A stick-skinny man with a bald head and a long mullet down his back approached him. Ramirez focused on him. The skinny man was wringing his hands as he spoke. “It’s my gal. She’s hurting awful bad. You gotta help her, Mister.”
Ramirez scanned the crowd. “Where is she?”
He thumbed the trailer behind them. “Just inside.”
Ramirez motioned him forward. “Lead the way, sir.”
The skinny man led them up the cracked concrete of the driveway. The crowd of onlookers parted as the small caravan passed but quickly closed ranks behind them, jostling for another view.
Ramirez and Drifts lifted their medical bags off of the stretcher, which they left at the bottom of the stairs, and proceeded to follow the man inside. As he cracked the seal of the door, a pungent smell of blood and decay struck Ramirez in the nostrils.
“Mmmph!” Leo gritted his teeth.
Noticing his partner’s sudden pause, Drifts looked inside the doorway. “What’s the matter . . . shit! He staggered back as if he was actually assaulted, throat heaving. The crowd that tried to press in quickly departed several feet back out of the splash zone. Drifts grabbed his knees trying not to wretch.
Ramirez took a slow breath, “Sam, are you okay?”
Drifts held up a finger.
“Do you need anything?”
The EMT shook his head.
“We’re going to go on in and check out our patient.”
Drifts waved them on.
“Come on, Justin.”
The student followed him in. “Oh, wow,” he said as he caught his first whiff.
“Are you okay?” asked Ramirez.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Leo, I grew up on a farm. Sometimes I ate breakfast smelling worse than this.”
“Okay.”
“She’s back over yonder. I’ll show ya,” said their skinny guide.
They followed him down a narrow hallway lined with picture frames and shelves full of Precious Moments figurines and other knick knacks. He led them into a back bedroom where the rancid smell grew ten times in potency.
Ramirez ignored it as he took in the room. It had a large chest of drawers and full-sized bed crammed into its small confines. His gaze fell on the room’s two occupants. A wizened woman, who sat by the bedside, met his eyes with a frightened expression. She was holding the hand of a teenage girl. The girl, dressed only in a nightshirt, was even paler than the sweat-soaked cotton linen she wore. The girl had a distended abdomen and between her legs was a thick tangle of towels and other cloths. All of the linens were soaked with amalgam of blood and pus. Without showing any signs of slowing the vile fluid continued to ooze out from her partially-exposed vagina.
Ramirez moved forward and felt the young girl’s wrist. “Justin, go ahead and spike a bag of normal saline.” He turned to face the older woman, “Ma’am, my name is Leonardo, and this is my paramedic student, Justin. What is this young lady’s name?”
“This here is my granddaughter, Maybelline Swanson,” she said with a croaking voice.
Ramirez nodded as he placed an oxygen mask on Maybelline’s face, and jotted her name down on his glove. “How long has this been going on?”
“Her belly has been paining her all day. She started bleeding like that maybe two hours ago. I thought that she was having an extra powerful monthly, seeing as how they’ve been so irregular of late.”
Justin placed the spiked IV bag on the bed. Ramirez told him, “Put her on the monitor and get me some vital signs.” He turned to look at the older woman. “You said her periods were irregular. How irregular were they?”
The grandmother’s eyes went wide. “I don’t rightly know. That’s the girl’s business, but I do believe I heard her say that they had been scarce the last six months or so.” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Just what are you trying to imply?”
Before he could answer, Drifts walked in muttering under his breath, “Why is it always the last fucking room down the hall.”
He froze at the door. An instant later, he was beside Justin and took the monitor out of his hands. “I’ve got this kid, go ahead and start the line?”
Justin looked at him perplexed. “Line?”
Drifts rolled his eyes in exasperation. “The IV, kid. Start the IV.”
“Oh! Okay.” He placed a tourniquet on the girl’s limp arm and looked for a vein.
Ramirez focused on the girl. “Maybelline! Can you hear me?” She didn’t answer.
He placed his knuckle on her chest grinded down on her sternum. The girl groaned, and her hand came up limply before it flopped back down.
“What are you doing?” demanded the older woman.
Ramirez answered her flatly, “I’m trying to see just how sick she is, ma’am. She’s unconscious and only responding to pain.
“Oh.”
Drifts looked up from his stethoscope. “Blood pressure is 78/32, heat rate 152, respers are 38. I can’t get a reading on the pulse oximetry.”
Ramirez nodded.
“I got the IV!” Justin exclaimed. “Oops.”
Blood began to seep out of the open catheter. Drifts moved to help the student grumbling not quite inaudibly under his breath, “. . . ing baby sitting . . .”
The EMT popped off the tourniquet, clamped off the IV catheter and assisted him to clean and tape up the line and attach it to the bag of saline. Drifts unceremoniously took a small velvet picture frame off its spot on the wall and handed it to the man who guided them in. “Here take this.” He then hung the IV bag on the nail hook and opened up the bag of fluids.
“Ma’am, does Maybelline have any medical problems that she is being treated for by a doctor?”
“No.”
“Is she allergic to anything?”
“She’s powerful allergic to cats.”
“I hear that.” Drifts chimed in.
Ramirez continued. “What about medicines?”
“Just Tylenol every once in a while.”
“Does she take birth control pills?”
The older woman looked scandalized. “Goodness no! She is thirteen years old!”
Ramirez sighed. “Ma’am, there isn’t any way to put this delicately, but I believe that Maybelline here is pregnant.”
The grandmother gasped but Ramirez pushed through her reaction. “Moreover, I think that she is miscarrying. That would be dangerous enough, but since the days of the outbreak, that can mean dangerous consequences especially for the mother.”
“Mother?” the older woman breathed.
“Yes ma’am, I’ve seen this before. This is very dangerous for Maybelline. We need to get her to the hospital immediately.”
