chest. “You’ll be okay, pal. Hang on, I gotta do something for you here.”
He opened his ruck to withdraw the catheters he’d stashed. As soon as he’d heard the victims had suffered paralysis and burns, LB knew that neither man would be able to hold his water. The engineer couldn’t sense anything below the waist, and the cadet was in so much pain he couldn’t stay conscious.
Jamie unwrapped all the cadet’s bandages. He stuffed them, the cadet’s sheet, and their stench into a trash bag. The boy’s skin glistened with fluids weeping out of his tissues, as the cells of his body tried to cool themselves.
LB handed Jamie one of the catheters, then set to work on the engineer. The insertion went quickly; The man couldn’t feel a thing he was doing. LB slid the small sterile tube into the engineer’s penis, threading the tube deeper into the urethra until urine flowed. This meant he’d reached the bladder. A quick injection of fluid swelled the inserted end to hold it in place. LB hooked the plastic collection bag to the bed, and it was done.
Right behind him, Jamie finished with the cadet.
The first mate returned with a mop and a bucket slopping with sudsy water. The pungency of the bleach added to the urine stench.
“Prop the door open,” LB told him.
Grisha did so, then began to mop.
“That is Nikita. He is dear friend. When piston blew he was thrown against railing. Broken back. Broken rib. The rib causes him pain.”
Nikita whispered something in Russian. LB bent closer. The sailor cleared his throat, then repeated himself. He could not turn his immobilized head.
“Chyort.” Damn.
LB asked Grisha, “What’ve you given him?”
“What I have. Fluids. Morphine.”
“How often with the morphine?”
“Every hour when I check on him.”
“He needs to be checked every ten to fifteen.”
LB moved next to the bed. He leaned over so Nikita could see his face.
“Nikita. Buddy, how you feeling?”
“Like blyadischa. Tired whore. Nothing in the legs.”
LB patted the engineer’s shoulder. “That’s funny. Good. Now listen to me. You might have a broken spine. You might not. Maybe what you have is some bad swelling in your back, a couple of bruised vertebrae pressing on your nerves. That could be where the paralysis is coming from. We’re gonna hook you up to a high-dose anti-inflammatory, see if we can get the swelling down. That might help. You’ll be at the hospital in Djibouti in two more days. Can you stay calm?”
“Could you?”
LB moved his eyes directly above the sailor’s. “If I had someone as good as me looking me over? Yeah.”
Frightened Nikita tried not to be amused. “Americans.”
Together with Grisha and Jamie, LB pulled the damp sheet from beneath the engineer, then stuffed it into the garbage bag. Grisha found clean linens to lay over Nikita, then returned to his mop.
LB joined Jamie beside the cadet. Together they wrapped fresh bandages over his burns, tenderly lifting the boy’s limbs. The cadet’s face twisted with every movement, eyes sputtered open, lapsing in and out of awareness. His breathing came in fits between groans from his blistered mouth. Fingers clenched at nothing and released.
LB curled a finger for Grisha to stop mopping and come beside the bandaged cadet. Jamie stacked bags of Solu-Medrol and set out vials of morphine.
LB laid a hand across the cadet’s unwrapped forearm. The boy’s temperature felt dangerously high. At the end of the tube in his arm, the liter bag of saline hung empty.
Barely audible, Grisha said, “His name is Alek.”
“You check on him every hour, too?”
Grisha recoiled at LB’s tone. “Yes.”
LB took down the drained IV bag. “Well,” he said, not looking at Grisha, “Alek is dying. His kidneys are shutting down from lack of fluids. You see these bubbles?” He circled a quick finger around the cadet’s mouth, cheek, and brow. “He’s got these over half his body. He’s using up all his water. We’ve got to stay ahead of what he’s doing. If he runs dry, his kidneys shut down and he’s dead.”
LB guessed the cadet’s weight at about 170 pounds.
“He gets a liter of saline every twenty minutes until he stabilizes. Then eight liters over the next ten hours. You got this kid on the same morphine schedule? Every hour?”
“Yes.”
LB pulled from his ruck one of the vials of fentanyl, stronger than morphine. This needed to be injected every thirty to sixty minutes instead of the morphine’s five to ten. LB drew a few cc’s of fentanyl into a syringe and pushed the needle