5
The human female known as Melanie Elizabeth Mooney, inhabitant of Sol 3, locally known as “Terra” or “Earth,” is hereby offered legal residence and employment within the Medical Corps of the Galactic Union. This arrangement is conditioned upon her agreement to:
provide appropriate and expedient care as required for any
Union citizen, regardless of species;
complete all necessary training required to provide such care;
demonstrate the ability to assimilate, and be able to conduct herself accordingly, within the variety of cultures which comprise the Union.
Successful completion of a probationary period, equivalent to eighteen months as measured by her species, will qualify her for full recognition as a Citizen of the Union.
The contract went on from there, with more terms and conditions reduced to language I could understand. Compensation wasn’t mentioned in any currency, only that all my needs would be met and that I would have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I felt like when I wasn’t on duty.
I was given twenty-four hours to consider their offer. Rejecting it would result in a complete mind-wipe of everything I’d seen and heard since that night in the woods. Breathing a word of it to anyone while I was considering their offer would result in a mind-wipe for me and whoever I mentioned it to. At the end of the contract was a place for my handprint, which amounted to my signature. Press my hand against the crystal, and I was in. Leave it alone for the next twenty-four hours, and I’d forget the whole thing ever happened. Red pill, blue pill. Which hole do you want to go down, Alice?
And boy, did I have questions. How long was the training going to take? Human anatomy and physiology alone was a full semester, and they’d mentioned something like a dozen different species. That sounded like a couple years’ worth of schooling.
Where was I going to live? How would I get around, learn the language? Or languages, for that matter. Back to the dozen different species . . .
When I looked up, ready to pepper them with questions, Green Eyes and Blue Eyes were gone. I went to the front porch and there was no mysterious car pulling away, no fresh tire tracks heading off into the distance, no flying saucer zipping into the sky. It was as if they’d never been here. The crack in my coffee pot had even disappeared, somehow fixed. That had been nice of them.
The crystal had gone blank. When I reached for it, the text reappeared in glowing golden letters. I pulled my hand back and the words disappeared. I assumed that meant it was for my eyes only, and would only be readable when I reached for it, but I wasn’t taking any chances. It was coming time to get ready for my shift, and I wasn’t about to leave this thing lying around. Not that I had roommates that might get into my stuff, but it still felt like heading off for work while leaving a stack of cash on the kitchen table. I went to the sideboard and pulled out an old velvet jewelry pouch—like most everything else in the house, it was one more thing of my parents that I couldn’t part with. I carefully picked up the crystal by its edges, not wanting to accidentally activate it with my handprint, dropped it into the pouch, and slipped it into my backpack before heading off for work. Just another day, with an employment contract from an alien civilization sitting among the random junk of daily life.
At the station, I was back on rotation with my normal shift and caught more than a few questioning side-eyes. I ignored them and headed straight for my locker to place my pack and its unmentionable contents safely under lock and key until I could think things through.
Not that there’d be much time for any of that. The hourglass had been turned the moment I finished reading their offer, and I my workday was barely getting started. By the time I got home early tomorrow morning, I’d only have a few hours left to activate it.
Was that what I was going to do? If I didn’t accept, I’d never know the difference. The thought lingered as I inspected my trauma bag and the rest of our equipment while my partner gave the truck a once-over outside. Twenty minutes later we were satisfied we were ready for the day, and sent word to dispatch.
Before I even had a chance to step down from the cab, an alarm blared overhead: the long, monotone signal for a fire and ambulance run. An amber line appeared on the center console’s laptop: MMVA, multiple motor vehicle accident. Cops were on scene, the highway was blocked, and two more squads were already on the way. This sounded ugly.
When a call like that comes, adrenaline takes over. Time slows down and you get tunnel vision, tuning out the rest of the world while every sense in your body goes on high alert. By the time we flicked on the lights and siren and barreled out of the squad bay, the magic alien crystal hidden in my locker was the last thing on my mind.
“Good God.”
If you ever hear that from a crusty old medic rolling up on scene, you know it’s bad. Russ Finley had been with the department almost literally since I’d been born and was on his way to retirement. He’d been running squads for so long, and become so jaded, that it had made him wholly unsuited for promotions. If that sounds counterintuitive, you don’t know fire departments.
Here Russ was, well into his fifties, still doing ambulance runs, and utterly aghast at the situation playing out before us.
What had once been a sparkling new BMW had gone left of center. Judging by the mess in the opposite lane, the driver had tried to avoid a deer or some other decent-sized animal. Probably jumped out of the cornfield adjacent to the highway; that was a real danger out here in farm country.
The Beemer had crossed into oncoming traffic and got creamed by a semi. The semi won, but not without taking its lumps. Its driver was sitting cross-legged by the side of the highway, trying to chain-smoke the trauma away. We were a good hundred feet away and could see his hands trembling from inside the squad. “He looks shocky,” Russ said. “Need to keep an eye on him.”
