Her hands, one over the other, pressing firmly, were covered in thick, crimson blood. She pushed harder; she needed to stop the bleeding. Beneath her hands, his body writhed momentarily, but he was too weak to resist her firm touch. A guttural moan accompanied his shaky exhale. His breathing was growing increasingly ragged.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” she stated. She looked up and studied his pale face. His eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth twisted into an awful grimace. “Then we need to go.”
He nodded once. His wavy hair lay in thick, wet locks against his clammy forehead.
Beneath her hands, the wound kept bleeding. The knife had been twisted before being pulled out, ripping flesh and muscle. It was low on his flank, but she had no idea if it had done any serious internal damage. The knife had been small, but it had been used forcefully. And now, a few minutes after the attack, blood had soaked through his white shirt and a dark stain was growing steadily on his denim jacket.
Her left hand wrapped around his hand, which had balled her shirt into a fist. Loosening the grip from her shirt, she guided his hand to the wound on his side. Once both of his hands were over the wound, she pressed them into the wound - mimicking the action she had just been doing. “Press as hard as you can until I say stop,” she said softly, “okay?”
Her hand tucked a drenched curl behind his ear as he nodded. He opened his hazy, green eyes to slits and met her gaze. He had been hurt many times before, but not this badly. He was scared, and she could see it in his eyes.
She broke her gaze away and pulled her shirt off of her body. She gulped, noticing for the first time that her shirt was stained in his blood, too, and that the blood had soaked through and dried in the crevices of her toned stomach. She gagged; he didn’t notice.
His legs were bending and straightening as he tried to control his breathing. Each breath hurt, but he needed to regain his composure. If they were going to get out of there, he needed to calm down. His heart was racing - not such a great thing when you’re trying not to bleed out. His muscles were tensing and spasming, making the pain worse; he needed to relax. But each movement brought with it a renewed agony. He was lost in a world of pain, and she was worried that he would never come out of it.
She bent over him, moved his hands and lifted his shirt. She tried not to react when she saw the gnarly wound. Immediately, she pressed his hands against the bleeding flesh and reminded him to “press hard, okay?” He was weakening, but nodded and did as told.
Inhaling deeply, she braced herself and turned him slightly on his side so she could slip her torn up shirt beneath him. He yelled hoarsely as the movement jostled the wound. His one bloodied hand left the wound and gripped her forearm so tightly that her arm almost buckled. She rounded him, and repeated the process on the other side so she could pull the shirt out a bit, effectively making it easy to knot it in front.
He almost passed out from a mixture of pain and shock and blood loss, but he knew he couldn’t. However, neither he nor she was sure of how much longer he would be able to fight the looming darkness.
“This is going to suck…” she whispered, trailing off.
Tears slipped down his temples and into his hair. His hands had long since slipped from the wound.
With trembling hands, she pressed down the rough edges of skin and flesh, pulling the shirt tightly over it like a bandage. He jerked beneath her and groaned. “Sorry.” He gasped. She shook her head but couldn’t speak; her heart ached for him.
Behind her, she could hear footsteps and voices approaching. It was their backup. She breathed a sigh of relief; he was too injured to stand by himself, never mind walk, but she wouldn’t be able to carry him alone. Keeping the shirt pressed tightly against the wound on one side, she knotted it on the other side of his torso; it now looked like he was wrapped in a thick bandage. She tried (and failed) to ignore his pained wheezes.
“We need to go.” He said shakily. He gripped her arm with one hand and started pushing himself to a sitting position with the other arm. She had to grip his shoulders as he pushed up, otherwise he wouldn’t have made it up. Once seated, he was breathless and trembling so viciously that it reverberated through her. She shuffled closer, on her knees beside him. Once she got close enough, he all but collapsed into her. He was fast losing his grip on consciousness.
She didn’t know how they were going to get him out of there, but she prayed he lived through it.
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