“John!” Claire called frantically. “Come back!”
Fuck.I rushed back to them. Kimmy stood in exactly the same spot against the wall. Claire looked up at me, wide-eyed.
“She’s hurt,” she whispered.
Her tone told me it was bad. Instantly, I snapped back into survival mode.
“Where?” I demanded. “Show me.”
“It’s not that bad, John,” Kimmy said weakly, but her face was white as a sheet.
I ignored her and moved closer. Claire lifted Kimmy’s shirt. Dark blood soaked through. Kimmy gave a small groan, and I saw the gruesome wound: a short, sharp piece of rebar stuck in her flesh. She’d been impaled on it. My stomach twisted, and my heart started pounding.
It was a living nightmare. She wouldn’t survive.
“What do we do?” Claire asked, tearing a strip off her shirt and wrapping it around the rebar to soak up blood. “If we move her…she’ll bleed.”
“Have to,” Kimmy said through gritted teeth. “If you don’t, I’ll die right here.”
She was right. At that moment, I would’ve done anything to save her.
“Grab the medical kit from Kimmy’s pack,” I ordered. “Get everything ready—suture, alcohol, cotton, bandages. When I lift her off the bar, I’ll set her face down on the ground. Then we have to work fast to stop the bleeding.”
I didn’t let myself think about what would happen if we weren’t fast enough. Claire sprang into action, and I held Kimmy’s hand as we waited for the kit to be ready.
“Keep squeezing my hand,” I murmured, hoping to hell that she couldn’t hear the raw panic clawing at my throat.
“Don’t…it’s…pointless,” Kimmy’s eyelids fluttered, a sign the adrenaline was wearing off and she was passing out. “I’m not gonna make it.”
“Shut up,” I said firmly, but I smoothed her black bangs out of her eyes. “You’re going to be fine. Still annoying, but fine.”
The corners of her mouth ticked up, but she said, coughing, “I’m a nurse, John. I know…what this means.”
I couldn’t stop myself from snarling a reply. “No. You don’t get to give up on me.”
“We’re ready,” Claire said to me, kneeling on the ground by the open medical kit.
I swallowed hard, then wrapped my arms around Kimmy.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in her ear. “Has to be done.”
I lifted under her arms, trying desperately to pull her off the jagged metal in as straight a line as possible. Her scream was ear-splitting, and the wet, squishy sound turned my stomach. Once free, I quickly set her on the ground, and Claire pressed bandages into the deep puncture wound as it gushed with fresh blood. Kimmy screamed again.
“Keep the pressure on it,” I instructed. “I’m going to disinfect, then start suturing.”
Claire’s face was pale with worry, but she nodded. I took a deep breath to steady my hands, then started cleaning the wound with alcohol. My heart broke at every one of my sister’s hoarse screams. Claire held the wound closed as best she could while I sutured it, my stitches nowhere near as tight and neat as Kimmy’s.
She was made for this, not me.
Kimmy’s screams faded into hoarse groans, then to nothing as she finally passed out.
An eternity later, we’d closed the wound and stopped the bleeding. I helped Claire wrap bandages around Kimmy’s torso, covering the stitches.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “I’ll carry her until we can stop and make a drag litter. Take the compass and point us north.”
Claire helped me hoist Kimmy into my arms, then retrieved the compass. I didn’t care where we went as long as it was as far from the city as possible.
We wandered for an hour northward, out of the city and into the woods. Then I built a drag litter out of branches, and we went as far as we could into the brush, eventually finding a ruined cottage in a wooded area. The back half of the house had collapsed, but the foyer and adjoined living room were intact. It’d have to do for now. Kimmy needed rest.
