Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) Read Free Page B

full of Latin Kings ink and a knife wound in your belly. An IV is gonna hurt a lot less than that.’
    Nique deftly inserted a 16 gauge IV into the man’s vein. To be fair, it was a big needle. But he had nice veins and if he did need rapid volume replacement, the bigger the better.
    ‘Ah, puta !’ he shouted, straining against the straps of the chair.
    I put a hand on his throat and pushed him back into the seat. ‘Mira!’ I said. ‘Listen up. We don’t help you, you’re gonna die. You’re gonna bleed out. It may not hurt that much or look that bad, but your belly is filling up with blood. I’ve seen it. You need fluid, you need an OR. You talk to her like that again, you might need a dentist. Comprende, pendejo? ’
    He nodded in silence. I released his throat.
    ‘See, Nelly,’ said Carlos. ‘I told you he’s one of us.’
    Violence among the gangs who controlled the drug trade was hardly new. Turf battles, real or imagined insults, too much youth, anger, drugs, money and testosterone without a constructive outlet or any real ambition. People got cut or shot or beaten for being in the wrong neighborhood, talking to the wrong girl or guy, wearing the wrong colors. But that was just business as usual. This attack was different. It had been done in broad daylight and seemed both brutal and carefully focused. Sure, it had been a bad wound to the dealer, but it was one stab. Nobody stabs somebody once in anger. This was a message. Don’t deal on this corner, or we’ll cut you. We don’t really care if you live or die. That’s how little you matter. And then a clear message to the buyer. Somebody was using a precise and careful application of violence in place of the usual messy and haphazard fashion common to street gangs.
    I wondered if somebody had translated Sun Tzu for gangbangers. There promised to be interesting times ahead.
    * * * *
    We dropped our patient at the ER and cleared up. The rest of the shift was fairly routine. We treated a legitimate chest pain, a cry-for-attention chest pain by a guy whose girlfriend left him, and a beautiful example of how not to slice a bagel; we saved a prostitute unresponsive from a heroin overdose who signed herself out of the hospital and walked out, looking to score, before we finished our paperwork.
    ‘Hey, wait,’ Nique called after her as the patient walked past the tiny, battered EMS desk. ‘That medicine we gave you is gonna wear off before the heroin does and you’ll go right back to not breathing.’
    In response, the woman flashed a hand at us, palm outward, in the universal sign of dismissal, her head held high and her expression haughty as a runway model; assuming stained halter tops, threadbare mini-skirts, scabbed knees and no panties was the hot new look in Paris and Milan this season.
    ‘Bitch,’ Nique muttered. ‘See if I save you again. Shoulda just left her there.’
    ‘Now, now,’ I smiled. ‘Where’s your sense of compassion?’
    ‘Used up about three calls back,’ she replied. ‘Next time I find that bitch unresponsive I’m intubating her.’
    ‘You’ll probably get your chance. Given her line of work, shoving a tube down her throat probably wouldn’t bother her all that much.’
    She chuckled and her brow unfurrowed. ‘OK, I’m good. All sunshine and bunnies again. Maybe we can come up with some kind of incentive program for our repeat customers.’
    ‘What, like a card you punch? After six transports you can turn it in for clean needles?’
    ‘That could work.’ She smiled. ‘Seriously, why do we do this?’
    ‘Fifteen bucks an hour?’ I replied. ‘Actually, I just do it so I can hang around with you for twenty-four hours a week. You’re so damn sexy. I told ’em they could cut my pay if they bought you a tighter uniform.’
    She laughed at that. ‘Oh, that did it. I feel better now. You’re the only one who gets to talk to me that way, you know.’
    ‘And I’m honored,’ I said.
    It was true; for whatever