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SEVERAL EXPLOSIONS later.
“Perfect!” Danny shouted as he forgot to cover his ears when the garage door blew. “Now we have enough of a hole to bash the silver beast through, then we can load Maggie up, get out of here, and get help.”
“Danny, before you guys move me, I need to say something to you. Just you, Daniel. I’m going to take this mask off. I don’t think we need these anymore. Nothing has been leaking out of that room.”
“Uh oh, sounds like you are in trouble, bro,” sang Kevin.
Danny knelt down by Maggie and held her hand. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. I fucked up big-time. My laziness finally caught up with me, and you paid the price. I will never forgive myself for all the pain I caused you. God, I could never let anything happen to you. You, Kev, and Melissa are my family. You are everything to me. I would gladly give up everything I have for you; my toys, my dumb ass inventions, the formula, anything and, everything for you. I love you, Magdalene Elizabeth Penny. I will accept any punishment you give me including sleeping out in the desert with the coyotes for the next month, and finally,” Danny said while raising his right hand “I will never not put anything away in the correct spot again.”
“Wait, that last bit, I don’t think that made sense, but it was lovely never- the- less, just lovely. Now my turn. Keep holding my hand, Danny, and take off your mask too. Now I want to say this in case things don’t turn out as planned.”
Danny took off his gas mask. “I don’t like where this is going, babe. It got a little, okay, a lot crazy there for a while, but everything is fine now.” Danny had shifted to his knees and was only inches from Maggie’s face. He cupped her face gently in his hands and said, “We are going to get you out of here, and if someone responds to the signal we sent out, help will be here any second now. I am not going to lose you. Do you hear me?” And he kissed her gently on the mouth.
“This,” Maggie grimaced as she looked at her leg, “is also partly my fault.”
“No, babe, no.”
“Shushh. Just listen. As usual, I rushed in without thinking and winged it. If I had taken a few more seconds to think about what I was doing, maybe a lot of this could’ve ended sooner and without any horrible fatalities.”
“Oh no, hon, they caused their own demise. Don’t for one second think anything that happened was your fault.”
With tears running down her face, Maggie continued. “I need to say this before the cavalry gets here. I just want to let you know you were always a part of the Penny family. My parents didn’t think of you as the guy their daughter was seeing, they loved you like you were their own son. They thought of you like family, babe. Danny, you are the most important person in my life. I love you today more than I did yesterday and tomorrow, baby, and tomorrow, if, God willing, we are all here, I will love you even more than I do now.
Kevin had cleared away a large section of the garage that had just recently been blown, and now saw a cloud of dust heading toward the house. “Hey, guys we are about to have company,” Kevin said ducking into the garage only to find everyone in tears. Christ, what the hell did I miss?”
“It was so beautiful,” Cathy sobbed.
Humberto got as far as, “She said ‘I’... and then collapsed against Cathy, weeping.”
Any further comments were interrupted by the sound of large vehicles pulling up outside.
Maggie attempted to turn and look toward the newly formed garage entrance but regretted it instantly as searing pain shot through her thigh. She hadn’t realized she had screamed until Danny fell to his knees beside her and jostled her leg again causing another shooting pain to course through her leg. “Danny don’t” Maggie shouted.
“Don’t what, babe?”
“Just don’t.” she panted, trying to breathe the pain away.
“Ma’am?”
Maggie heard a voice above her and when she opened her eyes she saw several pairs of boots surrounding her. She also saw tears coursing down Danny’s cheeks.
“It’s Okay babe help is here.” She then looked closer at Danny and realized that the tears may be due to the fact that she was gripping his right shoulder in one hand and his left hand in the other. His left fingers seemed to be turning a dark pink. “Sorry Danny,” and relaxed her grip.
The boots around her began moving and a container that looked a tackle box was set down beside her. A man dressed in all in black crouched down beside her looked at her leg, the pickaxe at her and back at the pickaxe.
“Ma’am how in the hell, did you?”
“Practice, lots and lots of practice, um err sir.”
Maggie looked at Danny and back at the compact man in black who was now taking things out of the tackle box and muttering to himself. When the man turned back to her she saw that he didn’t have a name tag on his shirt only a tag that said medic in white scroll.
“Now what we are going to do.” He stopped for a moment looked at Maggie and laughed. “Practice, that’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that one. In fact that’s what we were doing when we received your distress signal. We were training not too far away from here.” As the medic was talking his hands were constantly moving and with a brief glance to someone behind her she was carefully leaned backwards and a band was wrapped around her leg. He then started to do a countdown and gave some sort of signal to someone behind her.
Realization suddenly hit Maggie and she screamed, “wait, wait, wait. The last time I checked, this garage did not double as an operating room. This is not the time or place to be removing garden implements from people’s legs.” She heard a squeak come from Danny and realized she was squeezing his hand again. “Sorry babe.”
A disembodied voice came from behind her and said, “We need to stabilize you and remove you from this house which is extremely unstable. It’s unknown at this time if there are any unexploded devises that remain in the house.”
Maggie could hear a shuffling of feet moving further away from her and made an educated guess. “Where are you going Montgomery?” The shuffling sound stopped and she could hear not so muted arguing between Melissa and Kevin.
The medic’s face came into view and told her, “We are going to inject you with a concentrated form of the formula adjacent to the entry and exit wounds before and after we extract it. This should limit any blood loss.”
“So have you done this before?”
“Yes.”
“Successfully?”
“Um. Yes, very little blood loss. Here we go.”
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the formula going in and then pressure as the pickaxe was removed, then two more pricks from the concentrated formula. With her eyes still closed she heard a commotion off to one side.
“What’s going on? Have they found unexploded devices?”
There was a snort from the entrance to the garage. “Not exactly. Two of your friends decided to take a sudden nap.”
“I can only guess who. My heroes.”
The medic squatted in front of her and said, “Ma’am.”
“Please don’t call me that. Makes me sound ancient. My name is Maggie. Call me Maggie.”
“All right, Maggie, we are pressed for time. I will slowly release the tourniquet and see how well you have healed. Are you ready?”
Melissa came rushing over to Maggie’s side. “I’m here with you Maggie. Our heroes are just waking up.”
“OK.”
Maggie looked down at the bandage on her leg as the tourniquet was slowly loosened and did not see anything bleeding through. The medic slowly lifted the bandage and a general sound of disgust came from the group. Under the bandage the wound looked scabbed over and just a small trickle of blood ran down her leg. The blood stopped, and quickly crusted over. “Ugh, I’ve never been happier to see a crusty scab in my entire life.”
As Danny and Kevin casually wandered over and were inspecting Maggie’s leg, Melissa walked the medics to their truck.
“Hey did that other incident involving the super concentrated formula go as well at this?”
“Well there was very little blood loss, but we weren’t sure if that was because of the concentrated formula or...”
“If it was due to the fact that the dude’s heart stopped beating,” his partner said with a grin as they jumped into their truck and took off around the corner of the house.