Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,121
ambulance . . . Christ . . . I don’t know how bad. Bad!”
Took two more steps before I stopped and told him, “Cancel that.”
“What?”
“Tell them there’s no rush.”
“Jesus, man, I think you’re in shock. You need to sit down.”
“Stay out of this,” I warned Bambi, then continued walking, my eyes seeing only the spear hunter—the man sitting now and moaning—while all the options played through my mind in stark black-and-white: Gaff Deano under the jaw, drag him out and drown him fast. No . . . grab the son of a bitch by the ponytail, take him way, way out in the Gulf of Mexico, where . . .
Where, if I didn’t bleed to death in the next couple of minutes, there were all kinds of options.
The wooden walkway lay between me and Deano. It took some effort to climb over it, but I managed, hearing him say in the voice of a spoiled child, “Shit, I need a doctor! You guys do something now!”
Because I was behind him, only a couple of steps away, he was startled when I replied, “I plan to,” and he spun around. Looked up into the flashlight’s beam and shielded his eyes.
“Dude, you’re blinding me—this is serious!”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
“Goddamn thing went clear through my foot! Pain’s killing me, man!”
“Then I better hurry,” I said and pointed the flashlight at the ground. That’s when Deano saw the club I was carrying, plus the stainless gaff hook, then connected it all with the look in my eyes, the tone of my voice, and he scooched away from me.
“Don’t,” he whispered, “please don’t,” the child in him doing all the talking now.
Several seconds, I stood there and thought about it, staring at the rich boy with the damaged brain who had failed at everything: big, babyish face, mud-streaked with tears, cradling his swollen foot in both hands. Then looked from Deano to my stilthouse, where my eyes lingered on the pond shimmering beneath, the small pond that is Dinkin’s Bay. Took a deep breath, my internal monitor aware that my lungs didn’t gurgle with blood. So maybe I would live, and maybe it was time to be smart for a change. Time to . . . what?
Not befoul my own nest, for one thing. And also to stabilize my wound by not moving.
I sat heavily on the walkway, placed the gaff hook behind me, and said to Deano, “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Then angled the flashlight toward the broken stingray spine protruding from my sternum. A thousand years ago, sacrificial victims of the Maya had, no doubt, felt the same numbing fear.
“Goddamn worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” the spear hunter replied, then yelled, “Luke, where the hell’s that ambulance?”
—
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I was in the ambulance, on a gurney, growing increasingly unsettled by the concern of the EMT who had already strapped me immobile and was now on the phone with a trauma physician.
The stingray barb had moved in my chest, apparently, and I was listening to fragments of one-sided medicalspeak that confirmed I might be dying.
CT scan . . . depth of penetration “significant” . . . Yes, assess damage associated with a fractured sternum: mediastinal structures, pulmonary and myocardial contusions. Then came a long list of words that grated against the beep of the fluctuating heart monitor but might explain my plummeting blood pressure and why I would have to be rushed straight to surgery.
I was feeling hazy, too, a symptom of failing cranial hydraulics that spooked me. An odd realization: Time—whatever the hell time is or was or isn’t—I might be running low. I couldn’t see my watch, but knew it was after eight. Date night!
“Need to call someone,” I told the EMT, my chest burning from the effort.
She shook her head, busy with a syringe. “Quiet! Later, when we get things figured out.”
“Send a text?” I asked.
The woman looked at the monitors in a way that wasn’t encouraging, which pissed me off—irrational and I knew it—then made it all better by allowing me to dictate a message.
Moments later, my phone chimed with Hannah Smith’s reply: On my way, hold on. Please hold on!
Moments later, I heard another chime, and a second message was held above my face to read privately: Love always, Hannah.
“Your wife?” the EMT asked, taking the phone away.
“Maybe so,” I replied. “And I’m buying a dog, too.”