Page 30 of Bryce

“Medical!” I found myself barking, my senses sharpening to a fine point. The scent of blood hung heavy in the air as I dropped to one knee.

Logan handed me the medical kit he’d been carrying in his pack.

“I need flashlights on him!” I ordered, looking at Isla and Leslie. They clutched each other, stunned and horrified and unhelpful. “Flashlights! Now!”

Isla must have heard me, for she shook herself free of shock long enough to fetch three torches. Leslie took one while she used the others, training them on Gate’s broken body.

It was so much worse in the light.

Focus, focus. I shook my head, taking deep gulps of air. Pain and despair threatened to steal my focus, and that simply could not be.

I took inventory of him then, my practiced eyes and hands summing up his injuries.

“Pulse weak,” I was sorry to say. I lowered my ear to his chest then, listening to the sound of the air going in and out. No gurgling. A relief. His lungs had not been injured. But there was so much more to check.

“Broken left ankle,” I reported to Logan, who knelt at Gate’s other side. “Compound fracture of the right femur.”

He tore open a hole in Gate’s pants, where the bone had broken through. Blood poured from the wound. Isla let out a cry of horror.

“Tourniquet,” I ordered, refusing to allow myself the luxury of comforting her.

Logan cinched a tourniquet around the upper thigh while I went on with my assessment. “Broken ribs. His breathing seems steady and clear, so I don’t think anything punctured them.”

I pressed his belly then, gently as I could but firm enough to feel for the hardness that indicated trauma. It was difficult to say. I opened his shirt, dreading what I might find. Deep, dark bruising would mean the pooling of blood, which would point to heavy internal bleeding. There was only so much I could do for that.

And only so much blood a shifter’s organs could lose before they stopped working.

There was a minimal amount of bruising, around as much as I would guess a body would sustain after a car door slammed into it.

“Don’t move his head,” I warned as I took hold of his arms. “Left forearm broken.”

“What about his neck? His spine?” I heard the fear in Isla’s voice, but just barely. She was able to rise above it.

“I can’t say yet,” I admitted. “Any treatment he receives will have to take place here, in this spot. I can’t run the risk of moving him and making things worse if he does have a spinal injury.”

“Set the bones?” Logan asked.

I nodded in grim agreement. At least he was unconscious. This would be unpleasant enough without him feeling it.

“What can I do?” Isla asked. Brave, willful thing.

I looked up at her, grateful and more than slightly impressed. “Train both beams on his leg. We must get the femur realigned. The wound will never heal with the bone jutting out this way.”

“What will you have to do?” Leslie asked, a tremble in her voice.

“You’ll see.” I glanced up while taking hold of Gate’s ankle. “Then again, perhaps you won’t wish to. You might want to look away.”

She shook her head, nostrils flared as she breathed hard and deep. “No. I’ll be fine.”

Logan and I exchanged a look. He wrapped his hands around Gate’s upper thigh, above the point of the break. “One,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Two. Three.”

I gave the ankle a sharp tug, lengthening his leg and allowing the broken piece of bone to slip beneath his skin again. Logan worked the two pieces together. “Done.” It took no more than a few seconds but felt much longer.

Gate, lucky guy, had remained unconscious throughout. I’d heard some of the most hard-bitten, ferocious shifters imaginable screech like they were on fire while having compound fractures set.

Logan went to work on wrapping the wound, winding a wide bandage tight around the thigh in layer after layer. I turned my attention the ankle, which didn’t seem badly broken enough that it wouldn’t heal itself.

Martina’s wide, familiar eyes danced at the forefront of my consciousness. Watching me. Blaming me. It was my responsibility to care for him, and look what I’d allowed to happen. I should never have allowed him to throw that limb, which we were all fortunate hadn’t impaled one of us on being blasted away from the site.

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