Fire In the Blood

-Sure as Death-

It wasn't any kind of grand affair, the first time I laid eyes on Forrest Bondurant. No star-crossed swooning. No birds were singing. The clouds didn't part and light didn't shine down from the Heavens, some sort of divine intervention telling me this is the one. Well, I probably did think that at some point in those first few moments, but for no spectacularly romantic reason. Chances are, I was thinking sure as there are snakes in the grass, this is the one that's a goner.

Nothing was out of the ordinary, that morning. Just like every other day. Late spring heat slowly beginning to rise, heavy overcast trapping all the warmth and the moisture, making the air thick, heavy. Never sure if the liquid running down your face was from humidity or sweat. But the slightest breeze made it just right to bear. I'd been making my rounds, greeting folks with a good morning and opening their windows. Most rooms were empty, save for a few elderly and little Jimmy, who'd spent the night after having gone and fell right out of a tree, flat on his back. Foolish kid was lucky to be alive. No broken bones. But the doctor wanted to go ahead and keep him to make sure he hadn't messed up his insides or his head.

I could hear the motors before I could see the vehicles. An annoying succession of mechanical chugs that disrupted the quiet of nature, and the shrill blast of multiple horns that had me scowling at the blatant disrespect for this place of peace as I stood from my position at Jimmy's bedside. All I saw was a white coat come running past the doorway, tail trailing behind him from the wind of his speed. The Doctor never rushed like that. Nothing usually to be that hurried about, unless the bootleggers done fucked up again. I hadn't been there all that long, but I knew that there was some kind of war going on between them and the feds, just like everywhere else in this country since the damned prohibition. The moonshiners were frequents at this here little hospital.

I could hear the panicked shouts of many men, and soon the hollow stomp of boots on the wooden boards of the floor, and I knew my initial assumptions were right. Amidst the screaming and crying, it didn't take long at all for the Doctor to begin calling for his nurses, one by one, spouting off orders on how to keep the injured stable while he saw to them in order by priority of life. Someone had to be phoning in the other off-duty surgeon. It sounded like it was going to be a busy day.

I stood my ground, not ready to witness the massacre I was sure was waiting for me outside little Jimmy's room. But soon, my time to take the responsibility of a man's life had come. "Edie!" the Doctor need only yell my name once, and I was running, one leg in front of the other as I fastened my white apron tight behind my back.

The entrance hall reeked of smoke, liquor and blood, and for a moment I was shocked into a state of oblivion at the sight before me. Outlaws and officers alike littered the room, injured lying in an organized heap on the floor, while the few left unscathed and standing huddled over their familiars, some lending them words of comfort, others screaming in their unconscious faces for even thinking about letting themselves die. But for all the madness, there was no tension between the two groups. Maybe they'd set aside their differences in the aftermath of an unexpected tragedy. Maybe they were saving it for later.

"Edie." The Doctor's frantic voice drew me back into the present, and I turned to the man knelt to the ground on my right. The poor man looked a fright, as though it were taking every nerve in his body to hold on to his patience and his wits. His wide eyes moved quickly over the body of a man with multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen, assessing the damage and forming a plan. He seemed to nod to himself, and then looked up at me. "Edie, I need you to take Mr. Bondurant here to room two. Lay him down, keep pressure on his wounds, and keep him awake. I have to address a neck wound, and then I'll be right in. You hear?"

I stared at him, for once in my life questioning the Doctor's motives. He would not be treating this man first? A shot to the neck seemed a sure death, but this man still had time. It was ticking quick, but a little was still there. A person could bleed out in twenty minutes through a laceration to the abdomen, and that was assuming the bullets had missed vital organs. Multiple gunshot wounds would be cutting his time down to single-digits, seconds, even. This man would die without immediate attention. Surely, he would die.

