Blood Will Tell

  Finally, Lucy climbed the three steps of what had once been an old house, crossed the front porch (empty now, but crowded in the summer), and pushed open the door with fingers that were numb despite her mittens. Inside it was warm and steamy, and she immediately began to thaw. Up on the tiny stage, a bald guy with long orange sideburns was singing “Billie Jean” while doing a very bad impression of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.

  After shoving her mittens into her coat pocket, Lucy took off her purple-and-white-striped scarf. Then she blinked in surprise. Cooper! Cooper was here. He’d said that he thought he was coming down with a cold, that he was going to go to bed early, but here he was, sitting with his shoulders against the wall, laughing at whatever the person facing him had just said.

  Before Lucy could call out, wave her hand, hurry over, his eyes began to close and his mouth began to open. And then he was going in for the kill. Leaning in to kiss the girl who had her back to Lucy.

  Lucy wanted to rewind time, to put herself back in her apartment, to make it so this was not happening. Because this was not—this couldn’t be happening to her.

  She didn’t remember walking across the room, but suddenly she was right next to them. Cooper and that stupid Jasmine from their econ class, the one with the long waterfall of blond hair, were still locked in a slobbery kiss. When Cooper had told Lucy he didn’t like PDA.

  Their beers hadn’t even been touched. They had probably been too busy kissing.

  Lucy’s mom had once turned the hose on two strange dogs in the yard. Something like that needed to be done to Cooper and Jasmine.

  Leaning past them, she grabbed up the two beers, the glasses slick in her hands, and lifted them high. Their eyes opened just as she upended them. Jasmine squealed and managed to dodge most of hers, but Cooper’s plastered his hair to his head.

  “What the hell, Cooper!” Lucy shouted. People’s heads turned, but she didn’t care. Michael Jackson had finished protesting his innocence. The bar was completely silent except for the sound of beer dripping onto the floor.

  “Lucy! I can explain.” Blinking rapidly, Cooper swiped beer from his eyes. Did he really think there was something he could say that would magically make this all better?

  “Explain! I think what’s going on is pretty clear!”

  Jasmine gave Lucy a sulky look, not even bothering to protest. Her mouth looked swollen. How long had they been kissing tonight? How long had they been kissing in general?

  Cooper looked ridiculous. His skull was oddly lumpy. How had Lucy never noticed? Jasmine picked up a napkin and dabbed at her face.

  The bartender, an old guy with long, stringy hair, was walking slowly toward them, twisting a once-white bar towel in his hands. “I’m sorry, miss, but you’re going to need to leave or I’m going to have to call the cops.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m already going.”

  She turned on her heel. People were murmuring to each other. Two or three already had their phones pointed in their direction. Lucy lifted her head. If this got posted someplace on the Internet, she did not want to look like a loser. She stalked out of the bar, not even turning when she heard footsteps hurrying behind her.

  CHAPTER 6

  RUBY

  SUNDAY

  STILL AS DEATH

  What happened after Mariana called out took only a few seconds, but to Ruby, it seemed to last forever.

  The girl. Running toward them. Her eyes wide.

  Lights rounding the corner. Coming up fast. Too fast. A pickup. Big and black.

  Mariana stretched out her arms as if she wanted someone to catch her. Snatch her up and hold her close.

  Instead it was the pickup that caught her. Caught her midstride. One moment Mariana was running toward them, and the next she disappeared.

  Ruby didn’t see the impact, but she heard it. A sickening, meaty thump.

  The pickup stopped just past where Mariana had been, so hard it rocked back. Smoke from burning rubber hung in the air.

  Mariana was gone, but one of her boots remained in the street. Somehow still standing upright. One red-and-black boot, rocking gently. But where was Mariana?

  As the three of them ran around the pickup, toward the place where they had last seen the girl, Dimitri fumbled the radio from the rat pack. “Team Three to Base! Team Three to Base!”

