Page 144 of Beware of Dog

Shep flushed the wounds. He wanted to use the quickclot, but first, he shined a penlight down into them each, spreading the edges with careful fingertips. There was a bullet lodged in her scapula.

“I’m gonna pull it.”

It took an age, forceps slipping off the back of the slug again and again. Someone wiped the sweat off his brow, and he didn’t know who, only that he was thankful. The fingers of his right hand started to tingle, and he prayed he could fish the thing out before his wrist cramped up.

“Shep, son,” Devin said in a careful voice. “You’re bleeding.”

He was? “Where?”

“Right arm. Have been for a while.”

“That explains the numbness.” The forceps gripped, and held, yes. “Two holes?”

“One. It’s still in there.”

The numbness was getting worse, and bringing a healthy dose of pain with it.

“Lodged in the bone, I bet.”

Devin hummed an agreeing noise. “Adrenaline’s kept you from feeling it.”

Slowly, carefully, breath held, Shep drew the bullet out of Cass’s wound, and dropped it in the dish of alcohol. “Jesus fuck. Thank God.” When he reached for the saline to flush the wound, pain shot up his arm, through his shoulder; streaked up his neck and hit him in the back teeth. Ow. When he looked, he saw that blood had poured down his bicep, over his elbow, and was slowly filling his glove.

It was just like in Iraq. Bleeding all over himself while he fought and cursed, teeth clenched, to draw a round out of a fellow soldier. He could even hear the thump of helo rotors…

No, wait. He actually could hear them.

Raven let out a deep breath, a rush like she was caving in on herself.

Devin hung the IV bag off the chandelier and walked around to Shep’s side of the table. He nodded toward Cass. “Keep tending to her, and I’ll tend to you.”

More saline, a healthy dose of quickclot powder, and fresh gauze. Shep worked one-handed while Devin mopped him up and wound bandages around his bicep. When Shep went to tear the tape with his teeth, Raven took it from him silently and fastened down the edges of Cass’s bandage.

The chop of rotors grew louder, more staccato.

From the doorway, Ian said, “They said on the phone they can only take two extra passengers.”

Devin did use his teeth on the tape. After, he said, “Shepherd and Raven.” Like it was a no-brainer.

Which…yeah. It was.

~*~

It was dark out. And cold. And the air smelled of exhaust. An ambulance trundled by, lights spinning but no sirens, and Shep lifted his head from where he’d been staring at his boots in the gutter, blinked, and thought,I’m at a hospital.

Duh, Cass would have said, laughing. But Cass was in surgery, and they hadn’t let him go back with her. He thought, but wasn’t sure, that he’d shoved someone. Or hit them. His knuckles hurt. But his whole hand and arm hurt, too.

Because he’d gotten shot. That was a blur.

Much of the past hour was a blur.

He remembered Devin twisting his bad arm and drawing him back, Walsh putting a hand on his chest, when the paramedics came in and took charge of getting Cass onto her back and then onto a stretcher. It was Raven who’d rattled off what Cass had been given, and in what amounts. Raven who’d stepped up, dress splashed with blood, to push Devin and Walsh away.

She’d told the paramedics: “She just got married today. This is her husband, and he was an Army medic. He’s done a beautiful job.”

Then Raven’s slim, elegant, blood-sticky hand had been in his, and she’d towed him after the stretcher out into a night made windy and loud by helicopter blades.

He’d climbed into the red and white machine unquestioning. When Raven guided him to the bench in back, he sat; when she pressed a hand to his thigh, he didn’t try to get up and accost the paramedic who strapped Cass’s stretcher into place and then started working on her. It had been a middle-aged guy with a bald spot and a quick, efficient way of moving his hands, and Shep had let him do his work while the pilots got the bird up off the grass and into the air with a whine and a lurch.

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