But the Doctor had made his decision and left me to follow his instructions, and I would not back down on my call to duty, no matter how grim and gruesome the outcome looked. I focused my attention on two gentlemen that had taken the place of the doctor upon his departure. They looked fit to cry, and were begging the man on the ground to hold onto life, apologizing for all the wrong they'd ever done him. Pleading with God to spare him yet again. "You," I said, my tone loud and full of authority, so they knew I was addressing them. They looked up at me, and the younger of the two had wet tears leaving streaks down his dirt-covered face. "I need the two of you to pick this man up here as carefully as you can, and follow me. You understand?"

There was a duet of mumbles in the form of "yes ma'am", and the two scooped up the injured man by the shoulders and the legs, struggling to stand under his weight, the younger wavering on the brink of collapsing more than several times. "Careful now," I said, and once I was convinced they had a proper hold on him, I turned on my heel, taking only a few steps down the hall and through an open door on the left, where I gathered a collection of towels from the ambry and met the two men bedside as they lay their friend against the white sheets. "All right now, you've done your part," I said, taking a pair of scissors off the top of the stack of towels, fitting the metal between my fingers. "You best be taking your leave."

"No, this here's my brother," the younger one said with strong determination. "I ain't going nowhere."

I sized the young'un up, wondering whether he'd be fit to stay and make himself useful, or be more of a nuisance than anything. My eyes traveled from his face down to his boots, and back up again just to make my intentions clear, and my heart rightly jumped in surprise when I had to do a double-take at the spreading bloodstain in the fabric of his shirt. "Sir, are you shot?" It was more of an accusation than a question.

He glanced down at his body, as though I'd only just reminded him of the perforation in his side. "I'm fine," he said lightly, pulling his shirt out of the brim of his pants to get a better look at the damage. Blood still trickled freely from the wound.

My eyes widened at the crazy behavior of these men. All of them, crazy. Trying to kill each other, over what? Alcohol? Coming in here, bleeding all over the place. Thinking they could just walk around, do some heavy lifting, like that wouldn't get them killed any easier than warring with the feds. "The hell you're fine!" I shouted, snapping my scissors dangerously close to his face. He withdrew in alarm, and so I advanced on him further. "You get on out there and you get yourself some help. Thick in the head if you think you can just stand there and die on my watch." Neither man moved, so I snapped my scissors at one, and shoved the face of the other toward the direction of the door. "The longer you stand there, the more time I spend on you instead of your brother. Go on now, go!"

Their movements were slow, begrudging, hesitating, but step by step I followed them until their bodies reached the other side of the door frame, and I slammed the door closed right behind them. Crazy sons of bitches. With a sigh, I focused my attention on the dying man, returning to his side, and immediately tore the outside sweater open, and began to trim a line right up the middle of his shirt. His breathing was labored, like he was trying to keep the rhythm slow and steady to remain calm, but could only push out small grunts and inhale soft whispers.

His eyes were opened and watching me closely, but I didn't look him in the face. Looking him in the face made him a person and not a body, and the body is what I had to attend to. Since he was going to die anyway, there was no use in remembering his face and feeling bad about it later. I parted the two halves of his shirt and glanced down very briefly at his torso. The vast surface of skin was bruising and stained with blood, the entry wounds just small dark holes among the thick smear of red.

I grabbed the towels and threw them down onto him in a quick, pathetic attempt to cover up the sight. I could feel my heart begin to race, pounding in my ears, and my face flushed hot. I wished life for this poor, hurting man, but it just didn't seem possible. And the prospect of watching him die under my hands left me fighting to hide my fear.

"What's your name, sir?" I asked him loudly, wondering if he could register words, or even hear me at all in his state. I hovered over him to position the towels in a thick layer over his wounds and repeated the question once more.

To my surprise he responded, but his answer only came in the form of vocalized consonants. I bent lower to try to hear him, but mouth-to-ear, I couldn't make out anything more than perhaps an 'R'. I straightened up, my eyes on my hands as I positioned them over a towel. "I'm sorry sir, but I can't understand a word you're saying. You'll have to speak up." I applied hard pressure to the wound low on his shoulder, and his reaction was immediate.

