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BO CLAMBERED HIS WAY up the hill with his stomach full and his fabric lunch bag empty. The spring was here all right, with the hillside greening up and the trees casting the thinnest bit of shade. He made it up the hill as steep as many cliffs, gasping for breath. This was good. He should do the hill more often.
He crossed the two sets of tracks and ambled toward the factory. Its complex sprawled down a gentle slope, dominated by two huge chimneys which were surrounded by smaller structures with flat roofs and lots of small, glass windows in the walls. The place was like an antique brooch, old and pretty and functional.
He smiled, dropped the bag in his truck, pulled out another bottle of blue Gatorade, and headed for his loading dock shortcut. Eli was sure to be upstairs by now, having lunch with the staff.
He ignored his pang for a cigarette as he climbed the short ladder up the loading dock platform. He had quit on January 1st,. Three months later he started again, only to quit once more. It had been a week. If he could last as long as before and add a few weeks, maybe he could leave the cigs behind forever. He wasn’t smoking, and the loading dock had nothing on him. Buoyed by his little victory, he tiptoed onto the hot floor.
He loved to be here alone. The hot floor was quiet, almost peaceful. Warm. The larger furnace was the heart of the whole factory, and he felt its heartbeat to the core of his being. His punty was still leaned up against its wall. Maybe he could make something before regular production got started. A paperweight? They were done with the cobalt blue, so using the dregs on the bottom of the pot wouldn’t do any harm. Blue always looked good layered over a ball of clear. He was considering whether or not to blow a bubble inside it, when a movement caught his eye.
Eli Winkler stood right by the cullet pile, illuminated by the sun that hit the mountain of glass. The light scattered, making Eli’s white shirt glow with a watery light.
Cullet was dangerous. Deceptive. It was rare, but cullet was known to spontaneously explode. So pretty, though.
Eli raised himself onto his toe and slowly moved his arms and his right leg into a lovely, graceful shape. Like moving underwater, almost floating, with the coruscating twinkles of light illuminating his outline. He obviously thought he was alone.
Another movement. In the shadow of the foreman’s office. One of the guys... with a gun? A rifle? Aiming at...
Bo glanced at the target. Shit, they wouldn’t. They all had fun shooting BBs at the cullet pile to see the chunks fly apart with a bang, but not while someone was standing right there!
What to do? Get Eli away from the cullet, get the guy with the gun?
What first?
Bo flicked his eyes back to the shadows. The shape moved.
“Hey, you!” Bo shouted, putting everything behind hit as he ran toward the furnace, putting its bulk between himself and the asshole with the gun. Pop.
An air gun, not a rifle.
Almost simultaneously, Bo heard a chunk of cullet explode with a familiar snap.
Eli screamed.
Bo ran out from his cover, glancing to the left.
The space by the foreman’s office was empty. The staircase to the basement must’ve made a handy escape.
Bo turned to Eli. Crimson blood stained his white shirt sleeve, and much more soaked the fabric of his trouser leg, making the fabric look a whole lot darker than it was. By the time Eli stumbled and grabbed his injured arm, Bo was behind him.
“Get away from that pile!” Bo recognized his own voice. Eli just stood there, stunned at the spectacle of his own blood dripping off the white cloth of his shirt.
He grabbed Eli’s hand and tugged. “Come on! Hasn’t anyone told you not to stand by cullet like that?” But someone had helped that cullet along with a little BB from an air rifle.
A prank. A stupid production prank – and whoever did this to Eli would pay with his blood.
They were halfway to the small furnace when Bo realized Eli was limping badly.
“Your leg?”
“Yeah. Fucking hurts.” Eli seemed out of breath, as though it had been him climbing up the hill.
“Don’t move. Lemme get you a chair.” He pulled a steel and wood chair on casters from one of the team groupings. “Don’t bleed on the presser’s chair, okay?”
“Yeah.” Eli was biting his lip, and Bo’s heart clenched. “Stay here. I’ll go get help.”
Bo took a few running steps, stopped, and looked over his shoulder.
Eli was pale and slumping, as though he was going to fall out of the seat and onto the gritty floor.
“Help!” Bo screamed at the top of his lungs. “Injury on the hot floor!” He turned and ran back to Eli.
No, no, no...
The stain on Eli’s thigh spread fast. Blood dripped onto his construction boot.
Shit. Suppose something big got cut – Eli could bleed to death!
“Bo?” Eli was pale and looking scared.
“Lie down. Here, I’ll help ya.” He dragged Eli off the chair and onto the dirty brick floor. There might be small bits of glass around, but those were the least of his problems now. “We’ll put your leg up, okay?”
