Page 103 of Five Survive

“I need to put pressure on the wound, Maddy,” Reyna said, her voice firm but even, dropping to her knees beside her, pressing the towel down on the gushing bullet hole.

Maddy screamed harder.

“You’re okay,” Red told her, because Maddy had said it to her before, and maybe it was just the thing you said to people who weren’t okay.

She stepped back to give Reyna space, watching. Red’s hands floated up to her face to stop it from falling open. One hand was wet. Blood. A handprint of Maddy’s blood across her cheek.

Someone grabbed her, spun her around. Oliver’s pale face too close to hers, eyes swollen and red, swimming in and out of her vision like a nightmare.

“How did he know it wasn’t you, Red?” Oliver spat, shaking her whole body, trying to knock the answers out of her. “How did he know?”

“I don’t know!” Red fought him off, leaving another handprint of Maddy’s blood on his shirt as she pushed him away.

“Not now, Oliver,” Reyna said. She didn’t shout, she didn’t have to. The look on her face was enough. “I have to stop the bleeding. Does anyone have a belt?” She glanced around at the group, eyes frantic now that Maddy couldn’t see them.

“For a tourniquet?” Simon asked, pulling up his shirt.

“Yes.” Reyna turned to him. “Do you—”

“I have one,” he said, undoing the buckle and sliding the black leather belt out from the loops in his jeans. He passed it over.

“Okay, Maddy, this is going to hurt. I need to tie this above the wound, as tight as it will go, okay? It should slow the bleeding.” Reyna held the belt across both hands, moving the towel.

“Okay,” Maddy managed to say through gritted teeth. Her skin was starting to look pale and pallid, a tremor in her jaw.

Reyna pushed one side of the belt through under Maddy’s knee, then slid the length of it up past the wound. She hooked it around and through the buckle a few inches above the blood-gushing hole, and then she tightened it.

Maddy screamed, weaker this time, breaking into sobs.

“Please, stop,” she begged.

Reyna pulled, muscles in her arms and her neck straining. Tighter, digging into the jeans and Maddy’s flesh. But that red gurgle of blood, it was slowing, bubbling over rather than pouring out as Reyna secured the tourniquet in place.

“Simon, come here,” she said.

He did, falling to his knees.

“Press this towel down directly on the wound.” Reyna showed him, and Simon’s hands replaced hers. “Harder than that,” she directed. “More pressure. More. More. Okay, stay like that.”

Reyna pushed up shakily to her feet, wiping the sweat and hair out of her eyes, a pinkish smear from Maddy’s blood across her forehead. She stepped over to Oliver and Red and it was written all over her face, in the fall of her eyes and the set of her mouth.

“She’s bleeding a lot,” she said quietly, under Maddy’s groans in the background. “Could have severed the femoral artery, I’m not sure.”

“What does that mean?” Oliver croaked.

“It means we need to get her to a hospital as soon as possible, or she could bleed out.”

Red’s heart fell into her stomach, curdled there in the acid and the shame.

Maddy Lavoy couldn’t die. That couldn’t happen. Red couldn’t letit.

“I’ll stop the bleeding as much as I can,” Reyna continued. “But she needs a hospital.”

Oliver shook his head, and for once, he must be out of plans. His sister was dying and he was the one who sent her out there. Did he feel that guilt, or was he leaving it all to Red? She should have tried harder to stop him, maybe Oliver wouldn’t have actually used the knife. Why didn’t Red try harder?

Reyna returned to Maddy, taking over from Simon, pressing down with all her weight against the wound.

Plan. Plan. Think of a plan to get away, to get Maddy to a hospital. Red looked around the RV, eyes catching on the pattern in the curtains, she and Maddy sitting beside them just seven hours ago playing Twenty Questions, Red zoning out, forgetting herperson, place orthing.And now Maddy was dying on the floor over there and Red had to do something. Think. The more she forced it, the harder it was. And, remember, she’d lost her mind awhile back.

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