  Nick stopped short, and Ruby almost ran into him. He was staring down at the bramble-lined ditch. The girl lay on her side. She was as still as death. One arm flung to the side, the other over her head. One pant-clad leg ended in a white sock. The other ended in a black-and-red boot.

  Above the boot was more black and red—and white. The black was her torn pants. The red was her mangled thigh. And the white was a broken bone.

  Next to Ruby, Nick suddenly clapped his hand to his mouth, then bent over and threw up on the road.

  Ruby pushed past him, already pulling on purple vinyl gloves from the first aid kit in her pack.

  Dimitri’s radio crackled. “Go ahead, Team Three.”

  Behind her, someone flung open the truck’s door. Hip-hop music spilled out. A young man dressed in jeans and a blue down coat ran around the pickup and stopped short. He was screaming, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  Ignoring him, Ruby slid down into the ditch.

  “We are needing an ambulance right away,” Dimitri said in a high-pitched voice. “We found the subject, but she has just been hit by a pickup.”

  Nick wiped the vomit from his mouth and then lurched toward the girl.

  “Talk to me!” Ruby commanded.

  The girl didn’t move. Was she dead?

  With her knuckles she rubbed the girl’s sternum. It was painful but not harmful, designed to provoke a reaction. Only she didn’t see one.

  She closed her attention to the blood, to the bone, to the guy’s denials, to Nick’s frightened face, and focused only on the girl’s face. She rubbed again, harder.

  And was rewarded with the faintest of groans.

  “Copy Team Three.” Mitchell’s voice sharpened. “What’s her condition?”

  Ruby turned to him. “She’s responsive to pain.” That meant she was breathing and her heart was beating.

  “Oh my God! Did I kill her?” The driver’s voice broke. “I killed her!”

  Dimitri’s words were meant for both Mitchell and the pickup driver. “She is still alive, but her leg is broken open. Perhaps greater injuries. We need an ambulance right away.”

  “Copy,” Mitchell said. “We already made the call. ETA is about five minutes.”

  Even though they got plenty of first aid training, SAR wasn’t what most people considered a fast-response group. It could be hours before they located their subjects, and according to Jon, at that point their main medical concerns would usually be hypothermia or frostbite, not traumatic injuries. By the time SAR showed up, patients were usually either stable—or dead. This situation was nearly unprecedented. But Ruby’s parents were doctors, even if they were just dermatologists; and when she was a kid, she had liked looking at their old medical textbooks the way other kids liked looking at Dr. Seuss.

  The young man was pacing back and forth on the side of the road. “She just ran out! Right in front of me! Where did she come from?”

  Nick stumbled down into the ditch. He put his hands on the girl’s boot. “We’ve got to get the bone to go back in.” He started to lift her foot, and the girl screamed right in Ruby’s ear.

  “No!” Ruby and Dimitri yelled at the same time.

  Nick dropped it. She screamed again, but not as loud.

  “The bone could be corking the wound,” Ruby said rapidly. “If you try to push it back in, she could bleed out—and you could do even more damage.” Should she be saying all this in front of the girl, now that she seemed to be conscious?

  “Nick, please hold the C-spine.” Dimitri meant the cervical spine. He clambered down next to them. “Ruby, get a bandage from your pack. We need to stop this bleeding. Do not press on the place of
the fracture, but above.”

  “I know,” Ruby interrupted him, already ripping open a sterile bandage. “I’ll try to find the femoral artery.” The femoral ran down the inside front of the leg. She was careful not to touch the wound. Even breathing on it could cause infection. She pressed above the tear in the girl’s pants. Under her touch, Mariana began to squirm. Nick was on his belly, propped on his elbows and cradling her head with his palms, but he would be no match if the girl kept moving.

  “Mariana,” she said, leaning closer. “It will be okay, but you need to stay absolutely still.” If the bone fragments got moved around, they could cut her. “So stay still, okay? Do you hear me?”

  The girl’s eyes were still closed. In the light of Ruby’s headlamp, her lips had a bluish tinge. But then she made the slightest of nods.