Eli nodded, and Bo plopped the blood-stained boot onto the wooden seat of the presser’s chair. He forced his attention on the task, hoping help would show soon. He tried not to count seconds, not to watch the spread of crimson on Eli’s pants with alarm that threatened to grow into panic.
Panic kills.
He drew a quick breath and expelled it to steady himself. How big was that cut, anyway? Only one way to find out. Bo fished a folding knife out of his pocket and opened it. “I’ll do some damage to your pants here.” He cut the fabric around the wound, trying to get access.
Eli screamed.
“You got glass in your leg,” Bo murmured, trying to ignore his sympathy, blocking the thoughts of pain and fear and the way Eli’s naked body had felt against his.
Bo bellowed for help again.
“What is it?” Frankie jogged up to them.
“A piece of cullet blew. Call 911.”
“Shit. Okay.” Frankie rushed off, and Bo sewed through the fabric some more. The cut didn’t look too wide, but it was deep, and Eli was bleeding profusely.
They had had training on these things. The factory had its risks.
“This might hurt,” Bo said, turning to Eli. “Stay with me, okay? Talk to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
Bo sprang to his feet, raced to the furnace, and grabbed his punty. It’s five-foot long handle was made of steel, and was heavy and strong. Just the thing to apply pressure with to Eli’s groin and cut off some of that blood flow to his leg. He’d have applied pressure to the wound itself, but the glass was still in it. It would hurt. Even worse, pushing the glass through Eli’s leg would likely do more harm than good.
“Bo...” Eli’s voice was thin, his eyes closed. Tears of pain shimmered at the end of his eyelashes and his face was drawn with pain.
“I’m here,” he said gruffly and placed the rod of his punty handle into the crease where Eli’s thigh and groin met. Then he grabbed it, each hand on one side of Eli’s thigh, and leaned on it. Hard.
“Oww!”
“Gotta do it. Sorry, babe.” He realized he’d called Eli babe, but he didn’t care, not at the moment. For now, his focus was on the wound in Eli’s inner thigh. His focus, as well as his gaze. Watching the pressure of his punty stem the blood flow beat seeing pain in Eli’s face any day. The blood was still coming out, but slower now. He wanted it to stop. He couldn’t have Eli bleed to death on him.
“Talk to me,” Bo said, as he put all his body weight onto the punty rod.
“Oww! You’re heavy.”
“Yeah. We need that right now.”
Stan rushed in with a handful of other guys. One of them plopped down on his knees on the other side of Eli’s prone form and opened a red first-aid kit. “Thanks, LeRoy,” Bo said, still focused on keeping the pressure on, not letting any more blood escape. Not a single drop.
“Am I gonna die?” Eli’s voice, thin yet calm, carried through the murmur of the crowd that suddenly appeared around them.
“Not on my watch,” Bo said, gritting his teeth. He felt his jaw tighten as he focused. In the background, he heard the foreman break the guys up, giving them things to do. He was vaguely aware of LeRoy examining the wound and plastering some gauze over it, being careful not to dig the glass in any deeper.
The familiar sounds of production setup were punctuated by the wailing sirens of emergency vehicles outside. Knowing the way emergency calls worked, a simple need for an ambulance would clutter the parking lot with police cars and firefighters and, if they were particularly unlucky, a TV van.
Eternity passed.
“Here, let me take over.”
Bo didn’t move. He kept leaning on his punty rod, focused on keeping Eli alive.
“Can you let go of that? We’ll use this to apply pressure...” He didn’t know the voice and looked up. An EMT tried to move him aside, insistent yet gentle.
Bo felt hands pull him off, and he heard an anguished bellow of grief tear out of his throat as he was forced to let go.
“Eli, Eli! Talk to me, Eli.” He tried to drop to his knees by Eli’s head, but a uniformed officer steered him away. “Let the pros take over now, son. You did good.”
Eli didn’t stir. He was out.
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THEY ALL WATCHED THE paramedics wheel Eli Winkler out on a gurney with a clamp-like contraption squeezing the pressure point near his groin to keep the blood from gushing out. Eli’s torso was wrapped in a blue blanket, against which his cheeks looked unnaturally pale. An oxygen mask was strapped over his mouth and nose.
Bo’s mind flashed to all that blood. It had been bright red, much like the cadmium-red signal lights they made on regular basis. Arterial, then. But not gushing out, so Eli had a chance.
“You ought to change,” the foreman said. “You can’t work like this, all bloody.”
