I looked up at Shawn’s wide, frightened eyes. “We’ll have to log roll him onto the backboard. We can’t pull traction on this leg. Let’s get his helmet off,” I said quickly.
Javier ran a backboard over while Shawn kneeled and cradled Brandon’s head. I reached around and unclipped the strap, and we kept his neck stable while we pulled the helmet off. His brown hair was matted with blood.
Shawn was crying. “The bitch didn’t even fucking stop.”
“Keep it together,” Javier said calmly. “Look at me, Shawn. He’s a patient. He can be your buddy when this call is over. Right now he’s a patient. Do your job and he’ll be okay.”
Shawn nodded, trying to collect himself. Javier snapped the cervical collar on Brandon’s neck and we all put our hands on him, ready to flip him.
“On the count of three,” Javier said, not looking up, sweat beading on his forehead. “One, two, three!” And in one fluid motion we turned him onto the backboard.
Brandon always wore heavy-duty pants when he rode. But he was in a T-shirt. It was eighty today. His bare left arm was torn to shreds by the asphalt. He looked like he’d been through a lemon zester. Blood oozed from the white streaks of the under layer of his skin. And this was the least of his worries.
Shawn, Javier, and an EMT lifted him onto the gurney while I felt his chest and stomach. He had rib fractures and rigidity in his abdomen. “A possible liver laceration,” I said, a lump bolting to my throat.
Javier mumbled a curse word, and Shawn shook his head, his eyes red and glassy.
We needed to get him to the hospital.
The ambulance crew took over.
I rattled off what I knew as we ran him to the open ambulance doors, my voice professional and disembodied, like it came from someone else, someone who wasn’t standing over his critically injured best friend. “Twenty-nine-year-old male, motorcycle rider struck by vehicle, thrown twenty feet from the point of impact. Helmet has significant damage. A weakened, thready radial pulse. Pupils are equal and reactive. Open femur fracture, severe road rash. Unresponsive.”
I climbed into the ambulance and saw the woman from the blue Kia being slapped into handcuffs as the doors slammed shut behind us.
We’d gotten him in the ambulance in less than five minutes. I worried it was five minutes too long.
I leaned over him. “Hey, buddy.” My voice cracked. “Hold on. You’ll be all right. I’m going to get Sloan over here, okay?”
Tears stung my eyes, but my hands kept working, running on muscle memory. I set up his IV en route. The EMT put him on oxygen while the driver called it in.
We cycled his blood pressure. Put him on an EKG to monitor his heart. But none of this helped him. It was nothing but reassess. That’s all we could do. Reassess. It was the longest ride of my life.
Finally the rig turned hard into the hospital parking lot.
The EKG flatlined.
“No!” I started chest compressions to the long, static beep of the heart rate monitor as the ambulance pulled up to the ER. “Come on, Brandon, come on!”
The ambulance doors swung open and I climbed the gurney and straddled him, pumping his chest with the palms of my hands. Javier, Shawn, and Luke were waiting, and I ducked as they lowered us both out of the ambulance and wheeled us into the trauma room.
“He’s crashing!” I screamed between thrusts. “We’re losing him!”
The emergency room team descended on the gurney.
The room was chaos. Shouting and barked orders, beeping machines and the squeaky sound of wheels rolling on a hard floor. I kept doing chest compressions until they ran over the crash cart. I didn’t stop until I saw paddles.
A doctor in a white coat waited for me to clear the gurney and then he pressed the charge to Brandon’s chest. “Clear!”
Brandon’s body lurched with the jolt and everyone froze, staring at the lines on the monitor.
Nothing.
“Clear!”
He lurched again.
We waited.
The jagged V of a heartbeat launched the room back into action, and I breathed again.
I was backed out into the hallway by the throng of people working on him. They started a central line. They started X-rays. Neurology was called. And then a curtain yanked closed and it was done. There was nothing else we could do for him. That was it.
It was out of our hands.
I stood there panting, in shock, the adrenaline crashing into me now that I’d stopped moving. I looked down at myself, my hands trembling. I was covered in his blood.
