Chapter 433
[ 487 words ]
Chapter 433:
Brenna offered no response. She just stared at the dark horizon, her heart heavy with a fear that she knew Julian shared, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
Captain Zachary Hayes led her to a makeshift triage area set up in the ruins of what might have been a town square. The scene was pure chaos. The air was filled with the groans of the injured and the shouts of the rescuers. It was a vision of hell.
Caroline didn’t hesitate. She dropped her pack, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and went to work. A strange calm settled over her. In the midst of the chaos, there was a clear, simple clarity. Stop the bleeding. Splint the fracture. Save the life in front of you. Her movements were economical and efficient, a small island of order in a sea of entropy.
A soldier came running up, his face pale with panic. “Captain! We’ve got another one! Pulled from the bank vault. He’s pinned by a rebar, straight through the abdomen! Bleeding out fast!”
The unit’s medic was already overwhelmed, trying to stabilize two other critical patients.
“I’ve got him,” Caroline said, her voice commanding. She was at the man’s side in an instant. A quick assessment confirmed her fears. The rebar was lodged deep, perilously close to the abdominal aorta. Moving him would kill him. Waiting for a surgical team would kill him.
𝖶𝘦 𝘶𝘱dа𝘁𝘦 𝗲𝘷ery 𝘄ee𝘬 оn 𝘨𝗮l𝘯𝗈𝘷e𝗅𝘀.𝗰о𝘮
She made a decision that was far beyond the scope of a registered nurse.
“Don’t move the bar!” she ordered the soldiers. “Hold it steady. Get me light.”
From her own medical pack, she pulled a sterile scalpel blade and a bottle of antiseptic. With the soldiers holding flashlights, she performed an impossible procedure right there in the dust and debris. She made a precise incision, located the source of the bleeding, and applied direct pressure with a hemostatic agent from her kit. Her hands were rock-steady, her focus absolute. It was a display of surgical nerve that belonged in a state-of-the-art operating room, not a disaster zone.
Captain Hayes watched, his mouth agape. There was something about her—the way she moved, the look of intense concentration in her eyes—that was painfully familiar.
Minutes later, the bleeding was controlled. The man was stabilized. She had bought him the time he needed to be evacuated. The soldiers who had been watching stared at her with a new, profound respect.
As she straightened up, her back aching, Captain Hayes approached, handing her a bottle of water.
“Thompson… Caroline Thompson…” he said, tasting the name. The pieces of a memory clicked into place. “I remember now,” he said, his eyes wide with recognition. “Afghanistan. The border outpost. You’re the woman Colonel Romero pulled out of that firefight.”
Caroline froze, staring at him. To find someone here, in this place, who knew Jarrod—who knew about that—was a shock that jolted her to the core.
“You know him?” she asked, her voice tight with urgency.
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