Bo looked at his red hands. He had red jeans and a red, long-sleeve shirt. The only thing on him not splattered by Eli’s blood were his construction boots.
Eli might die. He might still bleed out, or there could be complications. A lump began to form in Bo’s throat, and he found he couldn’t trust himself to speak. That leg, damaged, pierced by an ill-placed glass shard. Just yesterday, that leg had been wrapped around him, and he had liked it.
This was all his fault. Had he not been running away from Eli like a damned coward, Eli wouldn’t have looked for him. He wouldn’t have stopped by the pile of the pretty, treacherous cullet and he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
No. Enough.
The prankster with the BB gun helped the cullet along. What an asshole thing to do. If he only knew who was responsible, he’d rip his head off.
A stinging pressure mounted in his eyes. Suppose Eli died, and that would be the end of that.
“Dude, you okay?” Frankie grabbed his shoulder – the only part of him probably still clean – and shook it.
Bo shook his head. His gorge rose and his lunch pressed, trying to get out. He yanked his shoulder away from Frankie, took few steps toward a nearby garbage can, and threw up.
Halloran appeared by his side. “I told you to go change, Bartowski. The shift should’ve started half an hour ago.”
Bo froze. If he kept still, there was a smaller chance he’d actually slug that sonovabitch, whether he was the foreman or not. “He almost died,” he said instead.
“No loss from my point of view,” Halloran said with callous disregard. “Nosy little twerp. He don’t know shit about glass and he gets himself hurt.”
He’s learning. He’s smart. He’s amazing.
Bo couldn’t say any of that. He turned away from Halloran and stumbled into the locker room. He had a set of spare clothes, all of them did. Working in a factory was a messy job. There was a shower, too, but that one was for emergencies only. This sure counted as one, not that his foreman would agree. What was the man’s problem anyway? But fuck it. He turned the spigot to get the hot water running.
Meanwhile, he peeled the shirt off and took off his boots so he could switch his jeans. Damn it, his hands shook. How would he gather glass like that?
A shower might reset him. He’d be okay if he only rinsed off Eli’s blood and his concern for him. Hot water would melt the cold ball of dread in the pit of his stomach. There was a towel in the bottom of his locker somewhere, and the ordinary hand soap would have to do. Bo wasn’t getting back onto the hot floor until every speck of Eli’s blood was scrubbed off his body.
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HE WAS DRYING OFF WITH a towel never intended for showers at work, and was about to get dressed when LeRoy came in. He sat at the bench opposite Bo heavily and slumped his shoulders. “Shit, man,” he said. “That’s about as bad as when old Jesse lost his eye to an exploding piece of glass.”
“I wasn’t here for that.” Bo slipped into his old underwear. “I’ve heard the story.” He hesitated. “Um... that wasn’t just a simple cullet blow. I saw someone shoot a BB gun into the pile.”
“Yeah, we do that sometimes for fun, just to set it off,” LeRoy said. “Wait,” he froze. “Y’mean he did that with Eli standing there?”
“Yeah.”
“Could be just a prank gone wrong,” LeRoy said. “Or, could be...”
“Could be on purpose,” Bo said with a nod. “The thing is, it could’ve been anyone.”
“Why do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know.” Could’ve been a hate crime. No sense outing Eli, though.
“The kid looks gay,” LeRoy whispered. “Could be, some of those guys are real assholes. D’you think...?”
Bo shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Halloran wants your ass out there. Man, a shower sounds great right now.” He eyed the pile of blood-soaked clothes on the floor. “I don’t have enough blood on me to get away with shit like that.”
“Go ahead. Aren’t they still cleaning the floor?” Bo couldn’t imagine going on with business as usual when Eli was in the hospital. His family was in New Jersey, wasn’t it? And his two douchebag friends didn’t count as reliable, not after that stunt they’d pulled.
What would it feel like, waking up in the hospital, in a new city far away from home and friends, and not seeing a single familiar face? He’d have to visit at the very least. Now, though, he had to go gather glass for another four hours or so.
“See you out there, bro.”
LeRoy’s tired smile lit his brown face. “Call me a brother, I’ll make a homey out of you yet.”
Bo paused. “Go wash up, I’ll wait. It won’t look good if I walk out before you.”
“Yeah?” LeRoy jumped at the offer. “Can I use your towel?”
Bo tossed him his brown towel. “It’s not much.” Small and damp.
“No prob. See you in five.”
Bo waited, impressed by LeRoy’s strip-shower-dress ex-army routine. “Let’s hope your tag-along makes it, man,” LeRoy said on their way to the hot floor. “Ain’t no worse thing than losing a man on your watch.”