“I doubt I’d even have service way out here, but okay,” Tom quipped, reaching for the first aid kit once more. When he looked back at the woman, his face was plastered in worry. “Hey, Hey! I need you to stay awake. Talk to me, about anything,” he suggested, knowing that if she fell unconscious that he might not get her back. Tom was worried for the woman that lay before him – she had lost a lot of blood, and with no IV fluids or transfusion to give her, there was no way to replenish what she’d lost. He gut turned at the thought of losing her. No. Not today. He wasn’t going to lose her. He was determined. Tom dug through the first aid kit, finding a pair of tweezers and found a bottle of water in the duffel. He stabbed a hole in the lid of the plastic water bottle, preparing to irrigate the wound. “This is going to hurt like hell, but I need you to keep talking to me, okay?”
“You wouldn’t,” Cara murmured. But, if she put the gun down and let her guard down along with it, what was to stop him from taking off until he could find cell service? The fear that he would do just that was what she was holding onto, internally reminding herself of it over and over again as she fought to stay conscious. And the man must’ve realized she was barely succeeding, because he was suddenly urging her to stay awake. To talk to him. What she said she would later blame on having lost so much blood and the pain of the wound itself, “…I saved her. I was worried that I was too late.” Or that too much damage had been done to the poor girl’s body while she’d been possessed. “…But now that she has a chance, that she’s made it this far and she’s in surgery… She has to survive.” Or Cara had failed. Her eyes glazed over at the thought, but the man’s warning forced her to focus again, and she nodded, “I’ve had worse. Just do it.”
Yeah, keep talking. C’mon. Tom thought to himself, willing his hands to steady. “Lilah? Yeah, she’ll make it, because you saved her. Tell me about Lilah,” he urged, hoping she would continue talking as he irrigated the wound. He flooded the wound with the water, and he saw a glint of the bullet. He took hold of the bullet with the tweezers and pulled it out. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts, but I got the bullet out. The worst of it is still ahead of us,” he warned, irrigating the wound again before pressing gauze to the wound. Tom turned and washed his hands off before turning and grabbing a suture kit from the well stocked first aid kit. “I have to stitch you up, but I have to tell you that I’m not comfortable doing this outside of a sterile environment and without proper lighting. If I do it here, you could get a major infection.”
