“Don’t go there Talbot. Don’t cover over your insecurities with sarcasm. You know what I mean.”
I sighed. I knew what she meant. She was asking if I had I ever had the need to put any of my friends back together after some raghead had done their best to make Humpty Dumpty fall. “I’m sorry.” I told her. “No there was never time during the heat of battle to help and by the time the last bullets had flown they would be medi- vacced out. Some I got to visit in the hospital while they recovered. Others I watched as their bodies got loaded on a plane and headed back home.”
She witnessed the pain in my eyes as I pulled the band-aid off a wound that would not heal. “I’m sorry Mike.”
“Me too.” I took another pull of the disgusting concoction while leaning over a moaning BT who was luckily still passed out. How long he was going to remain in that status while I delved into his leg was another story all together.
“One for me.” I took another swig. “And one for you.” As I poured a liberal amount of the elixir into the wound.
BT’s eyes flared open. Fiery pain seared across his brain plate. He looked right at the source of this intrusion. “What the fuck are you doing Talbot!?” The gods shook under the assault of those words.
It must have been the warmth of the liquor as it spread throughout my body. I felt no fear, only resolve as I explained to BT what was happening. It was tough to tell which of us was more detached as I clinically laid out my plan. I sounded scholarly as I slurred my way through the procedure. BT nodded at all the right moments. I handed him two oxycodones and the bottle. He didn’t shun either one away or question what they were.
I’m going to wait until those kick in and then I’m going to start.” I reached out to grab the bottle back.
“Think you’ve had enough.” He grinned savagely, the pain distorting his features. “I’d appreciate it if you got started now instead of waiting, not sure how much longer I can keep this macho shit up, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry in front of a woman. The last time I did that, I was six and my mom had just whopped me upside the head for writing on the walls with peanut butter. Don’t ask.” He told me, just as I was about to.
Tracy came over with three knives, one still smoldering a dull red from the heat. BT looked at the blade and then back at me. “You know what you’re doing right? Wait don’t answer, I don’t want to know.” He finished the bottle. It clattered loudly to the ground as he threw it over the side. I placed a shirt under his head as I gently pushed his head back down.
“You want something to bite on?” I asked him seriously.
“Why you think this is going to hurt?” He laughed. He then set his eyes hard, on some distant object high above our locale. I hoped for his sake it was God. The call of a lone falcon was the only sound as I plunged the knife into the bullet hole. Tears silently streamed down BT’s face as I made the hole big enough so that I would be able to plunge my fingers in.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until those pills take affect?” Sweat froze on me as fast as it formed.
A curt shake of his head kept me going. My respite was not to happen. BT went rigid as I submerged first one and then a second finger into his bloody laceration. The sheer size of BT’s thighs meant I was going to have to go deep in my attempt to find the foreign body. Lady luck was going to have to be on my shoulder for this. If the bullet had struck and tumbled away I’d never find it. I had gone in as far as my two fingers were going to allow and not struck home yet. There was a hollow sucking sound as I pulled my fingers out of the wound. Nobody commented, but I could hear more than one disgruntled stomach recoil at the noise.
“I’ve got to make the hole bigger BT.” I wanted to apologize.
“Can’t get much worse.” He replied. I’m glad he didn’t realize then that he was wrong.
My hand was steadier as I made the second lengthening incision. BT didn’t flinch at all when I stuck my whole hand in up to the knuckle. A potent combination of Jack Daniel’s, Oxycodone and shock were all taking affect those plus the minding numbing cold. I concentrated hard on the fact that I was merely feeling around in some beef. Sure it was warm bloody steak but it was steak nonetheless and that was what was going to let me keep going. If I were to dwell on the reality of the situation, BT would end up dying from infection. My hand was relatively warm compared to the rest of my body, encased as it was in the living tissue of my friend. That being the case, my fingers were not numb and were therefore able to detect when I brushed up against something that didn’t have a right to be where it was. Relief was my immediate thought. Relief to rid BT of the bullet and relief to get my hand out of his thigh.
I oriented the foreign material as best I could so as to not damage anything more on its way out. What I removed was not a bullet, not unless they were white about an inch long and a quarter inch wide. Tracy was the first to recognize what I had removed, I could tell by the sounds of her retching, although the others weren’t far behind. The splintered bone fragment shone brightly in the noonday sun. I hastily tossed it before BT had the chance to see it.
“Wasn’t it was it.” BT said resignedly.
I shook my head and dove my hand back in. No sense in stalling at this point. For fifteen minutes I pulled various sized pieces of bone out, most no bigger than a toothpick. Two or maybe three fragments were taken out, roughly the size of my pinkie. I didn’t think there was going to be any bone left to knit together when I was through. Blood coated the bottom of the truck bed. BT was drifting in and out of consciousness. My time line for success was rapidly diminishing. Either I got the bullet or the bullet got BT. It was that simple of an equation but one in which I’m sure was never up on any algebra teacher’s chalk board.
“Where is the fu…got it!” I could tell by the mushroom shape this wasn’t another bone fragment. BT couldn’t share in my elation, he had passed out, I think. “Jen?”
Jen had earlier hopped up on the bed of the truck to help. “He’s still breathing.” She answered. “But its thready.”
“That sounds mighty ERish.” I said triumphantly as I pulled the bullet free from its human stockade.
“What can I say, I had a crush on the triage nurse, Margulies on that show.” She said as a smile spread across her face as she also saw the bullet. “Now what?”
“Well I’ll sew him up, we’ll set and splint his leg as well as possible and then we’ll get out of Dodge.”
“I meant what about internal damage.”
“From the bullet or my ministrations?”
“Well probably both.” She said honestly.
“Shit Jen, I’m already 5 orders of magnitude above my pay grade. I can only sew him up and hope his body will take care of the rest. IF he’s lucky he’ll only have a pronounced limp when he can walk again.”
“Worst case scenario?”
“Are you kidding me? Do you see the blood we’re sitting in. Do you see how sterile an environment I’m working in. Or, better yet, my surgical skill level. The bullet looks fairly whole but I’m not completely sure I didn’t leave a piece of it in, plus there’s no way I got every bone fragment out but if I don’t close him up soon he’ll bleed out. Which may still happen depending on how many blood vessels, veins and arteries were damaged. That he’s alive up to this point is near miraculous. We’re going to have to pump him full of antibiotics for the next two weeks and pray.”
“Pray?” She looked at me incredulously.
“Figure of speech.” I said as I turned away. Seemed like the wrong time to spurn God, but I wasn’t feeling very pious at the time.
Within a half an hour I had closed the wound. Jen and Tommy had got him cleaned up and put new clothes that weren’t blood soaked on him. And then after getting him placed in the back of Brendon’s minivan, I set his leg in a close approximation of the position I felt it should be in. Two ax handles and a roll of duct tape completed my handiwork. It wasn’t pretty. He was going to be eating oxy’s like pez for the next month and we had about a week’s worth. Great, another stop on the journey. Those always go so well.
Another set of clothes down the drain, so to speak. The only thing salvageable on me was my shirt. The jacket had caught the brunt of arterial spray. I shivered on the side of the road as I stripped out of the stiff clothing.
Tracy had come up to me with a box of baby wipes to clean up with. I couldn’t have been more grateful if she had showed up with a cheeseburger right now.
She started laughing at me. There I was, nearly naked in the dead of winter on the side of a highway.
“Hey that’s not cool!” I yelled. “It’s because of the cold, it causes shrinkage you know. It’s like when you go swimming!” I was now yelling to her laughing retreating back. “Not cool.” I said angrily to myself as I washed up. I