  “I am checking for the other life threats.” Dimitri ran his hands lightly over the girl’s head, neck, and then her arms and other leg. She flinched a little at his touch, but Ruby kept murmuring to her that it was okay. And then Dimitri nodded and Ruby knew it really might be, except for the broken bone.

  Nick was still holding the C-spine. His face was nearly as white and clammy as the little girl’s.

  It seemed to take forever, but it was only a few more minutes before two EMTs were sliding down into the ditch to join them. While one wrapped her in a cervical collar, Nick took hold of the girl’s hand, murmuring everything would be all right. He only relinquished it when the other paramedic clipped a plastic oximeter to the girl’s finger.

  “The patient is seven-year-old Mariana Chavez,” Ruby told the EMTs as they worked. “Her pulse is 120 and thready. She has a compound fracture of the right femur, but no other observed injuries. We’ve been holding her C-spine since about thirty seconds after the accident.”

  Her words were met by nods and a few puzzled looks.

  But Ruby was used to that.

  CHAPTER 7

  LUCY

  SUNDAY

  EMPTY HANDS

  “Wait! Lucy! Wait!”

  Ignoring Cooper’s shouts, Lucy somehow managed to make it down the three steps of the Last Exit’s porch. It was hard to focus through her tears.

  Just as she reached the sidewalk, he grabbed her arm and pulled her around. People from the bar had spilled out onto the porch and were watching them. Including Jasmine, who was dabbing at her coat with a handful of paper napkins.

  “Just talk to me, Lucy!” Cooper’s lips were pulled back. For a moment, she wondered if she should be afraid.

  “You okay, miss?” a man’s voice called out. Cooper threw a glance over his shoulder and then let go.

  “I’m okay. Thank you!” she said, eager for everyone to leave them alone.

  Looking as embarrassed by the whole scene as Lucy was, a young guy hurried down the steps and past them.

  She turned back to Cooper and lowered her voice. “Why should I talk to you?” She couldn’t stand the thought that her biggest humiliation was being witnessed by a dozen strangers. A dozen strangers and Jasmine, which made it even worse. She felt coldly sober now, not the least bit fuzzy. Everything felt sharp but also far away. “There’s nothing to say. You’re supposed to be my boyfriend. Instead you’re in some bar kissing her.” She wasn’t going to say Jasmine’s name.

  “Look, it was nothing. It was, like, an accident.” Cooper’s beer-soaked head steamed in the cold, little tendrils of fog drifting up in the glow of the streetlamp.

  “An accident!” Lucy hissed. “Don’t give me that. It didn’t even look like your guys’ first kiss.”

  “It’s because you won’t move in with me.” Cooper’s voice was low and urgent.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I just wanted to make you jealous.”

  She found the flaw in his argument. “And just how was that supposed to work if I never found out?”

  “Everyone who comes here is a big gossip. You would have heard.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Lucy said, wondering if his version of the event could possibly be true. “I’m going home now.”

  Cooper put his hand on her wrist and leaned close. Despite herself, Lucy still felt a flash of desire.

  “Let me come with you.”

  “No!”

  Heels clacked down the stairs as Jasmine joined them. “Cooper’s the one who brought me here,” she told Lucy. “This wasn’t my idea. It was his. He’s been asking to go out with me for weeks.”

  “That’s not true!” Cooper protested.

  Lucy didn’t wait to hear any more. She turned on her heel and set off at a determined pace, her head held high. But as she walked, her courage and strength began to leak away. The cold crawled up her sleeves and wrapped around her neck like a muffler. She must have left her scarf at the bar. Along with everything else. Her happiness. Her so-called boyfriend. Her blissful ignorance. She was crying in earnest now.

  Her head was a balloon, and her feet didn’t belong to her. It was hard to walk when you couldn’t see through your tears. As she crossed the street, an old pickup had to stop short, but she barely saw it. A minute later, Lucy’s foot slipped on a skim of ice that had glazed a puddle.

  “Are you okay?”

