Crossroads

Crossroads

2506

The personnel carrier bumped hard over a pothole, bouncing the occupants of the truck bed nearly a foot off their seats. Several people cursed at the driver under their breath, one of them a tiny brunette attempting to secure an IV line. It would do no good to shout about it—their route to the evac point was not going to be easy. The road snaked through a canyon, and they all knew that the possibility of ambush was high. It was why the three-truck convoy was pushing the speed and ignoring the jostling.

Glancing up from where she knelt taping the line to the soldier’s arm, Corpsman Grace Tian assessed the other men in her truck’s bed. There were two men who’d taken gunshot wounds, both already bound up; the one she’d just finished working on, who probably was not going to make it if she had to guess; and one soldier with a head wound that he wouldn’t let her touch until she dealt with his men.

“Major,” she said as the climbed to her feet and stepped cautiously over the patient she’d just finished with. “Let me see your head wound, please.”

The major was watching through the tiny window at the front of the bed that led into the cab of the truck, his rifle held in competent hands. When he turned to look at her, Tian could already tell he had a concussion—one pupil was blown. “I’ll deal with myself when we’re evac’d, Corpsman,” he barked shortly at her.<r>

There was little she could do for his situation here, so she simply nodded and made her way back toward the rear of the truck to continue to deal with the others, bracing herself against the tailgate.

The next thing she knew, Tian was waking up on the ground. Gunfire chattered around her and people were shouting, but it sounded muffled somehow. A smoky haze covered the ground around her. Levering herself upright, struggling to clear her vision, she realized the truck was ten feet away on its side and she and four other people had been thrown clear. An IED had taken out the front end of the truck.

She scrambled to her feet a little dizzily to stumble toward the men on the ground. Two of them were already dead, but she checked their pulses briefly anyway. A third man had just regained consciousness and he was pushing himself up, shaking his head and trying to get his bearings. He mostly looked rattled and his gaze sharpened on Tian as she crawled toward him and the last man she could see, lying half under the canvas canopy of the truck where it had flipped open as the truck laid over.

The just-awakened soldier grabbed his weapon and moved to help her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying properly, but her focus was on the last soldier on the ground anyway. He grabbed her shoulders to make her look at him. Muzzily she thought, He’s got incredible eyes. And then her attention snapped to his mouth and she caught that he was asking her if she was okay.

Though her ears were ringing, Tian nodded immediately and got to work on the last man—little more than a kid—on the ground. His left arm was twisted grotesquely beneath him, obviously broken. Moving carefully to check his vitals while the sergeant guarded them, she made the horrifying discovery that a piece of shrapnel was lodged in the young soldier’s chest high and close to his carotid. All around them, the gunfire kept going and she couldn’t think for a moment through the chaos. It couldn’t come out—not that close to the artery. He’d be better off if she could stabilize it until a surgeon could get him. Any movement at all and he might bleed right out in seconds.

She heard a shout and instinctively ducked to cover the boy as a grenade exploded just on the opposite side of the truck from where she was. The sergeant who’d been guarding her and the injured soldier poked his head and his rifle around the back side of the vehicle and returned fire. Tian desperately scrambled for her med bag and ripped off her outer shirt, her focus entirely on doing her own job, trusting the sergeant with the amazing eyes to protect them all.

She was carefully wrapping the ripped-off arm of her service blouse around the piece of shrapnel when boots thundered in low and hard from their flank. Men from the truck that had been behind them were arriving to reinforce their position. More shouting occurred toward her, but Tian still couldn’t make out the garble through the ringing in her ears. She shook her head at whoever was shouting and shot back, “I need another set of hands here!”

The group shifted around, weapons changing hands and people taking protective positions. The radioman dropped to his knees next to her, still shouting what she assumed were their coordinates into his radio. Then he dropped the piece of equipment and set about being her second set of hands. She instructed him on how to wrap the gauze while she held the pressure bandage and the piece of shrapnel in place. The boy under her hands whimpered in agony, and she looked into his face. Her expression and tone calm amid the madness around them, she told him, “I’ve got you, Specialist. Look at me. Do you hear me? I’ve got you. You’re going to be just fine. What’s your name?”

He gasped in pain while the radioman, she thought his name was Fu, wrapped the gauze tightly. “Manning,” he choked out.

“All right, Manning,” Tian said. “Stay with me, okay? We’re going to—”Above her head, another round of chattering gunfire made her duck down and cover Manning.

Fu suddenly cursed violently, dropping the gauze he’d been rolling and scrambling for the radio as it squawked demands for their coordinates again. Another curse came from above her head and Tian turned her head in time to see a grenade landing just feet from her position.

Time stopped. Or maybe she lived her entire life in that split second. And before she even thought about it, Tian threw herself those five feet to land on her belly, rolled to her back, and called desperately, “Hot potato!” Instinct alone allowed the sergeant with the beautiful eyes—wide with recognition at the danger—to catch it and hurl it back over the truck, where it exploded mere moments after leaving his fingertips.

They stared at one another for another of those moments where time just wasn’t moving right, and then suddenly she snapped back into real-time. Breathing heavily, the sergeant shouted at her, “Woman! Fa Feng!!”*

Tian’s eyes shot to her patient and she fast-crawled toward him. The explosion had shifted Manning just enough. “Bi Jweh!”** she barked at the sergeant. “Get your hand in here!” She was now up to her wrists in spurting blood, desperately trying to keep Manning from bleeding out.

Shaking with adrenaline and shock, the sergeant dropped to his knees, dropping his weapon and following her orders. He had no time to be squeamish and put his fingers literally inside Manning’s neck as ordered, feeling around until he could feel liquid surging past his fingertips and clamped down on it instinctively.

