Scott Williams - The Pulse

Looking to the forward deck, he saw that the wild-haired Rastaman didn’t need any help and that he was the only person still standing on the boat. The smaller man that had engaged him in a deadly machete duel was now draped lifelessly over the forward crossbeam. Scully pushed the body the rest of the way overboard with one foot before he noticed Artie had come on deck.

“Scully! Are you all right?”

“I an’ I okay, but you miss dat udda mon. Quick, don’t let him go. Shoot ’im in de boat, ’cause he be comin’ bok wid he friends if he get away!”

Artie turned in the direction Scully was pointing. He could make out a small boat in the darkness—a rowboat manned solely by the last of the assailants, who was pulling desperately at a pair of oars to get away from the scene of the foiled attack.

“I can’t just shoot him. He’s running away,” Artie said. He still couldn’t believe that his shot from down in the hull had not blown the man’s head off. Apparently he had seen the muzzle of the 12-gauge pointing at his face just in time to move out of the line of fire and had decided to abandon the attack.

“How many were there, Scully? Just those two?”

“No, t’ree, mon. I kill de first one before you an’ de Copt’n wake up. Den dis last one keep tryin’ to cut me up, so I killing him too. You missed dat one an’ now he escapin’ to come bok again.”

All Artie needed to know was that the attack was over and he could focus on his brother. He passed the shotgun to Scully and rushed to the port companionway, terrified of what he might find after witnessing Larry receive such a vicious blow with such a big blade. Quickly descending the steps into the hull, he heard two more blasts from the shotgun as Scully fired at the man in the rowboat, but he couldn’t be concerned with that now. He held his breath as he dropped to his knees on the cabin sole, where Larry was curled up in a fetal position, clutching his right forearm with his other hand in an attempt to stanch the flow of blood that was welling out from beneath his fingers, soaking his shirt and pooling on the floorboards around him. He reached for the battery-powered lantern Larry had mounted over the galley stove and turned it on. He saw that his brother was also bleeding profusely from a long cut across his forehead that extended from his hairline to his right eyebrow. His attempt to parry the machete blow that would have split his skull succeeded in absorbing most of the force, but at the expense of a wicked cut to the blocking arm.

“It’s all right, Larry. I’m here now. You’ve just got a couple of little cuts.”

“Scully?”

“He’s fine. Not even hurt. He took out two of those guys single-handedly. The other one’s gone, or maybe he got him too.”

Larry grunted approval, but didn’t reply. He was clearly racked with pain. The blood from his scalp wound ran over his face and eyes unchecked until Artie reached for a roll of paper towels near the sink and wadded up a bunch of them to form a temporary compress.

“Scully! I need your help down here!”

When Scully reached his side, Artie instructed him to keep pressure on Larry’s head wound while he went to work on the far more serious slash to his brother’s arm. Holding pressure above the cut to control the blood flow, he pulled Larry’s left hand away so he could see the extent of the damage.

“It’s bad, huh, Doc?”

“Yeah, but at least you still have your arm.” Artie could see that the machete had cloven nearly halfway through his brother’s arm. Probably the only reason it didn’t sever it completely was that his arm gave with the force of the blow, like a shock absorber, allowing some of the energy to reach his forehead.

“Can you fix it?”

“I don’t think you’ll lose it, if that’s what you mean, but we need to get you to an ER, and ASAP.”

“You know we can’t do that, Doc.”

Artie had momentarily forgotten the larger situation in his haste to take care of this immediate crisis with his brother. His trained response was to rely on hospitals and the rest of the infrastructure supporting them, but he knew Larry was right, that was not even an option now. “Larry, I haven’t dealt with trauma patients since my internship. But I do know that you can’t fool around with a wound like this. You could lose your arm or even die if this gets infected.”

“I’ve got everything you need to take care of it in the ship’s first aid kit, over in the nav hull. Look under the chart table. Go! Scully and I will hold pressure on this ’til you get back.”

Artie returned with a big yellow Pelican case with a plain red sticker on it in the shape of an emergency cross. His brother was shivering despite the warm tropical night, so he grabbed a blanket off the bunk to cover his bare legs and feet. There was barely room in the slender catamaran hull for him and Scully to crouch, with Larry taking up most of the narrow cabin sole. Artie didn’t want to move him to the bunk until he knew the bleeding was under control.

His assessment of the damage led him to the conclusion that the ulna, the outward of the two forearm bones, which had been facing upward and outward in his blocking motion, was almost cut in two by the chopping blow of the sharp blade. It was no wonder that his brother was in severe pain and borderline shock. The damage to the bone would heal, much like a clean break, but Larry was facing a long recovery from the inevitable nerve and tissue damage. But the more immediate concern was stopping the flow of blood from the severed ulnar artery and numerous smaller vessels that had been cut.

“This is good,” Artie said, as he opened the case and examined the contents in surprise.

“It’s not your regular Boy Scout first aid kit,” Larry agreed, grimacing in pain as he spoke. “When you’re delivering boats across oceans, you’ve got to have what you need.”

“Got some good medicine in dat box,” Scully said. “De Copt’n, he know where to buy de good stuff.”

“I’ll say. Having the tools and supplies that I need will certainly make this easier.”

Artie ripped open a QuikClot sponge compress and pressed it into the deep slice in Larry’s arm.

“There’s a tourniquet in there too, Doc, if you think I need it.”

“No way, not if you want to keep your arm. We can keep the blood in check with pressure. The worst bleeding is from the ulnar artery, which is one of the main arteries in your arm. You’re lucky it’s a clean cut. The artery will seal itself off on its own if we keep up the pressure. Then we’ll clean this wound out and make sure it’s disinfected, and bandage it so it can’t open up again.”

“You gonna sew ’im up, Doctor?” Scully was still holding the makeshift compress on Larry’s head gash. Artie opened another sterile compress from the kit and gave it to Scully to replace the blood-saturated wad of paper towels.

“Not his arm, Scully. This cut is so deep, and into the bone, there’s too much chance of infection if we seal it completely, especially out here on a boat. I’m going to close it up with those butterfly sutures in the kit, and hold everything in place with some heavy tape over that. That way we can check it every day for signs of infection, in case it is still contaminated. We’ll keep the bandages changed and keep an eye on it. Do you have any duct tape on board, Larry?”

“You bet. Enough to put the whole boat back together if need be.”

“Good. Now that cut on your forehead, that’s another story. I think we can stitch that up with the suture kit in here so it won’t scar too badly.”

“De Copt’n gonna look like de pirate fo’ true now, mon. Scar on de face, big scar on de arm. De girls, dey like dat, dem.” He grinned at Larry, who didn’t look quite so amused at the prospect of a new, more rugged look.