  She started and turned. A guy. She hadn’t even heard him pull up across the street. He had just gotten out of the pickup that had narrowly missed her.

  He lifted his empty hands in the air, palms toward her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I heard you crying. Is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine.” With a sodden mitten, she swiped at her nose.

  “Pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look fine.”

  Lucy opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she just shook her head.

  “Can I call you a cab?”

  She shook her head again, tears blinding her eyes.

  He leaned into his truck and came up with a roll of white paper towels. Holding it ahead of him, he crossed the street. “Sorry I don’t have a handkerchief. But how about a paper towel?”

  The ridiculousness of it made Lucy half smile.

  He stepped closer.

  CHAPTER 8

  ALEXIS

  SUNDAY

  AN OPEN WOUND

  Alexis hurried over as Nick and Ruby climbed out of a police cruiser holding their backpacks. “Are you guys okay?” she asked as the cop pulled away from the apartment’s parking lot.

  She hadn’t seen the accident or the aftermath, but all of them had heard it. Unlike a wilderness rescue, when only Base heard everything, tonight the teams had been close enough to catch each other’s transmissions. Close enough to hear the wailing sirens of the ambulance and police cars when things went terribly wrong.

  Alexis’s team hadn’t even made it back to Base before the ambulance had done a scoop and run. The guy who’d hit Mariana had also been taken to the hospital for blood tests to see if he’d been drunk or drugged. But it sounded like it had just been a terrible accident.

  At her question, Nick shrugged, but his too-wide eyes, shiny in the glow of the streetlight, gave him away. “It was a little gory, but we handled it. Dimitri stayed behind to talk to the cops.”

  “At least we didn’t have to use the ten-code for a deceased subject,” Ruby said. The only clue that she had been affected by events was how fast she was chewing her gum. Deaths were one of the few times SAR didn’t transmit in plain English. The families of the missing usually hung out around Base, meaning they were often within earshot of a radio.

  From behind Alexis, Mitchell demanded, “How in the heck did you guys let a subject get hit by a vehicle? We’re going to have to do a boatload of paperwork to explain it!” Even though he had been team leader for only a few weeks, Mitchell was fully invested in the role. He was an Eagle Scout who wanted to be a cop.

  “There wasn’t any time to react,” Ruby said as she stripped off her purple vinyl gloves.

  Mitchell’s eyes went from her han
ds to Nick’s bare ones. “Nick, where are your gloves? Please tell me you were wearing them on scene.”

  Nick winced. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “Let me see your hands.” Mitchell’s tone was exasperated as he turned on his headlamp and leaned close. “If you have an open wound, then you just got exposed to a biohazard.”

  “I didn’t get any blood on me.” Nick held out his hands. They trembled in the beam of light. He made a show of shivering as if he were cold.

  Mitchell pointed to the sleeve of his parka. “What are those wet spots?”

  He hesitated. “Vomit. Um, my vomit.”

  “It was pretty gross,” Ruby said. “Compound fracture.”

  Alexis was very glad she hadn’t been on scene.

  Mitchell blew air out of pursed lips. “That is so against protocol. We’re going to have to debrief tonight.”

  Ruby stepped in front of Nick. “His skin appears intact, which means his risk is very low. Especially given that the victim is a seven-year-old girl, which means she’s probably not infected with hepatitis or HIV. And it’s not like he suffered a percutaneous injury with a large, hollow-bore needle.”

  Alexis nodded at Ruby’s words, even though part of her was thinking: Who even talks like that?

  * * *

  An hour later, everyone who had responded to the callout was seated in a circle at the sheriff’s office, listening to Dimitri try to explain what had happened.

  “The girl, she hid in bushes.” Dimitri was rolling his Rs and hacking up his Hs even more than usual.

  As he sought the right words, Alexis shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Jon had said this was an informal debrief. Still, a lot of people looked tense, and Jon had begun by saying there would be a chaplain available to talk to them. Search and Rescue was supposed to help people. To find an uninjured subject and then see her get hurt while she was being rescued was unheard of.