True, but the mess wasn’t limited to Peterbilt vs. BMW. The Beemer got hit so hard that it knocked the engine clean out of its compartment, the finest German engineering transformed into a three-foot aluminum boulder dropped smack into the middle of Highway 40. This in turn was plowed into by an old Corolla which had been trailing behind the semi. The Toyota practically exploded around the Beemer’s engine block, ejecting both driver and passenger. Honestly I don’t know if safety belts would’ve done them a bit of good in this case. They would’ve been crushed if they’d stayed in the vehicle.
The problem was finding the Corolla’s victims. There were two human-sized holes in what was left of the windshield, but only one body. The first was easy enough to find, having hit the pavement at about sixty miles an hour. I’ll spare the details, but he was at the bottom of our rapidly growing triage roster.
I stood up in the doorway of our cab, still scanning the scene while Russ grabbed the go bag from his side of the truck. “Where’s the other passenger?”
He shrugged as he came around the front, but I saw him eyeing the adjacent cornfield.
“Oh man,” I muttered, and waved at one of the mass of state troopers to get his attention. I pointed at the field, in the general direction of where I thought the other human projectile went. “Anybody searching over that way? We may have somebody in that corn.”
“Got two on it now.” He keyed the mic clipped on his epaulet to check in with his troopers working in the maze of corn. He had three stripes on his sleeve.
“You in charge here?” I glanced at the name badge over his right pocket. “Sergeant Lopez?”
“I am. You’re gonna have your hands full. If you’re right about the cornfield, then we’ve got four victims so far. Two from the Corolla, one in the Beemer. The other one . . .” He nodded across the highway, where the BMW had jumped the median.
That hadn’t been a deer. I started searching in anticipation for the other squads, as heavy rescue and hazmat should’ve been here by now. A train whistle wailed in the distance, and I knew why. Damn. “Hang on.” I had tuned out the radio chatter while we were assessing the scene, missing the news that both squads had been blocked at two different railroad crossings. In big, congested cities like New York, first responders had to fight perpetually clogged traffic. Here in farm country, we had to contend with miles-long freight trains and monstrous combines blocking our way. I called them and learned both were presently hauling ass in the opposite direction, headed for the nearest open crossing.
I turned back to the trooper and jerked my head toward the distant whistle. “Heavy rescue’s on the way; they got blocked by that train. We’re it for now.” I studied the scene once more. “Where’s the BMW’s driver?”
The trooper pointed to the semi’s undercarriage, at the twisted wreck of what used to be a silver 330i. “Keep looking for our missing person in the field,” I barked, and ran for the semi. I waved for Russ, who was tending to its trembling, chain-smoking driver. He had draped a space blanket over him and was taking his vitals. The cab and trailer were sitting upright, no apparent risk of it tipping over, so I began belly-crawling underneath it toward the destroyed Beemer. “EMS,” I shouted. “Can anyone hear me?”
A pained moan barely registered above the background noise. I scrambled back out and practically screamed at Russ over my shoulder. “We’ve got a live one, under the trailer!”
I began worming my way back under. I was probably being too impatient; Russ was much older, and much larger, than me. But time was not on our side, and my size was the reason I’d become the go-to for confined-space work. I crept forward, finally reaching what was left of the Beemer and its driver pinned inside, deflated airbags draped around him. I couldn’t believe this guy was still in one piece. I reached for his neck, and have to admit to being more than a little surprised at finding a decent pulse. “Can you talk?”
“Yes.” His voice was weak but clear.
“Can you tell me your name, sir?”
“Andrew,” he groaned.
I kept one eye on him as I opened my trauma bag and snapped on a pair of gloves. First things first: get a C-spine collar around his neck. There was no getting him out of this tangled mess yet, but I had to make sure any damage to his neck wasn’t made worse by my futzing around.
His face was a maze of contusions, cuts and gouges. Head wounds bleed like crazy, all out of proportion to their severity. His glasses had been slammed into his face by the airbag, leaving gashes around his eyes. There was a nasty laceration across his forehead, not too deep but from what I could see it was responsible for most of the bleeding. I wrapped it with a four-by-four and gauze. This injury wasn’t life-threatening, and the pressure would keep the blood out of his face for now.
I wormed my head into the twisted compartment for a better look. “Andrew,” I said. “You go by Andy?”
“Drew.”
Of course he did. The guy was driving a BMW through the middle of farm country. Probably a lawyer or banker from Indianapolis. The more prosperous folk around here avoided being that ostentatious, though they’d spend as much money on a truck or SUV.
“Can you tell me your age, Drew?”
“Thirty-eight,” he said through gritted teeth.