“But she’s a good Christian girl! How could this have happened?” asked the grandmother.
“My guess is that Maybelline had a less than pious moment six or seven months ago,” interjected Drifts.
“Sam!” snapped Ramirez. Justin stared at the EMT with a slack jaw.
The grandmother’s fear multiplied. “What will happen to her if we don’t do anything?”
“She will bleed out and grow septic from the infection. Plus if the surgeons don’t remove the miscarried fetus from her soon, it will infect Maybelline, and she herself will turn.”
“My sweet Maybelline has one of the soulless inside her now?”
Ramirez nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
The older woman digested this info for all of a second before she whirled on their skinny guide standing in the doorway. “You!” She snarled. “This is all your fault, you son of a bitch!”
She launched herself at him with a speed that belied her age. She slammed him back into the hallway wall. Pictures cracked and clattered to the floor and a few Precious Moments figurines plummeted and shattered upon impact.
The skinny man screamed, “Wait, Grandmomma Edith! Stop it! Ow!”
Ramirez and Drifts ran over and yanked the two of them apart as the she raked her grandson across the face with her yellow nails.
“Enough!” shouted Ramirez. “We don’t have time for this!”
“Get off of me!” the old woman screeched.
Still holding fast, Ramirez snapped, “Ma’am, I’m trying to prevent a hot-drill from going into Maybelline’s forehead!”
Both relatives stopped struggling. They stared in unison at the young girl.
Grandmomma Edith asked, “What can we do to help?”
“For starters, quit fighting!” He pointed at the skinny guy. “You go with my partner and help him lift our stretcher into this place. Then stay outside. We don’t need any more trouble!”
“Hey now!” the skinny man started to protest. “This is my home! You can’t be telling me when I can or can’t be coming out of my own home!”
“You do as he says, Virgil, you useless piece of shit! Now get!” snarled Grandmomma Edith.
Drifts followed him out with a smirk. “I guess she told him.”
“Who was that?” Ramirez asked.
“That there’s Virgil Thompkins. He’s Maybelline’s uncle.”
“And is he . . .”
“Curse me for a damned fool, but he’s probably the one who seeded her with child. They were close up till seven or eight months ago when something changed. After that, she didn’t want nothing to do with him. I think we all suspected something but I guess we were afraid to ask.”
Ramirez nodded then looked at Justin. “Go ahead and see if you can get another line before we load her up.”
He took a few minutes to get some more logistical information. By then, Drifts had returned. Justin looked up from the girl’s arm. “I can’t get it!”
“It’s okay. Let me see.” Ramirez reached over and felt the placement of the needle. Grabbing it with two fingers, he angled it slightly and slid it forward. He felt the familiar pop of the vein and blood oozed into the IV hub. “There you go.”
“Whoa,” said Justin, “That was amazing.”
Ramirez shrugged. “I’ve done it once or twice. Go ahead and secure it for now; we’ll spike a second bag in the rig.” He quickly felt her carotid. It was weaker. “We need to get her going now.”
“Where are you taking her?” asked Grandmomma Edith.
“Memorial is the best place for her,” said Ramirez.
“What about Children’s?” she asked.
Ramirez shook his head. “They don’t do deliveries there, especially of this nature.”
“Oh. No, I’d imagine not.”
The three of them used the sheets Maybelline was lying on like a hammock to carry her through the narrow hallway to their stretcher. Drifts elevated her feet on the stretcher to promote higher blood pressure to her core. Moments later, with Justin carrying their medical bags, the two partners swiftly carried her and the stretcher down the stairs and up the driveway to their ambulance.
The crowd, which had amassed even more onlookers thanks to their rig, parted a respectable distance as they passed by. Many of them called, “Get better girl!” or “We’ll be praying!” They swiftly closed ranks behind them.
Once inside Justin stowed the medical bags in their compartments and joined Ramirez in the back. While spiking her second bag of saline Ramirez said, “Sam, do you think you can get out of here, okay?”
Taking a moment to look over the map book he said, “I think so. I was just about to-”
His words ceased as the passenger side door opened and Virgil stepped up into Ramirez’s seat. Drifts voice was artic. “And what do you think that you’re doing?”
Virgil put on the seatbelt as he answered, “I’m riding to the hospital with you.”
Drifts reached over and pressed the release button of Virgil’s seatbelt. “No, you aren’t. I don’t take passengers.”
“She’s my niece. Her family should be there for her,” Virgil said as he re-clamped his seatbelt.
Again Drifts pressed the button. “From what I heard, you did enough for her already. Now get the fuck out of my truck!”
Ramirez came forward and poked his head into the compartment. “What’s going on? We need to go now!”
Drifts pointed a thumb at the passenger seat’s occupant. “This goomba wants to ride to the fucking hospital with us.”
Ramirez regarded the man coldly. “Absolutely not!”
Drifts stepped out of the unit and walked around to open the passenger door. “You heard the man. Out!”
“Please!” Virgil whispered a plea. “They’ll kill me if I stay.”
Drifts hauled him out forcefully. “I doubt it! They’ve learned to live with your sorry ass this long. I don’t see them changing how they deal with you now that they’re forced to admit what you are and what they fucking allowed you to be!”
He slammed the door closed and stomped around to his side of the truck. “Fucking inbred pieces of rat shit!” he muttered to himself before he grabbed the mic and spoke in his radio voice. “Unit Triple-Three en route to Downtown Memorial on a code one.”
“Acknowledge, Triple-Three.”
He pressed the sirens blared the horn mainly for Virgil’s benefit as he set off down the road at full tilt.
Ramirez looked at his student. “Justin, grab the airway kit out of the bin right there.”
Justin did as he was asked. He looked at the older medic with wide eyes. “She’s still breathing.”