Amelia lay on her side, still on the floor, her dark hair partially covering her face and blood in an irregular circle around her body. Falling to her knees, Ellie took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She couldn’t be Ellie “the little sister” right now. She had to be Ellie “the paramedic.” She had to turn off the voice in her head shouting that her sister might be dead and turn on the cool, practiced voice that told her what to do in this situation.
First, always first: Is the scene safe? Ellie scanned the room and jumped a little when she noticed another crumpled form on the ground. At first it looked like a pile of clothes tossed in a heap just a few feet away, but when Ellie took out her Maglite and swept it across the room and through the smoke, she could see two dark shoes sticking out from the bottom of a black pair of jeans. Shit. Steve said one of the men had run away after the shots were fired, but he didn’t mention that the other one was still inside.
The beam of light started to wobble, a surge of adrenaline finally reaching her hand. Focusing the beam at the man’s feet, she traced the bouncing light up his legs, torso, and finally upper body and head. That was where she saw it—the sight that would normally make a paramedic shake her head but today made her pulse lower a tick. There was a reason he wasn’t moving anymore, and it wasn’t because he was planning an attack. It wasn’t hard to see; the man was close and facedown just an arm’s reach away from Amelia’s resting place. It almost blended in with the mask he was wearing, but there was a hole the size of a plum in the back of the man’s head. Exit wound.
Ellie let out a shaky breath. He was dead. One of the men who’d shot Amelia was dead.
“Amelia,” she choked out, then cleared her throat. “Amelia!” Ellie shouted, leaning over her sister, pretending she didn’t smell her sister’s favorite perfume mixed with a strong smell of blood, pretending she hadn’t spent hours as a child brushing and braiding the hair she moved off Amelia’s forehead. She put her face to Amelia’s cheek. Shallow breathing, her sister’s chest was clearly moving up and down. No. Not her sister. The patient’s chest. She could see the patient trying to breathe. That was a good sign.
Ellie ran the flashlight’s beam up and down Amelia’s body for a blood check. She knew there’d be blood—she was already kneeling in a small pool of it—but seeing her sister’s embroidered yellow blouse, her favorite clothing item that’d followed her from high school to college and then into her life as a wife and mother, saturated in it knocked the air out of her lungs. She needed to find out where all that blood was coming from. She needed her kit.
Ellie glanced to her right, so engrossed in her assessment that she’d actually forgotten dropping the cases before forcing her way through the door. Retrieving her kit from the kitchen would mean moving bleeding, injured Amelia—not exactly a best practice, but without her kit there was no way to help her. Damn it. The panicky little-sister voice was starting to edge back in. What if it was too late? What if Amelia slipped away while Ellie dashed into the kitchen to get her pack? What if she had to watch her sister die?
“No!” Ellie said out loud, shaking her head to refocus. There wasn’t time for this. Ten minutes on the scene. One hour from injury to surgery. These were the rules she’d been trained to work by if her patients were going to live. That didn’t leave any wiggle room for a full-on freak-out.
Ellie grabbed Amelia’s shirt by the shoulders and dragged her to the side, careful not to flip her onto her back just yet. Now she had to retrieve the kits, find the blood, and stop the bleeding. That was as far as her to-do list could go.
Ellie pushed off the floor, when Amelia’s eyes fluttered briefly. She was either waking up or having a seizure—waking up would be painful, but a seizure could be a deathblow. Faster. She needed to go faster. Nothing Ellie was doing was fast enough.
Carelessly, Ellie tossed the door open as wide as it would go without hitting Amelia and then took steady but fast steps into the kitchen. Within thirty seconds, she’d retrieved her packs, with one hanging off her sore shoulder and the other one in her hand.
Ellie grabbed at her shoulder for her radio while selecting her supplies. If Ellie could get the bleeding to stop, if she could keep her sister from crashing, if Chet could get through what was sure to be a circus of police and ambulances, Amelia might be able to make it to surgery at the hospital in Frampton before the one-hour window was up. Damn it—Amelia needed a hospital and emergency surgery, not the fumbling hands of a newbie paramedic.
Ellie talked into the receiver on her shoulder.
“Chet . . . are you there?” Silence. Ellie pressed the button again. “Chet!” she yelled, louder.
As she yanked at the receiver a third time, the cord flopped over her shoulder, bouncing against her chest. A quick check for the radio on her belt revealed an empty spot. She’d lost her radio. The electric hum of panic rushed across Ellie’s arms and shoulders.
Ellie was on her own.
Find the bleeding. She had to keep moving, already regretting so many wasted minutes getting the bags and trying to contact Chet. Urgently but gently she rolled her sister onto her back and examined her bloody blouse again. Ellie let out a gasp, fear and panic pounding against the compartment she’d locked them in earlier: two holes—one by her shoulder and one in her abdomen. The one in her belly was the bleeder; she could tell that without even removing the shirt.
Her head spun and her hands shook so fiercely, she didn’t know if she could continue. She squeezed her hands open and shut, open and shut, trying to force out the tremors threatening to paralyze her. Focus, Ellie. Focus.
Not wasting another moment, she grabbed a pair of trauma shears and cut through the thin fabric determinedly. She had to cut around the holes to preserve evidence, evidence that she hoped would tell the story of how and where Amelia was shot.
She started at the saturated hem of her sister’s shirt and cut in a curving line, skipping past the penny-size hole by Amelia’s belly button and another one just above the cup of her bra. As she shoved the drenched garment back from Amelia’s shoulders, the damage became a little clearer. Holes. Red, seeping holes in her sister’s skin.
Ellie put the back of her gloved hand to her mouth, pressing hard until her teeth ached. No. She couldn’t let herself think about the gunshot wounds in her sister’s body and what they could mean, because right now she was the only one who could help her sister—and if Ellie lost it, Amelia would die.
She snatched a neat stack of gauze. With as much control as she could muster, she wiped away the streaks of blood curling around in unidentifiable waves on her sister’s midsection, chest, and sides.