His left arm was free, hanging out of where the driver’s window used to be. The car’s roof had been sheared off and he was damned lucky his head hadn’t gone with it. Judging by the unnatural peak beneath the shirtsleeve, his forearm was broken. Airbags might keep you from getting killed but there was no guarantee you wouldn’t end up with some broken bones. So there was my next task. I pulled an IV bag and air splint from my bag and got to work. “Looks like you’ve got a broken arm, Drew. I can’t set it yet, but this’ll protect it while we get to work. Okay?”
“Okay,” he groaned. “It hurts.”
No doubt, I was thinking as I searched for a good vein in his hand. “What’s your pain level, on a scale of one to ten?”
“T-ten.” It came out as a mumble.
Thought so. “All right. First I’m going give you something for that pain.” I inserted the intravenous needle and taped the port in place as Russ crawled up alongside. He held the IV bag while I snatched a syringe of Dilaudid and pushed it into the port. It’s powerful stuff, comparable to morphine. Drew settled down right away and we got to work, first getting the air splint in place around his arm.
The rest of him was pinned good; his right arm was jammed under the empty passenger seat which now occupied the space where the center console used to be. His shoulder was at an unnatural angle. I winced, imagining the pain he must have felt before the Dilaudid got to work. For all of the nasty stuff we have to deal with, there’s always something that makes your skin crawl no matter how often you see it. For me, it’s dislocated joints. Broken bones may hurt like hell but they’re a temporary kind of pain; that is, until they’re set back in place. Dislocations are horribly painful from start to finish, and resetting them is no walk in the park either.
Thankfully the meds were doing their job; our patient didn’t wince as Russ cut the airbag free from around his out-of-place shoulder. I wished we could’ve reset it right there, but this wasn’t the time. We couldn’t have gotten any leverage from here anyway.
This might seem like small potatoes, given the mess he was in, but you’re essentially working your way down a ladder of bad stuff. If the patient is conscious and breathing, the next thing you look for is bleeding. Bandaging his forehead took care of that. I was going to have to crawl past his arm to get to the rest of him, and protecting that with the air splint ensured we wouldn’t make matters worse while we worked.
Russ cut away the seat belt and forward airbag, while I cut our patient’s shirt open to begin assessing his chest and abdomen. He winced as I palpated his chest. Broken ribs, most likely, and nothing we could do about them now.
His abdomen was a mass of bruises. One in particular felt hard to the touch, which meant internal bleeding. I glanced down past his abdomen, trying to get a look at his legs. They were somewhere behind the steering wheel and the twisted instrument panel, and that’s where the real trauma was going to be. That exquisite German engineering had kept his upper body mostly intact, but could only do so much with the engine compartment pushed up into the driver’s seat.
No way we’d be able to get him out of this on our own. There were sirens in the distance; hopefully that was the heavy rescue crew. They were about to get a workout.
I reached for the radio mic clipped to my collar. “This is Mooney, squad 183. We’re underneath the truck. Victim is semiconscious with multiple crush injuries. I can’t assess his legs. We’re going to need the jaws.”
The radio squawked and I heard the sirens stop. “Copy that, Mel. Heavy rescue is on scene now. Be there in a sec.”
“Copy.” I looked down at where his legs should be. If this went the way I thought, he’d start bleeding like a gusher as soon as we pulled that console free. “We’re also gonna need LifeFlight.”
They answered with two rapid mic clicks, shorthand for saying they heard me.
I looked back toward the highway as the heavy rescue truck pulled up alongside. From beneath the semi, I saw pairs of blue-clad legs running all over the place. One trailed a heavy, black hydraulic hose. That would be the Jaws of Life.
We were soon joined by two medics from station 185, the heavy rescue crew. “Helo’s on the way, Mel. What’ve we got here?” one shouted.
I repeated my assessment for them and moved closer to our patient as Russ draped a heavy canvas tarp over us. “They’re getting ready to pry the dashboard free. This will protect you from glass and debris. It’s about to get noisy, but I’m going to be right here with you, okay?”
Drew nodded silently, his eyelids droopy. I spotted his wallet, wedged inside a cupholder. I shoved it into my chest pocket; the LifeFlight crew would need his ID.
From the corner of one eye I saw the Heavy guys wedging the scuffed yellow scissor blades of the jaws into the driver’s compartment, between the floorboard and console. Another dragged a rolly—a flexible stretcher for confined spaces—beneath the trailer. He set it up alongside the driver and waited.
“Clear!” one of them shouted. With a grinding whine, the jaws slowly opened and began to spread the crushed Beemer apart. We were careful to stay clear of the machine, but also had to be close enough to catch the driver and ease him onto the stretcher.
Drew’s right arm dropped free as the passenger seat moved enough for it to fall loose. All that leather must have cushioned the impact because it looked fine, other than his dislocated shoulder.