“Feel it?” Tian demanded sharply.

“Yeah! Yeah, I got it.”

“Pinch it closed. I’ll be right back.” Once certain he had the spurting artery pinched off, she let go of Manning and up-ended her medical bag. Scrambling madly through her stores, Tian knew Manning had exactly one shot at survival—a desperate one, but it was all she had. Grabbing a hypo, she discarded vials of meds until she found the one she wanted, jammed it into the hypo, and crawled back to Manning and the sergeant.

“How do we—” His words were cut off when Tian jabbed the needle as deep as it would go into the vein on the other side of Manning’s neck and unloaded the vial of medication into him.

“Hold him,” she demanded without answering the question. She turned back to the scattered contents of the bag and came back with a suture needle. Slipping her dainty fingers beneath his large ones, Tian began—by feel alone—to stitch inside Manning’s neck.

“Skiff’s incoming!” Fu called. Another barrage of gunfire kept them pinned to the ground.

“Spencer, the major just bought it!” called another of the specialists from behind the truck that had been at the head of the convoy. The sergeant helping her cursed under his breath and called back grimly, “Tell ‘em to move their asses.”

Tian’s focus remained on what she was doing, but she was paused in her movements when Sgt. Spencer began to pull his hand away from the artery. “Not yet,” she instructed him firmly.

He closed his bloody hands around hers to still them and made her look up at him. There was regret in his blue eyes. “There’s nothing you can do,” a quick flash down to her nametag, “Grace. He’s gone.”

Just as calmly as she’d handled the grenade, Tian responded, “Not yet he’s not. I pumped him full of byphodine. He may still not survive, but byphodine slows the metabolism down to near death. If I can get him stitched up enough and we can get him to the med bay fast enough, before it wears off, the surgeon may be able to save him.”

Shock darkened his gaze and Sgt. Spencer released her. “Where do you need me?” he asked simply.

Tian shook her head. “Just do what you can to keep them off us, Sarge,” she said quietly. “I’m going to put in a couple more stitches and from there…” She shook her head. “It’s out of my hands. He’ll either make it back or he won’t. There’s nothing else I can do for him here.” He nodded and picked up his weapon, rising from his knees into a crouch and taking up position at the rear of the ship.

In the distance, the sound of a skiff coming in low and fast could be heard. A deadly barrage of gunfire came from it, sending the Independent forces hemming in the convoy scattering. A second skiff came in hot behind the first, the ramp dropping so that Tian and her group could evacuate.

Spencer called to the others, “Fu, take rear guard. Guilder, help me with Manning. The rest of you, round up our guys. No one gets left behind!” He looked at Tian. “Go. I’ll be right behind you with him.”

Tian nodded briefly, grabbed her empty med-bag out of habit, and took off running toward the skiff, keeping her head low.

• * * * *
  

The ride back wasn’t as long as she’d feared. Tian waited in the hall near the nurses’ station to hear whether Manning was going to make it. It had been a huge gamble to give him byphodine. The medics only carried it for exactly this kind of thing—to buy a little time for an extreme injury to make it home.

When the coffee cup appeared in front of her nose, Tian stared at it for a moment, too tired to comprehend. Her eyes skimmed up the hand and arm attached to the cup and she met the blue eyes of the sergeant who’d held Manning’s throat closed for her. What was his name? she wondered hazily. “Thanks,” she said quietly, taking the cup and sipping from it.

“You’re welcome,” he replied in just as soft a tone. Then he lowered himself into the chair next to her. “Any news?”

“Not yet.” Tian shook her head. “I can’t leave until I know.”

He nodded. “I figured.” There was a long silence between them, and he offered with a smile, “I’m impressed, Corpsman Grace. Whether he makes it or not, you did a hell of a job out there.”

She looked at him, offering a weary half-smile. “It’s a million to one that he’s going to make it.” Regret flashed across her expression.

He reached out and touched her arm. “He would have died on that field if you hadn’t done it. So cut yourself a little slack, okay? No one could have done more.”

She looked at his hand on her forearm, studying it in a rather detached fashion that she recognized as imminent adrenaline crash and post-battle shock. When she looked up at him again, she took the moment to skim his nametag to remind herself of his name and nodded slowly. “Thanks, Sgt. Spencer. I appreciate it.”

The operating room door swung open and the surgeon came out, pulling off his cap. Tian rose to meet him, feeling Spencer rise and stand behind her as she did it. Meeting the surgeon’s eyes, she knew the answer and her heart fell.

“I’m sorry, Grace. You did an incredible job out there. I saw the stitching you pulled off, and frankly I don’t think I’ve ever seen better. The byphodine wore off as we got him into the OR and we couldn’t replace his blood fast enough. We fought like hell, but …” He trailed off, glancing at Spencer. “One of yours?”

Spencer nodded slightly, swallowing the lump in his own throat.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” the surgeon said with genuine regret. He turned to walk away and glanced back. “You should seriously consider a career as a surgeon, Grace. That was really fine work.”

Tian’s shoulders slumped for a long moment and then she pulled in a breath and lifted her chin. She was surprised when Sgt. Spencer’s hand slipped up to rest on the base of her spine and he gently nudged her. “C’mon. Let’s get you something to eat and I’ll take you home, okay?” She gave him a dazed look. “Why?”

Spencer smiled at her, though there was still sadness lingering in it. “Cuz you’ve had the crappiest day ever and look like you could use a good meal and some sleep?”

For a long moment, Tian just stood there uncertain what to say or do. And then slowly she nodded to him. “I think… maybe I’d like that.” She allowed him to guide her down the hall.