The Friend Zone(77)

The helmet…a blacked-out Bell Qualifier DLX.

The man’s shirt…from the gift shop at the Wynn in Vegas.

Shawn and Javier must have noticed it at the same moment, because without speaking, we all began to run the last few feet.

Brandon.

It was Brandon.

I fell to my knees on the asphalt. “Hey! Hey, can you hear me?”

Oh my God…

He was unconscious. I put a hand to his back and felt the slight rise and fall.

Breathing. He’s alive.

This is Brandon. How is this Brandon?

I picked up his hand and checked for a radial pulse in his wrist. It was weak and thready. I could barely feel it.

It meant blood loss.

I didn’t see him bleeding heavily, so it had to be internal.

Internal bleeding.

He could be dying.

My mind raced. We needed to get him stable and into the ambulance.

Shawn dove into his trauma bag, kneeling in a rivulet of metallic-smelling blood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Come on, fucker, you’re getting married! You gotta be okay!”

Sloan.

My heart pounded in my ears. “He’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine, buddy.”

I got out my pocket light, opened his visor, and pulled back his eyelids. His pupils shrank to small black dots. They were equal and reactive. Good. That was a good sign. He didn’t have brain damage. Not yet. We needed to get him to the ER before his brain started to swell.

I gulped air. I had to stay calm. Stay calm!

The ambulance pulled up, and Javier jogged to meet them.

“I need a c-spine and a gurney!” I shouted.

Jesus Christ, his helmet was fucked. Dented from the impact. Covered in skid marks.

She didn’t stop. The lady didn’t fucking stop. It was a forty-mile-per-hour zone. A forty-mile-per-hour impact if she wasn’t speeding.

And she probably was.

I pulled out my trauma shears and started cutting off his clothes. “Sorry, I know you like this shirt, buddy. We’ll go back and get you another one, okay?” My voice shook.

As I cut away fabric, more injuries bloomed over his body before my eyes.

I grappled to make sense of it.

Where the fuck had he been going? Why wasn’t he home with Sloan?

His tux. He had a final tux fitting today at 9:00 a.m. He told me about it.

Why couldn’t he have been late? Or early? Why didn’t he take his goddamn truck? Or a different street?

I cut his pants off. He had a break. Compound fracture, left leg. His femur pushed jagged through his skin.

I swallowed hard looking over his mangled body, and my brain ticked off injuries.

Serious.

Serious.

Serious.

I looked up at Shawn’s wide, frightened eyes. “We’ll have to log roll him onto the backboard. We can’t pull traction on this leg. Let’s get his helmet off,” I said quickly.

Javier ran a backboard over while Shawn kneeled and cradled Brandon’s head. I reached around and unclipped the strap, and we kept his neck stable while we pulled the helmet off. His brown hair was matted with blood.

Shawn was crying. “The bitch didn’t even fucking stop.”

“Keep it together,” Javier said calmly. “Look at me, Shawn. He’s a patient. He can be your buddy when this call is over. Right now he’s a patient. Do your job and he’ll be okay.”

Shawn nodded, trying to collect himself. Javier snapped the cervical collar on Brandon’s neck and we all put our hands on him, ready to flip him.

“On the count of three,” Javier said, not looking up, sweat beading on his forehead. “One, two, three!” And in one fluid motion we turned him onto the backboard.

Brandon always wore heavy-duty pants when he rode. But he was in a T-shirt. It was eighty today. His bare left arm was torn to shreds by the asphalt. He looked like he’d been through a lemon zester. Blood oozed from the white streaks of the under layer of his skin. And this was the least of his worries.

Shawn, Javier, and an EMT lifted him onto the gurney while I felt his chest and stomach. He had rib fractures and rigidity in his abdomen. “A possible liver laceration,” I said, a lump bolting to my throat.

Javier mumbled a curse word, and Shawn shook his head, his eyes red and glassy.

We needed to get him to the hospital.

The ambulance crew took over.

I rattled off what I knew as we ran him to the open ambulance doors, my voice professional and disembodied, like it came from someone else, someone who wasn’t standing over his critically injured best friend. “Twenty-nine-year-old male, motorcycle rider struck by vehicle, thrown twenty feet from the point of impact. Helmet has significant damage. A weakened, thready radial pulse. Pupils are equal and reactive. Open femur fracture, severe road rash. Unresponsive.”

I climbed into the ambulance and saw the woman from the blue Kia being slapped into handcuffs as the doors slammed shut behind us.

We’d gotten him in the ambulance in less than five minutes. I worried it was five minutes too long.

I leaned over him. “Hey, buddy.” My voice cracked. “Hold on. You’ll be all right. I’m going to get Sloan over here, okay?”

Tears stung my eyes, but my hands kept working, running on muscle memory. I set up his IV en route. The EMT put him on oxygen while the driver called it in.