Uncharted(17)

“Gauze, alcohol pads, anything we can use to pack the wound. I don’t want this metal shifting around and doing more damage.”

“Okay.” I open the heavy plastic zipper and sort through the contents, muttering aloud as I take inventory. “Compass… two emergency flares… raft patches… whistle… aluminum blankets… ration packets…” I swallow hard. “I’m not seeing a first aid kit.”

“Look harder.”

I stiffen. “Don’t snap at me!”

He grunts — apparently, that’s as close to an apology as I’m going to get. I decide to ignore him as I continue my search. I’m nearly at the bottom of the bag, now.

“Plastic bailor… knife…” My hands close on the last item, a flat white box with a red cross on top. I yank it impatiently from the depths. “First aid kit.”

I crawl back to the men. Underwood is bent low over the flight attendant’s leg to examine the wound. He’s ripped the man’s pants apart around the metal, to better see the damage. My heart fails when I see the blood gushing out. There’s a lot of it. Too much. It’s saturating the fabric, dripping into the bottom of the raft where it mixes with rainwater to form a macabre cocktail.

I know just enough about anatomy to recognize that the shard of metal is dangerously close to piercing the femoral artery, if it hasn’t already. The bones in the lower half of his leg look completely shattered. He must’ve been crushed by a heavy piece of debris during the crash. The skin is badly bruised already; I can only imagine what it’ll look like in a few hours.

“Fuck,” I whisper, wiping rain from my eyes with my forearm as I watch blood flow from the wound.

Underwood grunts. “My thoughts exactly.”

“It’s a good thing he passed out. He’s got to be in unbearable pain…”

Busy applying pressure to the wound, Underwood grunts again. Apparently, that’s his main form of communication.

As I get a look at the damage up close, dread washes over me. There’s no way we can set a fractured femur, no way to cure a knee pulverized into dust. I wouldn’t know how to fix this man in a state of the art operating room with all the surgical instruments in the world at my disposal; my chances of mending such an injury on a raft in the middle ocean, without access to more than the most basic medical supplies, are dire indeed.

I glance down at the kit in my hands.

Band-Aids. Gauze. A pair of shears. A scalpel. A suture kit.

For all intents and purposes… these items are useless.

Blinking back tears, I yank a bandage out and press it against the worst of the bleeding, aligning my hands beside Underwood’s. When the flight attendant moans in agony, I have to bite down on my lip to keep the tears at bay.

You cannot cry, Violet.

Keep it together, for his sake.

Blood saturates the thin cloth in mere seconds.

“Shit!” I exclaim, watching the dark stain spread. “I can’t get this bleeding to stop.”

Underwood glances up sharply. “We need to tourniquet the wound or he’s going to bleed to death.”

“Tell me what to do.”

His eyes dart left and right as options whirl through his mind. A belt would be the obvious choice, but neither of us is wearing one.

“My shoelace,” he says finally, sticking out a booted foot in my direction. “Pull it out.”

I do as he says, unlacing the thick black string with trembling hands. When I tug it free, I look up at Underwood for guidance. I see my own fears reflected back at me, bright on the surface of those emerald irises.

“If you can’t do this…” He trails off.

“I can do it,” I snap.

After a second, he nods. “Tie it tight, just above my hands, where the bone is still intact,” he instructs, jerking his chin toward the flight attendant’s thigh. I keep my hands as steady as possible as I wrap the shoelace around the muscle, trying not to look too closely at the mangled limb mere inches from my face. The damage is catastrophic.

My fingers move deftly, looping and twisting and tugging tight enough to stop the bleeding. Once the tourniquet is in place, I exhale a faint sigh of relief as I watch the bleeding subside from a steady flow to a trickle. Underwood’s eyes move from the staunched wound to my blood-stained hands to my pale face. There’s grudging respect etched on his expression.

“Help is coming,” I whisper, more to myself than him. “They have to come.”

He nods.

“We just have to hold on till then.” I dunk my hands into the shallow water at the bottom of the raft and watch dark blood flow off my skin in rivulets. When they’re clean, I reach out and gently brush a strand of blond hair from the flight attendant’s face. Even unconscious, I can read the pain on his features. When he wakes, he’ll be in absolute agony.

“You have to hold on,” I tell him, throat thick with unshed tears. “Just a little while longer. Help is coming.”

Help is coming.

Help is coming.

Help is coming.

Stroking a stranger’s forehead, I whisper it over and over under my breath, like a witch weaving a spell that might summon a fleet of search and rescue helicopters from the skies above. I repeat it for hours, until my voice goes hoarse and the lightning ceases, until the rain gentles from a torrent to a patter, until the sky is streaked with the first pale pink traces of the coming dawn.