I’d been right about his legs. Even if he was lucky enough to have avoided a spinal injury—which looked doubtful—it was hard to see how they’d work again. They emerged from under the console as two pulpy masses of tissue, as if there were no bones left inside to keep them in place. A stream of blood began squirting from his right thigh.
“Shit,” Russ muttered. “There goes his femoral.”
I was ready for that, but it didn’t make things easier. The patient might have been freed, but we were still in tight quarters and a sliced femoral artery wouldn’t wait for us to drag him clear. I snatched a pair of clamps and forceps from a pouch on my hip. Finding the source was easy: his right leg was shredded into hamburger, and now that the pressure was relieved the artery was gushing like a damned garden hose. If we couldn’t get it clamped off quickly, he’d bleed out before LifeFlight could get here.
Knowing the source of the bleed isn’t the same as getting to it. The human body responds to blunt-force trauma in some bizarre ways; stuff gets moved around to places where it shouldn’t be. Working underneath a wrecked semi didn’t help; the lack of direct sunlight left us with headlamps and handheld flashlights. Russ held a light on the area while I began fishing around inside of our patient’s thigh. Blood was pooling up and I couldn’t see. “Can you give me some suction?”
That was when we heard a shout from the firefighter with the jaws, right about the time gasoline fumes attacked my nose. “Gas line broke!”
He pulled the jaws free and scrambled out from under the trailer just as I felt my coveralls getting soaked in flammable liquids. He wasn’t running away, he was going for the spill kit stowed in their truck. I could hear him shouting for the hazmat gear. Two more of the guys started unrolling a pig around the area, a big burlap-wrapped roll of absorbent material to contain the spill. Another came up from behind us and started scattering what amounted to cat litter over the expanding pool of gasoline.
All of this was happening in my peripheral vision. As they worked to contain the spill, I was still trying to stave off the gusher from my patient’s leg. With his free hand, Russ began moving a small hose around the area where I was working, suctioning away excess blood. I was still working mostly by feel, but now I could see a little better. There.
“Got it!” I kept one hand on the sliced artery and clamped it shut with the other. We watched the wound area to see if any more blood escaped, but it looked like we had it. I had no illusions that he’d be able to keep that leg, but at least he wasn’t going to bleed out underneath this truck. Not on my watch sounds melodramatic, but that’s how it feels being the only one standing between your patient and certain death.
I noticed Drew trembling about the same time I heard Russ call it: “He’s going into shock.” He’d already pulled out a space blanket and O2 mask.
“Bag him.” As Russ put the mask in place, I reached back for my trauma bag and slammed my head against the trailer’s undercarriage. I cursed myself for not putting on a helmet before crawling up in here, once again in too much of a hurry for my own good. I started pushing fluids through the IV while Russ rhythmically squeezed the pouch to force air into the patient’s lungs. We needed to get this guy out from under the truck, but first we had to get him stable or it wouldn’t matter. The heavy thump thump thump of an approaching helicopter grew louder and the air began to swirl around us.
I made one last assessment of our patient, now secure in the rolly, before we pulled him out from underneath the trailer. Between the blood loss and pain meds, he was out. The bruising around his abdomen was an ugly, deep violet blotch we called the “seat belt” sign. Chances were good that his spleen was ruptured, but that would be left to the ER docs.
We dragged him out onto the highway and two more medics came running up in black jumpsuits and bulky helmets; they’d be the LifeFlight crew. A squat red-and-black helicopter sat on the pavement nearby with its rotors turning, behind the trailer and as close as the pilot could safely land. They lifted their earpieces back and I shouted at them over the whining engines as we carried him to the waiting chopper. “Patient’s name is Andrew Larsen, thirty-eight years old. Pulse one twenty-five and thready, BP ninety over fifty-two. Hypovolemic shock, likely broken ribs and internal bleeding. Lacerated right femoral, we clamped it off.”
The flight nurse was typing this into a tablet as one of the heavy rescue guys helped her partner load our patient into the chopper. She looked at the patient, then back at me. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing: he’d probably never be able to use those legs again if he kept them at all. Finally, I handed her the wallet I’d removed from the BMW’s shattered console. She read his driver’s license and did a double take. “Andrew Larsen?” she asked over the helicopter’s roar. A sardonic grin creased her face.
I didn’t see much to smile about here. “What’s funny about that?”
“He’s a big-shot lawyer from Indy,” she said as she climbed into the cabin. Once again, my gut had proven right. “Specializes in truck accidents.” With that, she motioned for us to get clear and slid the chopper’s door shut. I could see her giving the pilot a thumbs-up, and their engines began to whine.
I turned and covered my face with my arms as the chopper spun up and away. Irony could sure be ironic sometimes.