Pete Conrad: Survival of the Sparrows

But time was at a premium. It was nearing 7:30 when prowling eyes might discover Winston’s activities. Despite the war, he still carried a wallet filled with photos, cash, and credit cards. He chose the weighty American Express card, pushed it hard into a crevice and managed to snag some of the caulking out from the groove. Applying slow and direct backpressure, he pulled the entire line of silicone caulking out in one long piece and shoved it into his pants pocket. The glass pane loosened, and all it needed to come out of its slot was a light tap near the top. He held the glass gingerly and placed it inside the barn, but it caught on something and cut the tips of his fingers.

“Fucker,” he whispered.

He positioned the glass as far to the right inside the barn as he could and looked at his fingers under the moonlight. There was blood, but the cuts weren’t deep enough to require stiches — they were just another pain in Winston’s ass. A bigger problem would be if the patrol noticed the missing windowpane before he could replace it.

He huffed louder than he should have, climbed into the barn through the still-locked window, ditched the stepstool behind the wooden crate, and was happy to see that the now-empty drone boxes did not impede his entry to the apartment. He waited a few minutes for the patrol to go back around, and found an old tube of clear silicone caulking. As expected, the tube had dried out, but he cut a corner off, hoping to squeeze some out. He unlocked and opened the window, repositioned the windowpane, and ran as much silicone around the edges as possible — a few inches on the two lower corners and a few dabs as far up on the windowpane as he could reach. He lowered the window gingerly — the caulking would dry by the time he reemerged from the apartment — and tugged on the apartment door, disappearing inside at the same moment that Dong-joo opened the barn door, thinking that he heard something move inside. He zipped his flashlight around the barn but saw nothing amiss and closed the door.

“May, you still with me?” Winston whispered as he closed the apartment door. He set down the book and first aid backpack and checked her pulse. She was alive, her breathing shallow and rapid.

Winston quietly and methodically emptied the contents of the backpack, hung his cap, strapped the headlamp around his head, and turned it on. The headlamp’s three red LEDs lit up the apartment brighter than he expected, and the rosy hue caused May’s blood to appear black.

He shook her gently, hoping to pry her awake, and checked her temperature. She felt hot to his touch, but her heart beat strongly. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but he was thankful nonetheless that she was still with him. He opened the book to a dog-eared page and read, his finger tracing the words.

May moaned and inhaled deeply, “you tryin’ ta rattle me, Winston?”

“You’re awake.” Winston replied, reached for a jug of water and held it to her mouth, “I need you ta drink as much water as you can.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Oh, you wanna start tellin’ me how ta save your life? Drink.”

“You insufferable.”

“I been told.”

Winston held the jug with firm hands to May’s lips until she shook her head, “no more.”

“A little more. You doin’ good.”

May took a little more. Winston set the jug down.

“Lemme know when you ready for some more. Gotta release the pressure of this here tourniquet. Was the blood bright red?”

May nodded.

Winston slowly untwisted the tourniquet, eyeing the wound. May responded with clenched fists and an anxious expression while blood flowed from the wound. He wiped the area where the bullet went in, using the antiseptic wipes from the kit.

“You done good, Mother.”

“I feel it, the blood going back into my leg. It’s tingly.”

“That’s good, that’s good.”

Winston released the tourniquet fully and removed the t-shirt. The wound was considerable. The 7.62-millimeter AK-47 round had penetrated at an angle, causing more damage than he originally presumed, and there was no exit wound, which meant that the bullet was still in her leg. The wound continued to bleed considerably, but it was better to keep the tourniquet off even if the femoral artery was hit. Winston hoped she could keep her leg.

“It’s prickly.”

“Let’s get you onto your back and elevate that leg some more.”

“I’ll try.”

Winston put one hand under her hip, the other under her knees. May used her elbows, and they rotated her body until she was flat on her back, and he put his own pillows under her knee. Winston saw on her face that she was in pain, and he knew first-hand what a wound like this felt like. He found and hung a saline IV bag from one of the nails that supported the basketball hoop, trying to remain stoic for the next step. He’d never injected a shot in his life, let alone prepared an IV drip. He was nervous.

“The IV is saline. Book says it helps your body make new blood.”

She nodded as he found the morphine in the kit.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Morphine. It’ll help you sleep.”

“But I’m already sleepy.”

“This’ll seal the deal. I don’ need you dreamin’ a us runnin’ along some romanic beach in Jamaica and you start moanin’ out my name. This’ll make you sleep soundly .”

“Oh, Winston…,” May softly moaned and smirked, watching him work on her. He had to remove the bullet and he was just following the book’s instructions, thankful for Duffy and the first aid kit. If he did manage to deliver all of the nukes to the U.S. military, hopefully there would be help for her. If he was caught, then nothing here mattered. At least she’d sleep through the nuclear explosion.

“This gon’ pinch.”

“They always say that.”

Winston expertly prepared the vein, tied off her arm, inserted the needle, and started the drip. He squirted the morphine — all of it — into the line.

“I saw Amadeus today. Let me pet him awhile. He sends his love.”

“He’s okay? Amadeus?”

“He lovin’ it out there.”

“That makes me happy. I thought I lost you.”

“I thought I lost me.” May, close to tears, cried, “I love you so much, Winston.”

Winston kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and then her lips.

“We gon’ be alright.”

She raised a hand and put it to his cheek, the cheek with her blood still on it, “ you make me happy. And pie.”

“Now, May, let me do my work here,” he said, looked at her and feigned a grin, “you make the pie.”

The morphine worked instantaneously. He didn’t tell her about Sergeant Duffy, the nukes, or the mission he had been pressed into. When she asked about where he found the military first aid kit, he lied and told her that it was with the medical book, hidden in Med’s house. As she drifted off to sleep, he found two types of forceps — one straight and one that looked like scissors. Fancy tweezers, really. Right before the morphine took full effect, May appeared to remember something. Her eyes grew wide, but her mouth couldn’t verbalize her thoughts.

When she was unconscious, Winston once again consulted the book. He was about as ready as any other seventy-two-year-old man about to remove a bullet from his wife of fifty years. He switched the headlamp’s red LEDs to bright white and focused their beams into the wound. He spread open the destruction on May’s thigh with the forceps and a wince, quickly sopped up the blood, and tossed the gauze down on the bloody pages with the pi symbol, not noticing the primal scribbling. A metallic glint shone deep inside her muscle tissue. He clamped onto it, gently applying forward and backpressure, and removed the amoeba-shaped bullet. She was lucky it hadn’t hit her anywhere else, like her chest.