The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [108]
ABC, she thought. Airways, Breathing, Circulation. She knelt next to him, tilting back his head a little to check his mouth. No blood, which was encouraging, and no obstructions. He blinked and gazed at her with eyes that might be unfocused and shocky, but still seemed reasonably present.
“What happened?” she asked, not only because she wanted to know but also to establish contact and to find out whether he could answer.
He didn’t even attempt to reply, just closed his eyes again, but it seemed more dispirited than actually comatose. He wasn’t unconscious, in her estimation; his breathing was fast and pain-afflicted, but unhindered, and his hands reasonably warm. There seemed to be no catastrophic hemorrhage going on, inside or out. She pulled the bloodied shirt to one side. He had been shot high in the chest, above the heart. The entrance wound was not enormous, but she could see no exit wound, which suggested that the projectile was still somewhere in his body, possibly lodged against the scapula. That, too, was to his advantage right now. Exit wounds were messy. Cautiously, she pushed back the lips of the wound. She could see splinters of bone in among the bleeding tissue. The man’s collarbone had been shattered. The sharp fragments worked like shrapnel inside his shoulder, increasing both the bleeding and the pain, but the shot must have missed all major arteries, and he was not lethally wounded. He was beginning to rock back and forth, probably in an effort to escape what was no doubt a significant level of pain.
“Hold still,” she said. “Moving makes it worse.”
He heard her. He stopped rocking, even though his eyes stayed firmly closed.
Nina glanced around for anything that might be used as an emergency compress, but this was not the kind of home that had tablecloths and cozy plaids and decorative cushions on the couch. In the end, she took off her own shirt and used it for a makeshift bandage; there was nothing she could cover him with to alleviate the effects of the shock, and the only thing she could use to pillow his head were the blood-spattered dollar bundles.
She had done what could be done for him. She turned her attention on the woman.
She was struggling feverishly against her bonds. Her smooth brown hair stuck damply to her forehead, and she had obviously been crying. There was something familiar about her, but Nina couldn’t quite pinpoint what.
Nina had pushed the cries of the younger woman from her consciousness while tending to the injured man, and this might have given her the impression that Nina didn’t care and wouldn’t help her. At any rate, she had stopped shouting. But now her eyes glittered wetly, and she spoke, in slow careful English.
“Please. Help me.”
Nina spotted a box cutter in the jumble of tools, wires, and whatnots scattered on the coffee table from an upturned toolbox. She used it to cut the tape that held the woman down. The minute she was free, the woman catapulted off the floor and exploded into motion with a speed that seemed out of sync with her short, square, unathletic figure. She seized the toolbox with her good hand and ran out of room.
At that moment, shots rang out from above. Two shots, close together.
Nina suffered a brief moment of doubt. She glanced at the injured man. She wasn’t sure how stable his condition was, but there was little else she could do for him now. She wiped both hands across her face. They were trembling, she noted, little sharp jitters she couldn’t control. She checked her watch again to steady herself, and at that moment her subconscious finally came up with the answer, and she knew who the woman must be.
It was 9:39 p.m. Nina gave the injured man one last look, then