Shaw set up for placing an IV next. An IV tray from that surgical center held all the parts she'd need, other than the choice of catheter.
She knew Reese's arm veins all too well by now, after a few years of having to use them in similar situations. She checked the one inside his right elbow, on her side of the couch. It bulged satisfactorily when she pressed on it. And once she'd applied the stretchy tourniquet above it on his upper arm, she jabbed him quickly into the vein and threaded the catheter in smoothly. Reese didn't react.
Chase handed her the end of the IV tubing to attach to the catheter and she had him open the clamp to let the fluid start flowing. All good, so far. She taped the catheter in place, with extra loops taped down, too, in case Reese tried to pull it out. She'd been down that road with him, too. More like a misbehaving kid than a grown man, sometimes.
Now that she had a functioning IV, she'd use it to give a dose of antibiotics. Chase watched her mix one of the vials of powder with one of the smaller glass vials of saline, then shake the two together until a clear liquid had formed. She drew it out of the vial into one of her syringes and then injected it slowly into one of the ports on the IV tubing. Using the IV port saved him the pain of injecting it right into a muscle. And the meds got right into his circulation with the IV, so they'd start fighting off the infection that much faster. Once the antibiotic was in, she slowed the IV fluid rate down. Chase had been watching everything she'd done so far. He was convinced she hadn't just had "a little extra training."
Time to explore the wound.
This wasn't going to be pleasant. And Reese had only had some medication to control his behavior. Nothing for pain, so far. That's where the next tricky part would be.
The surgical center where she'd gone for all the supplies would certainly have had the kind of meds she'd need for pain control – something she could give IV or in a muscle by injection. But those were the kind of meds they kept under double lock and key, in a special med safe. And all she'd brought for pain were oral meds. With Reese so uncooperative before, she hadn't been able to get him to swallow a pill for pain.
So, the next best thing to do to control the pain he'd be feeling while she was working on his wound would be almost as painful as working on the wound itself. She turned to Chase again.
"OK, this next part is gonna be tricky again. I need to numb the area where I'm gonna be working. He's not gonna like that." Chase stepped closer again.
"I'll be ready," he said.
Shaw drew up a larger syringe full of clear liquid from a bottle. She nodded his way, and then wiped the bright red skin around the wound with a couple of alcohol pads. Reese didn't react. She pierced his skin with the needle and he moved but didn't try to stop her. It wasn't until she'd started pushing the medicine in that he started to grimace and reach for her syringe. Chase was right there to stop him.
"Come on, buddy, we're trying to help ya," he said. Reese settled a bit with his voice.
Shaw had to go all the way around the wound with her syringe, injecting the numbing medicine under his skin. Each time it went in, he reacted, but Chase held him back from grabbing at her. The wound looked even worse after all the liquid had gone in, more swollen and an angry red now.
Shaw needed to let the medicine work for a few minutes before she started exploring the wound. She went back to the kitchen and scrubbed up one more time. When she came back, she pulled a paper gown over her, and tied a paper mask over her face, before she donned a pair of sterile gloves.
Chase watched her, even more convinced of his previous thought. She wasn't just some soldier with a little extra training. More to it than that.
"So, what happened to him?" he tried. Shaw wasn't about to go into everything with him.
"He's got a cut that got infected."
"Some cut," he chided. Things weren't adding up, but Shaw was giving off some kind of vibe that was warning him not to pursue it.
"Is this the kinda thing where if you told me what was going on you'd have tuh kill me?"
He said it half-smiling, but when Shaw nodded, he understood.
"Something like that," was all she'd say.
Shaw spent the next forty-five minutes working into the wound on Reese's side. As she suspected, he'd formed an abscess there. The bullet that had struck him in the side had drilled down deep inside and hit his appendix, blowing up the thin tube inside him. There are tons of bacteria normally living peacefully inside the appendix, but if they're released into the body outside of the appendix, they'll happily multiply and cause havoc.
When they'd gotten to Reese a day and a half after he'd been wounded on the street corner, he'd had plenty of time to get infected. They'd done the best they could do outside of a real operating theater in a real hospital to take care of the mess inside him, but the infection'd had a good head start, and Reese left them before they'd finished his antibiotic course. He was lucky to be alive.
Shaw drained all the badness that she could find and irrigated the area with a ton of sterile fluids, and then packed the wound with a special gauze that'd been soaked in a bacteria-fighting medication. The packing was going to need to be changed frequently in the days ahead. And Reese wasn't going to be too happy with that procedure, either.
Fun times.