When You Call My Name. Sharon Sala

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      “We’re not gonna make it,” the ambulance driver groaned, as he fought the steering wheel and the vehicle’s urge to slide.

      “Damn it, Farley, just quit talking and drive. We have to make it! If we don’t, this fellow sure won’t.”

      Luke Dennis, the emergency medical technician whose fortune it had been to be on duty this night, was up to his elbows in blood. His clothes were soaking wet, and his boots were filled to the tops with melting snow. The last thing he wanted to hear was another negative. They’d worked too long and too hard just getting this victim out of his car and up the side of the mountain to give up now.

      “Come on, buddy, hang with me,” Dennis muttered, as he traded a fresh container of D5W for the one going empty on the other end of the IV.

      An unceasing flow of blood ran out of the victim’s dark hair and across his face, mapping his once-handsome features with a crazy quilt of red. It was impossible to guess how many bones this man had broken, and to be honest, those were the least of Dennis’s worries. If they couldn’t get him back to the hospital in time, it was the internal injuries that would kill him.

      “I see lights!” Farley shouted.

      Thank God, Dennis thought, and then grabbed his patient and the stretcher, holding on to it, and to him, as the ambulance took the street corner sideways. Moments later they were at the hospital, unloading a man whose chance of a future depended upon the skills of the people awaiting him inside.

      Before he was a doctor, Amos Steading had been a medic in Vietnam. When he saw Wyatt Hatfield being wheeled into his E.R., he realized he might have been practicing medicine longer than this patient had been alive. It hurt to lose a patient, but the younger ones were much harder to accept.

      “What have we got?” Amos growled, lowering his bushy eyebrows as his attention instantly focused upon the injuries.

      “Trouble, Doc,” Dennis said. “Thirty-four-year-old male. Recently discharged from the Marines. He’s still wearing his ID tags. He got sideswiped by a truck and went over the side of Tulley’s Mountain. Didn’t think we’d ever get him up and out. He’s got head injuries, and from the feel of his belly, internal bleeding as well. From external exam, I’d guess at least four broken ribs, and, his right leg has quite a bit of damage, although it’s hard to tell what, if anything, is broken. We had to saw a tree and move it off him to get him out of the car.” He took a deep breath as the stretcher slid to a halt. As they transferred the victim to the gurney, he added, “This is his third bag of D5W.”

      Steading’s eyebrows arched as he yanked his stethoscope from around his neck and slipped it into place. This man was bleeding to death before their eyes. Moments later, he began firing orders to the nurse and the other doctor on call.

      “Get me a blood type,” Steading shouted, and a nurse ran to do his bidding.

      It was then that EMT Luke Dennis added the last bit of information about the victim, which made them all pause.

      “According to his dog tags, he’s AB negative,” Dennis said.

      A low curse slid out of Amos’s mouth as he continued to work. Rare blood types didn’t belong in this backwater town of eighteen hundred people. There was no way their blood bank was going to have anything like that, and the plasma they had on hand was sparse.

      “Type it anyway,” Steading ordered. “And get me some plasma, goddamn it! This man’s going to die before I can get him stable enough for surgery.”

      The once quiet hospital instantly became a flurry of shouts, curses and noise. Luke Dennis stepped out of the way, aware that he’d done his job. The rest was up to the doc and his staff…and God.

      He started back toward the door to restock the ambulance, aware that the night was far from over. It was entirely possible that more than one fool might decide to venture out in a storm like this. He just hoped that if they plowed themselves into the snow—or into someone else—they were nowhere near a mountain when it happened. But before he could leave, the outside door burst open right before him, and three people blew in, along with a blinding gust of snow.