Unknown Location
Sherrie White woke with a groan. Her head pounded like the day after St. Paddy’s Day, and her mouth was as dry. She blinked her eyes clear then gasped. “Fang!”
Lee Fang lay beside her, gripping her side, her breath shallow and rapid, a pool of blood beside her from the gunshot wound she had received during their escape.
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
It was a stupid, instinctual question, and Fang gave her a look, rather than waste energy replying. Sherrie pressed her left hand on the wound, Fang wincing with a sharp breath. She checked their surroundings, a windowless room, and saw a large duffel bag sitting nearby. She stretched to reach it, not wanting to take her hand off Fang’s wound. She snagged it and pulled it closer, unzipping it.
And breathed a sigh of relief.
“Medical supplies.” She quickly began yanking the contents out, spreading them around her, making a quick inventory as she planned on how to treat the wound. She smiled when she spotted the XStat applicators, an injectable combat field dressing that would seal the wound and stop her from bleeding out.
The bullet!
She frowned, eying the basic surgical equipment, enough here for her to go in and get the bullet before it caused an infection or did further damage.
Remember your training!
She mentally head slapped herself and pulled Fang’s shirt up. Fang winced.
“Sorry.” She sighed with relief when she saw an exit wound, the bullet a through-and-through. She took Fang’s hand and put it over the wound. “I’m going to seal it, just give me a second.”
She opened the XStat package and quickly read the instructions before moving Fang’s hand away. “This might hurt, sorry.”
She shoved the applicator into the wound then squeezed the plunger, the tiny sponges filling the hole, eventually oozing out the other side. She tossed the applicator aside and watched as the sponges expanded, the free-flowing blood easing to a trickle, then stopping.
Now let’s just hope that holds.
“You’ll have to stay as still as possible, okay? I don’t know exactly how stable that stuff is, so moving might reopen the wound.”
Fang nodded, her face covered with sweat, her breath still rapid and shallow. Several bags of IV solution were Sherrie’s next test at remembering her training. She opened the IV kit, and after a few attempts and even more apologies, she had an IV in place.
“This should help, but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
Fang didn’t respond, instead just nodding as she tried to relax and conserve her energy.
Sherrie examined their surroundings, deciding to occupy Fang’s thoughts with something other than her current medical situation. “We’re in a rectangular room, maybe ten by twelve. There are no windows, and a single door just behind you. It has no door knob or any other type of locking device, and it appears metal.” She stared up at the ceiling and grunted. “There’s a dome camera right above us, so someone is watching, or can watch us, and we’ve got four sets of fluorescent lights with no obvious light switch.” She glanced over her shoulder at the far corner. “There’s a half-height wall there with a toilet and sink, and nothing else.”
“Who-who?”
She looked down at Fang. “That was Nadja Katz. She shot me a little over a year ago. She works for the Assembly, or at least she used to. Hell, I don’t know what’s going on. Why would she rescue us? And rescue us from who? And why would they take us?”
Fang was about to say something when Sherrie held out a hand.
“Don’t answer that. You need your strength.” She grabbed some gauze and wiped up some of the blood from the floor.
Damn, she really lost a lot.
She reexamined her supplies. There was no blood plasma here for a transfusion, but she was a universal donor. Type O. If she could figure out a way, she could transfuse her own blood into Fang and quite possibly save the woman’s life. She chewed her cheek as she examined the supplies. She could use the needle from the second IV kit on herself, and the tube from it. That would allow her to get the blood out of her, though it could be slow.
But where to hold it?
She needed to hold the blood somewhere before she could give it to Fang. Her eyes popped wide and she stared at the IV already set up.
Skip the middleman?
Would that work? She had no idea. It hadn’t been covered in her training. If she put a needle in both their arms, with a tube between, how could she be sure it would be her blood going into Fang’s, and not the other way around? She had always seen the bottle or bag of blood hung high during a transfusion, at least in the movies, so gravity must have something to do with it.
Could it be that simple? She just had to make sure her arm was higher than Fang’s? And if she were to do this, it would mean unhooking the IV bag. Was blood more important than fluids? It had to be, otherwise during surgery they’d be pumping sugar water into the patient, not blood.
She looked at Fang. “Do you trust me?”
Fang nodded, and Sherrie believed her, the two of them having fought side-by-side in Baltimore a year ago.
“We’re going to try an experiment.”