She blinked in silent shock. Harold said he had a walkie-talkie.
Caitlin struggled to her knees, then scanned the ground like a strung-out addict hunting a dropped bag of crack. She saw nothing other than a cigarette butt near a footprint in the mud. No walkie-talkie.
“How’s your breathing?” Tom asked, turning back to her.
“Somebody’s sitting on my chest.”
“I want you to sit down. Your blood pressure’s going to drop as the pericardium fills. Do you feel light-headed?”
She went still, her panic morphing into something close to shock. As carefully as she could, she leaned back against the tree and sat down. She fell harder than she’d intended, scraping her back and landing on something that jabbed her right buttock. Leaning to her left so that she could reach whatever it was, her fingers touched hard plastic, then froze. Wedged tight along the vertical seam of her right pocket was the clear Bic ballpoint she’d borrowed from the waitress in the café.
“Tom!” she cried, taking it out and extending her hand to him. “I hope to God you can pull some kind of MacGyver shit with this thing.”
“Hallelujah!” he said, moving back to her. “It’s thick, but it’s about the best we could hope for.”
“You mean it’s thicker than the bullet hole?”
“We’ll find out. With a .22, the track through your body will have swelled shut, but not permanently. Which means . . .”
“What? Tell me!”
“To drain the pericardium, you’ve got to get the tip of that pen barrel to it. To get that tube to your pericardium, you’ll have to reopen the wound.”
“So?”
“The pain will be severe. And with my hands cuffed behind me, I can’t do the procedure.”
“Then tell me what to do!”
Tom stared at her for a few seconds, then at the wound. He shook his head slowly. When she began to sob, he sighed and said, “Take the ink tube out of the pen barrel and throw it on the ground. Then open that knife and get ready to use it.”
Caitlin stuck the pen’s point between her teeth, bit down, and yanked out the ink-filled insert. Then she slid a fingernail under the edge of the blue end cap and popped it out. What remained was a strong hexagonal tube about six inches long. Awfully thick for a needle, but better than nothing.
“What about sterilization?” she asked.
Tom actually laughed. “Infection is the least of our worries. You just worry about getting that Bic to your heart.”
“I’ll do it. Tell me what to do.”
Tom knelt before her, then allowed himself to fall onto his butt. As he coached her, his eyes moved constantly between her eyes and the bullet hole. Caitlin felt like she was about to climb Everest or jump out of an airplane, and Tom was the only instructor she would ever have.
“In a clinical setting we’d have an ultrasound machine to guide the needle. You’re going to have to go by feel. But first you have to widen the hole. You’re going to insert the point of the blade, then work it along the track of the bullet by touch—widening the track as you go. It won’t be easy—first because it will hurt like hell, second because the point might hang up in tissue all along the way. You’ve got to ignore the pain, but not altogether, because if you blot it out totally, you might go too far and hurt yourself worse, or pass out.”
“I understand. How do I keep from going too far?”
Tom considered this question. “That’s my job. I’m going to watch you closely. Once you have the blade halfway in, you’re going to guide the pen barrel along the blade, then push both toward the pericardium. Don’t be surprised if you get a squirt of blood. There’s quite a bit of pressure in that sac right now.”
“Won’t there be blood the whole time?” she asked.
“Not that much. When you reach the pericardium, you’ll know.”
She had a feeling he was underplaying the horror she might soon experience.
Tom tried to smile. “All right, let’s do it. If you pass out, this isn’t going to get done.”
Dropping the Bic between her legs, Caitlin picked up the multi-tool and looked at the knife blade. Three inches of tempered steel with a glittering edge . . .
“Don’t think about it,” Tom said. “Just do it.”
As she contemplated shoving that blade into her chest, something froze her hands. She was thinking of a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which a character slices open his own palm with a pocketknife.
“Cait . . . ? Come on, girl. You can do it.”
“I know. Fuck it.” She grabbed a twig from the mud, stuck it between her teeth, and bit down as hard as she could. Then she shoved the point of the knife into the bullet hole and pushed it slowly but steadily toward her heart. The twig flew out of her mouth when she screamed. She saw keen empathy in Tom’s eyes, but also resolve.
“Keep going,” he urged. “If you stop, you won’t start again.”
She pressed the blade deeper, and fire seared her chest. When she wiggled the blade in the wound, the pain was nearly unbearable.
“Back it out a little,” Tom advised. “The point’s probably buried in tissue.”
She did as he advised, and blessed relief was her reward.
“Okay, back in. You’ve probably got another inch to go.”
She shut her eyes and drove the knife deeper into the wound track. It was like threading a catheter into your bladder, only a catheter that had been heated to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
“Stop,” Tom said. “It’s time to put the pen barrel in there.”
Christ, she thought, shivering from adrenaline. She picked up the clear barrel of the Bic and held it along the knife handle, its narrow end near the bullet hole.
“Be deliberate,” Tom said.
The pen barrel actually hurt worse than the blade, because of its thickness. She groaned and screamed each time the tube penetrated deeper into her chest, and as it disappeared, she realized that her breathing was even more difficult.