With an energy I wouldn't have figured possible to muster, he rejected the increased intensity of a new wave of pain fiercely, attempting to sit up as he growled through gritted teeth, "Goddamn, it's Forrest."

With a scowl, I put a hand to his forehead, forcing him back down into a plank position, and he submitted with an irritated, breathy groan in pain. "Do you want to die, Forrest? Because that's exactly what'll happen if you try that again," I scolded, taking the hand limp at his side to hold over the towels placed low on his abdomen. "Now make yourself useful and hold those there. Crazy, the lot of you. You know that?" I tutted my tongue as I returned to putting pressure on the high wound. "And I don't care if you're neck-deep in quicksand, who taught you to address a lady like that? Especially one trying to save your life."

He continued to watch me, and I began to wonder how he was still conscious at all. Lord knows how long he was hurt out there before arriving at this hospital, and the Doctor had to have taken at least a good ten minutes with the other man before entering the room, white coat splattered with red. He looked calm, surprisingly calm for someone who seemed to have just come out of what looked like performing an unsuccessful procedure. I stood back as he approached the man known as Forrest, searching him over with a shake of his head.

"Good to see you again, Bondurant," he announced with ironic familiarity. "You've got yourself all through-and-throughs but one, and they seem to have missed the vitals. But that last one on the left, it's gon' be tricky, and it's gon' be painful. What do you want to do, you want us to put you under?"

I found myself wincing as I waited for his answer, hoping he'd surprise me by being smarter than I thought he was. Instead, his reply came in the form of a forced grumble enunciating the order to, "Just get it out."

The Doctor interpreted that as "do what you must", and soon Forrest was out like a light after I administered a good, hearty dose of anesthesia into his arm. I was tasked with the responsibility of recording the blood pressure every few minutes, as well as handing over the tools the Doctor required. He worked quickly, steadily, and said not a word except to ask for an instrument, or an update on the record I was keeping. Blood pressure was low, there was no blood left to circulate, but it hadn't yet reached any critical mark. I found this strange, but said nothing to disrupt the doctor. The man should be dead. Dead and gone. But there he was, still bleeding out, but still alive somehow.

Too easily, the hard part was over, and I was drawn to the sound of metal on metal as the Doctor dropped the bullet onto the tray beside him, muttering something to himself along the lines of "not even a scratch on the spleen." How? How? It just didn't seem possible. I voiced as much, and all I got was a laugh. "Nothing seems possible with Forrest Bondurant, but it always is," he said lightly, as though it were a phenomenon he'd accepted a long time go, while pulling thread tight through skin. "Always coming in here, balancing on the line with his weight favoring death. Always walks out of here alive. Ain't no logic to it. That's just how it is."

My head spun with the realization that this man would survive his sure death. Apparently it wasn't the first, either. Nothing short of God's walking miracle, is what he was. Just one lucky bastard. No wonder he was so crazy, I'd be too without the fear of death.

In the wake of his apparent survival, I justified taking a peek at his face. Handsome man. Cynical man. Even in an induced sleep, his eyes seemed to squint, tight muscles high on the cheek giving the impression that nobody was fooling him. Biggest lips I'd ever seen on a man, plump and puckered, turned down in a permanent frown. Maybe even a grimace, from the right angle. I wondered what color his eyes were, so I opened one, pulling the lids apart with my thumb and forefinger. Shockingly gray, with just a hint of blue. Put him all together and set him standing, and I bet he was rightly popular among the gals of this area.

The Doctor asked what I was doing, and I pulled back from my inspection, letting the eyelids relax to a close. "Just making sure he was still alive," I said.

He chuckled, shaking his head as he snipped off the excess end of the sutures. "Oh, he's alive, all right. Make a full recovery, too. Ain't no couple of gunshots gon' put Forrest in the ground."

Thought I'd go ahead and pioneer this category. Hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think. :)