Under his breath, my father muttered something that sounded very much like an instruction for Sean to go to hell.
My mother gave a short laugh that was way too highpitched to signify amusement.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, you’re as stubborn as each other!” she said crossly. “Let him do what he can, Sean. If anyone comes it will look like what it is—a doctor treating someone at the scene of an accident.”
“I’m more worried about his friends coming back with reinforcements, rather than keeping up appearances,” Sean said. He stared down at the injured man with entirely dispassionate eyes. “All right,” he said, letting out a fast breath. “Charlie, stay with him.” He turned to my mother and added, almost politely, “Elizabeth, if you wouldn’t mind helping me get our gear, let’s see if their truck will still drive, shall we?”
“Do what you have to,” my father said, dismissive, unfolding his glasses from his inside pocket and sliding them on.
I leaned harder into Kaminski’s shoulder but seemed to be having very little effect on the rush of blood. My hands were awash with it. I glanced up at my father and saw by his face that he knew my efforts were futile. If Kaminski’s frantic struggles were anything to go by, he must have known it, too.
“You must calm down if you want me to help you,” my father told him, quietening the man by the sheer authority in his voice. Or perhaps the lessening of Kaminski’s movements was simply due to the fact that he was bleeding out as fast as his accelerated heartbeat could accomplish the task.
Nevertheless, knowing that death is stalking your shoulder doesn’t make you entirely see sense. Kaminski clearly didn’t like the option of letting a man he’d just been sent to kill get close to him. His rib cage heaved, shuddering with the sheer effort he was expending to drag in each sodden breath.
“You know this man’s a top-flight surgeon, and you also know that without his help you’ll be dead in minutes,” I told him. “Now, just let him save your miserable little life.”
“You know him?” my father said.
“Yes,” I said coldly, meeting Kaminski’s eyes, seeing the pain and the dread in them and feeling nothing. “He’s the one who—if you’d refused to cooperate in New York—was planning to take such delight in raping your wife.”
For a moment my father’s hands stilled and I thought perhaps he might simply abandon his efforts and walk away. Maybe I wanted him to.
Then he glanced at me and seemed to shake himself. “I need a sharp knife and some form of clamp,” he said. “Anything will do, but quickly!”
One-handed, I dug my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket again and flicked out the smaller, cleaner, of the two blades, thrusting the knife towards him handle first. He took it like a typical surgeon, without either eye contact or thanks, and began to slice away the clothing around the wound site.
“Here.” Sean was back just long enough to dump one of the vehicle’s first-aid kits, a roll of duct tape and a tool roll down next to us. My father barely acknowledged him, just ripped the kit open and dug out sterile wipes, dressings and bandages. He searched through the rest of the contents quickly, but there was nothing intended to deal with anything this severe.
Kaminski, I recalled, had once been in the military. I bet he wished he still had his standard-issue ampoules of morphine with him now.
My father ignored the ties holding the tool roll together, cutting it open instead, his fingers slick with blood. With a grunt of satisfaction, he slipped a pair of pliers out of the roll, ready, and turned back to his patient.
“Hold him,” he warned. “This is going to hurt.”
Kaminski must have outweighed me by nearly two to one, but he’d been shot twice and bled for long enough to weaken him sufficiently that I had the upper hand. I knelt on his chest, letting go of the wound, which surged afresh like floodwater.
Swiftly, surely, my father stabbed the knife into the dense pectoral muscle at the top of Kaminski’s chest and sliced up towards his collarbone, his face ticking with irritation as the man screamed and bucked under us.
My father used one of the unpacked dressings to clear the welter of blood enough to see what he was doing, then stuffed what seemed to be his entire hand into the incision he’d just made.
I don’t count myself as squeamish, but that made me look away. I had to remind myself that this was, after all, what my father did for a living. The inner workings of the human body held no mysteries for him. It was just a machine that went wrong, and he was a highly trained and highly paid mechanic. I glanced at his face and found him calm, frowning slightly in utter concentration as he worked by feel alone.
“Ah,” he said at last. “Got it. Hand me the pliers.”
I grabbed the pliers. They’d been sitting in the tool roll for some time, by the look of them, and were covered in a film of oil and dirt.
“Shouldn’t we clean them first?” I asked as I slapped them into his outstretched palm, reaching for a sterile wipe from the first-aid kit.
“The man’s bleeding to death,” my father snapped. “I think infection is the last of his worries at the moment, Charlotte, don’t you?”
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew his hand from the gaping hole in Kaminski’s shoulder, a thin piece of rubbery tubing gripped tight between his forefinger and thumb.
Delicately, he wrapped the tube in a piece of dressing and clamped the pliers onto it before looking round. I grabbed an elastic band that had been holding one of the bandages together and handed it over. “Use this.”
He took it with a nod this time, stretching the band around the handles of the pliers to hold them shut. Then he sat back on his heels, head tilted slightly, his lips pursed slightly in disapproval.
“Not exactly the neatest bit of surgery I’ve ever carried out,” he said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, “but under the circumstances it will do the job.”
He leaned over Kaminski, eyes skimming the blanched features until he was sure the man had him in focus.
“If you dislodge or attempt to remove the temporary clamp I’ve placed on your artery, you will undoubtedly bleed to death,” he told him, voice cold and entirely matter-of-fact. “Do you understand me?”
Fear was not the only thing holding Kaminski immobile. Eventually, he gave a slow blink, which we took to signify assent.
“Good.” My father glanced at me. “Dressing, if you please.” I ripped off the cellophane wrappings and slapped the wadded gauze and cotton wool into his outstretched palm, too. He packed them over the wound, but ignored the bandage I offered in favor of duct tape, which he applied liberally across Kaminski’s chest, holding the pliers as well as the dressings firmly in place.
He was just adding the last strip when Sean approached.
“The truck’s drivable, no problem,” he said as he drew near. “Hitting us hardly even put a dent in the chrome. If you’ve quite finished playing Dr. Kildare,
“We should take him with us—get him to a hospital at the very least,” my father argued.
Sean hid his exasperation behind a formally blank face, but it edged out around his words, even so. “He’ll slow us down, decrease our chances of evasion,” he said. “And I should hardly need to remind you that he and his lady friend have just tried to kill the lot of us.”
For a moment my father didn’t speak, but his face turned grave. Then he nodded, brusque. “Very well,” he said. He rose, dusting off his knees. “If you get medical assistance soon, your chances of survival are fair. You may even retain the use of your arm,” he told Kaminski in a disinterested tone, turned on his heel and walked away.
I bent to retrieve my Swiss Army knife, carefully wiping the blood from the blade onto Kaminski’s jacket. Between us, Sean and I managed to drag him to the side of the road, where at least he wasn’t going to get run down by passing traffic. Not that there’d been any since the Chevy’s exit. Vondie and crew had chosen their ambush site well.
Kaminski was very weak now, passing in and out of consciousness, too far gone even to cry out when he was moved. I couldn’t find it in me to pity him.
Sean crouched and looked into the man’s eyes and made sure he was just aware enough of us to register.
“This is the second time we haven’t killed you when we had the chance,” Sean murmured, almost regretful as
