“Do you know what you’re doing?” Samuel whispered to Austin as they both waited for Daveed to react, Austin not looking away from the injured man as he replied.
“Yeah. My other half is a nurse. I’ve had basic first aid training too.”
Samuel nodded, amazed once again by what Austin was capable of. It made him feel insignificant.
Austin knelt beside Daveed, carefully sliding his hands away to inspect the wound in his stomach. While Austin tended to Daveed, Samuel took hold of his injured hand and studied it, trying to determine if his fingers were in fact broken.
“Okay,” Austin said after a couple of seconds, shrugging off the shirt he wore over his t-shirt and balling it up in his hands. “I’m going to need you to keep pressure on that, Daveed.” Austin pressed the shirt against his stomach to help slow down the bleeding. “We’re going to get you to a hospital. You’re going to be fine; do you hear me? It’s nothing that a couple of stitches won’t sort out. Sam, help me get him back to his feet, come on. Do you know where the nearest hospital is?”
Samuel tried to force his brain to work quicker than it currently was. The riot in front of the foodbank had reached its height and was starting to die down, but that was only because more bodies littered the ground in front of it. Daveed’s puddle of blood was certainly no longer the only one there.
“Yeah,” he answered with a shake of his head. “It’s not far. Five minutes maybe; it’s only a couple of blocks.”
Austin forced a determined smile onto his face. “You hear that, Daveed? Five minutes and we’ll have you in a hospital. They’ll patch you right up. Come on, we need to walk again now.”
Just as before, Austin and Samuel helped pull Daveed to his feet, supporting his weight between them. He was growing paler and paler by the minute, the blood loss not slowing down despite Austin’s help. Samuel wasn’t confident that they would be able to carry the man if he lost consciousness and he feared that might happen before they reached the hospital.
“Which way?”
“Right,” Samuel guided the other two, turning a corner as several other people ran past them, seemingly away from the final moments of the foodbank riot. It was obvious from the noise that the crowd had dissipated and the contest for the foodbank was over. No matter the result though, there would be no real winners. Managed improperly, the food would only last a handful of people for a few days and it was clear the city needed more than that. Foodbanks would no longer be getting donations and would quickly stop being a safe place for people to go and eat. The question of how people would survive once the basic rations ran out was going to get bigger and bigger over the next few weeks; those who weren’t prepared or willing to take matters into their own hands were likely the ones who would suffer. The elderly and vulnerable would go first, but the crash would not be selective in its victims. Everyone was going to suffer from what had happened, it was just a matter of when and how.
“Come on Daveed,” Austin spoke to the man in between him and Samuel, both of them feeling his weight grow slightly heavier as his head lolled about on his shoulders. “Look, the hospital is just there. Hold it together, big guy. Not much further now.”
Austin was right; they were only a few hundred meters from one of the hospital entrances now, but already they could both see it wasn’t going to be as simple as just dropping Daveed off with a nurse and leaving him to get help. The entrance was teeming with people, both injured and able-bodied but all frantically running around and trying to get what they wanted. Some people stood out as hospital workers by their clothing, but the non-uniformed men and women far surpassed them, showing just how much demand and strain the place was under.
“Help!” Austin cried out when they were close enough for people to hear him. “We need some help over here! Please, this man has been stabbed!”
A few faces turned in their direction, but no one even started to move. They all had their own problems to deal with, Daveed not one of their concerns.
“There!” Austin spotted a wheelchair lying abandoned on the tarmac. “Sam – the chair.”
Nodding, Samuel eased himself away from Daveed’s body and ran toward the wheelchair, righting it onto its wheels and pushing it back to the others as quickly as he could. Austin was struggling to keep Daveed both on his feet and conscious, the arrival of the chair coming just in time as he was forced to let the man fall into it.
“There has to be more staff inside.”
Austin agreed, taking control of the chair and starting to push Daveed closer to the building, maneuvering around the abandoned cars and people who littered the ambulance bay outside. Rushing through the automatic doors however, the scene only got worse. The hospital was awash with people in all sorts of different states; some bleeding and begging for help while others darted around trying to steal medication wherever possible. Samuel and Austin looked at one another with wide eyes, both shaking their heads.
“What do we do?” Samuel asked.
Before Austin could respond, the lights flickered above his head and the entire hospital descended into darkness.
Chapter 4
Several people screamed inside the pitch black, jam packed lobby of the small hospital. It wasn’t equipped for this number of people. As the building and its staff were put under more and more strain, the cracks began to show.
“What’s happened?”
“Power cut I guess,” Austin called
