cleaning up this lady’s mess instead of talking to Kristen.
Javier nudged Luke, and he veered off to check on the lady.
I tried to put myself into work mode, though most of it was autopilot at this point.
The motorcycle rider lay facedown twenty feet away. He’d been thrown. I knew walking up the injuries were bad. By the looks of his twisted leg, he’d been pinned between the car and his bike during impact. The mangled bike sat on its side next to a planter full of birds-of-paradise on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
I stared at the bike as I walked.
The bike…a Triumph, but with that new exhaust he just put on.
I looked back at the patient, everything suddenly slowing.
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