Coveredin my best friend’s blood.
Luke spoke from behind me. “She was drunk.”
My hands balled into fists, and Shawn started to wheeze.
Sloan. I needed Kristen to get Sloan. I walked outside, praying to God that Kristen answered my call, that she hadn’t decided to ice me out again in the short time since I’d seen her. If she didn’t answer and I had to text her, I wouldn’t be able to do it. My hands shook so violently now that it was all I could do to unlock my phone and pull up her number.
It had been twenty minutes since I’d seen her. Twenty minutes that felt like a lifetime.
I pressed the phone to my ear, my hand shaking.
I wouldn’t be able to stay with him. My station had mandated staffing. I couldn’t leave until someone relieved me. I had to go back.
“Hey.” Her voice gave me the first full breath I’d taken in almost half an hour. Just knowing she was on the other end of the line grounded me. Everything that had happened between us felt years away and unimportant.
“Kristen, Brandon’s been in an accident.”
I told her everything. I knew she would take care of the rest. She was capable—she’d get Sloan to the hospital.
When I got back, Javier paced the hallway, making phone calls to cover our shifts, a finger pressed to his ear. But there were fires up north. It would be hard to find someone. We were already borrowing Luke as it was.
Shawn breathed into a paper bag with Luke crouched next to him, looking worried. “They just wheeled him off to surgery,” Luke said.
I slid down against the wall of the ER hallway as nurses and staff streamed by me. I put my palms to my eyelids and cried like a baby.
Kirsten
Ihung up with Josh, and the switch flipped in my head.
Sloan called it my velociraptor brain because it made me fierce and sharp. Something big had to trigger it, and when it did, my compulsive, laser-focused, primal side activated. The one that got me a near perfect score on my SATs and got me through college finals and Mom. The one that made me clean when I was stressed and threatened to launch into full-scale manic OCD if left unchecked—that kicked in.
Emotion drained away, the tiredness from staying up all night crying dissipated, and I became my purpose.
I didn’t do hysterics. Never had. When in crisis, I became systematic and efficient.
And the transition was now complete.
I weighed only for a second whether to call Sloan and tell her or go pick her up. I decided to pick her up. She would be too upset to drive properly, but knowing her, she would try anyway.
From Josh’s explanation of the situation, Brandon wouldn’t be out of the hospital anytime soon. Sloan wouldn’t leave Brandon, and I wouldn’t leave her. She would need things for the stay. People would need to be called. Arrangements made.
I began to compile a list in my head of things to do and things to pack as I quickly but methodically drove to Sloan’s. Phone charger, headphones, blanket, change of clothes for Sloan, toiletries, and her laptop.
It took me twenty minutes to get to her house, and I got out of my car ready for a surgical extraction.
I stood there, surrounded by the earthy smell of Sloan’s just-watered potted porch flowers. The door opened, and I took in her blissfully ignorant face one more time.
“Kristen?”
It wasn’t unusual for me to stop by. But she knew me well enough to instantly know something was wrong.
“Sloan, Brandon has been in an accident,” I said calmly. “He’s alive, but I need you to get your purse and come with me.”
I knew immediately that I’d been right to come get her instead of calling. One look at her and I knew she wouldn’t have been able to put a foot in front of the other. While I mobilized and became strong under stress, she froze and weakened.
“What? ” she breathed.
“We have to hurry. Come on.” I pushed past her and systematically executed my checklist. I gave myself a two-minute window to grab what was needed.
Her gym bag would be in the laundry room, already filled with toiletries and her headphones. I grabbed that, pulled a sweater from her closet, selected a change of clothes for her, and stuffed her laptop inside the bag.
When I came out of the room, she had managed to grab her purse as instructed. She stood by the sofa looking shaken, her eyes moving back and forth like she was trying to figure out what was happening.
Her cell phone sat by her easel and I snatched it, pulling the charger from the wall. I grabbed her favorite throw blanket from the sofa and stuffed that in the bag and zipped it.
List complete.