Page 57 of Gravity
Bryce tries to speak, tries to gasp. Nothing comes out. “Hang on,” I force out. “Hang on, Bryce.”
Blood erupts like a fountain from his mouth, suddenly arcing over his lips, across his cheeks, down his chin, down to his sweater. Panic surges in his gaze. His hand in my sweater tries to yank me closer.
Valery runs Bryce into the medical room and lays him on the gurney pre-positioned in the center. There's a trail of Bryce's blood streaming behind us.
Two team trainers, three paramedics, and Pierre Jacques, the Étoiles team physician, are on our heels. Everyone's moving fast, running for Bryce, running for the emergency gear. Shouts rise, calls for suction and oxygen and vitals. One of the paramedics shoves Valery, and he hits the wall and doesn't move. Behind him, Coach Richelieu, MacKenzie, and Etienne hang like ghosts in the doorway. I stay rooted by Bryce's head, my hand covering his where it's still twisting in my sweater.
Scissors appear. Bryce's sweater is cut off, then his pads. Vital readings are shouted. The numbers aren't good.
Bryce stares up at me. His teeth are clenched and chattering. His face is snow white beneath the blood that's still rising out of his mouth and spilling over his lips and chin and cheeks. He's shaking, almost seizing. Cold sweat is pouring off him, and acrid, rancid fear saturates the air. His throat is black and blue and swollen like he's swallowed a melon. His eyes plead with me as tears build and bunch against his eyelashes.
“Help him!” I roar. “Fucking do something!”
A paramedic forces Bryce's jaw open and jabs a suction wand into his mouth. Gurgles, gargles, the sound of iron-thick blood sloshing through a vacuum. Bryce's lips still move like a fish out of water.
Jacques runs his fingers down Bryce's throat. “He's got a massive injury to his larynx. Possibly a collapsed trachea. We've got to get his airway open and get him to the hospital immediately.”
Bryce's finger's clamp down on mine, and a burst of fresh blood explodes out of his mouth, despite the paramedic's attempts at suction. His blood soaks our faces and the gurney, drips over the sides and onto the floor. Jacques slips, nearly falls.
“I need an ET tube and a scope!” Jacques bellows. “Oxygen, now!”
A scope appears, and Jacques and a paramedic force Bryce's jaw down again while Jacques struggles to intubate him. “I can't get through,” he mutters. “Everything's collapsed.Merde, merde.” He hurls the scope away. It clatters against the wall. “Get me a needle, the largest gauge we have!”
Hands fly over Bryce. Jacques takes a colossal syringe from one of the trainers and pushes the tip against Bryce's throat, beneath the swelling disfiguring his neck.
“Hold him.” Jacques looks to the paramedics, the trainers, and then to me.
They throw themselves across Bryce's legs and pin him against the gurney. I wrap my arms around Bryce's forehead and rest my cheek against his hair. “Hang on,” I whisper. “Bryce, hang on, hang on—”
Jacques's fingers press against Bryce's black and blue neck. “I can't feel the cricoid,” he mutters. “I can't find any of the landmarks.Tabernak, there'snothingleft.” He presses the needle against Bryce's skin, but doesn't push. “Putain,” Jacques hisses before he pulls back and recaps the syringe. “There's too much damage. I could flood his lungs. He could drown in his own blood.”
“Dosomething!” I shout.
Jacques drops the capped syringe and grits his teeth. “Calisse de crisse, get his head back and thrust his jaw!”
One of the team trainers protests. “If he has a spinal injury, that could paralyze him!”
“If he's dead, he won't care about being paralyzed. Thrust his jaw, now!”
One of the paramedics, a huge man who could have been a football player in a different life, grabs Bryce's forehead and yanks it back. Bryce's throat arches, as high and rounded as a football pass. His cervical spine makes aCagainst the gurney. A half second later, the paramedic grasps Bryce's lower jaw and jerks it forward, as if he is trying to rip Bryce's jaw from his body. Bones crunch like they're breaking.
I grasp the paramedic's forearm. Valery moves off the back wall—
Bryce shudders, and a thin, high-pitched scream tears from him. His frantic gaze snaps between the paramedic and Jacques and me as he thrashes beneath the trainers still holding him down.
“That's an airway!” Jacques calls. “If he's screaming, then there's air moving! Oxygen, now, now!” A mask appears, and Jacques presses it over Bryce's blood-drenched face. Bryce tries to jerk away. “Hold him, damn it!”
“He's fucking strong.” The paramedic is straining against Bryce as he fights to keep Bryce's airway open. Panic, terror, adrenaline. Everything inside Bryce is telling him to run, to escape, to flee. I push my forehead to Bryce's again and look him in his eyes, stroking my fingers through his sweat-drenched hair. “Mon amour, mon amour. Don't fight. We're trying to help you.”
A new noise slips from Bryce, something between a wail and a whimper. His eyes lock on mine, and I keep whispering to him, telling him tohold on,fucking hold on, that he'sgoing to be okay. “I love you,” I breathe. “I love you, Bryce.”
Tears slip from the corners of his eyes as that desperate, wailing whimper rises out of him again.
“Is the transport ready?” Jacques barks.
“Yes, the ambulance is here!” someone says. “We're ready to move him!”
I keep stroking Bryce's face, but his eyes are dimming and his lips are so fucking blue. He's ghost white, so pale he looks like he's dying.
