4. Lance
Lance
Training takes over before panic can fully set in.
My hands are already on the trauma shears by the time Josh and I transfer George from the paramedic gurney to the bed.
I start cutting away his jeans and my brain catches up half a step later, registering that these are the same ones he wore when he brought takeout to my place three days ago.
The pressure dressing is wrapped tight around his thigh, soaked through and bleeding into the denim.
When the fabric falls away in strips, the grease stains along the outer leg are unmistakably his, and the recognition hits me harder than it should.
“Alright, let’s get him exposed and assessed.” My voice comes out steady and clinical, which is a miracle considering my best friend is bleeding on my trauma bed. “George, I need you to stay still and let us work. Can you do that for me?”
His voice is rough with pain, but he manages something close to a smile through clenched teeth. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Sure it isn’t. Stay put.” I cut through his work shirt next, the fabric stiff with dried blood and motor oil, and focus very hard on the wound and not on the fact that I probably know every scar on the body I’m currently cutting clothes off.
His dark brown eyes meet mine. There’s pain, yes, but there’s also trust and maybe even relief. “Okay.”
Dr. Fernandez pushes through the trauma bay doors already gloved and gowned, her sharp eyes taking in the scene in a single sweep. “What’ve we got, Bradford?”
“Deep laceration to the anterior right thigh, about six inches.” I peel back the gauze as I talk, exposing the wound in stages. “Significant blood loss on scene, now seems controlled.”
“Good.” Dr. Fernandez moves to George’s other side, her hands already assessing his right hand where the swelling is obvious even through the temporary splint the paramedics applied. “Patient’s name?”
“George Torres-Macklin.” I keep my voice even. Saying his name out loud in this room, in this context, requires more effort than it should.
“Mr. Torres-Macklin, I’m Dr. Fernandez. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Just George, ma’am.” George shifts on the bed, wincing as it pulls at his thigh. “Shelving unit at the shop wasn’t secured right. It came down when I was reaching up. Tried to catch it with my hand. Caught a sheet of metal across my leg on the way down.”
“Any loss of consciousness? Did you hit your head at all?”
“No, just my pride and apparently my common sense.”
I’m starting an IV in his left arm when the trauma bay doors swing open again.
Carter Hayes comes in fast, face drained of color and eyes scanning the room until they land on George.
He’s tall and broad-shouldered, carrying himself with rigid, effortful control while managing something he wasn’t prepared for.
Long black hair tied up in a messy bun, sharp jawline, striking dark eyes, and rugged, very manly pretty-boy face.
There’s blood on his shirt and on his hands.
His unblinking focus stays on George, like he’s trying to verify his business partner is still breathing.
When he finally looks away from George to speak to me, it takes visible effort.
“Is he okay? I tried calling his emergency contact, but no one picked up.” The words come out fast and uneven, and then his gaze shifts to me, recognizing me. “Lance. Thank god you’re here.”
“Carter,” I say, taping down George’s IV.
I’m cleaning the thigh wound with sterile saline, irrigating away the dried blood so we can see what we’re dealing with.
The laceration is deep and uneven, cutting through skin and subcutaneous tissue into the fascia, angled across the front of his right thigh.
It runs a few inches along the muscle, deeper at one end where the metal must have caught harder.
It’s bad, but it could have been worse. Another inch over and it would have hit the femoral artery, and we’d be having a very different conversation right now.
“Wound edges are clean, no obvious foreign debris,” I report, noting that I keep catching myself looking at his face instead of the wound and pulling my attention back each time. “No active arterial bleeding. There’s some muscle involvement but I’m not seeing tendon damage.”
“Good.” Dr. Fernandez steps in closer, looking down at the wound as I finish clearing the blood.
Now that it’s clean, the depth is easier to assess.
Her experienced eyes take in what I’ve already noted.
“We’ll probe a little bit more just to see if there’s any further damage inside, then irrigate thoroughly and close in layers.
Bradford, set up for suturing. Josh, get a portable X-ray on that right hand. ”
Carter lingers near the door, like he wants to step in but doesn’t know where to put himself. “I tried calling you,” he says, voice tight. “You’re listed as George’s emergency contact. I didn’t know if you were on shift or if I should keep trying.”
I glance up from the tray, meeting his eyes for a beat. “Thanks for bringing him in. I’ve got him.”
The emergency contact thing is news to me, but there’s no time to unpack it.
Somehow, George upgraded me from annoying-but-charming best friend to official emergency contact, skipping over Trevor and his actual family.
That’s a conversation for later, when George isn’t actively bleeding on my table and I’m not working very hard to pretend this is just any other patient.
“Alright, George.” Dr. Fernandez slips on a fresh pair of gloves and moves toward his thigh. “We’re going to close it in layers. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but you will have anesthesia. Bradford here will help manage pain and keep you distracted. Sounds good?”
“Sounds like I don’t have much choice,” George says, the thread of humor in his voice thin but present, which is so entirely him that it does something unhelpful to my concentration.
“You really don’t,” I reply, moving to his side and laying out the sterile drapes. “But Dr. Fernandez is excellent at her job, so try to breathe through it, G.”
Dr. Fernandez starts irrigating the wound, pushing out debris with steady, deliberate pressure. George’s entire body goes rigid in response, his jaw clamping down hard, and without making a conscious decision about it I shift my position so I’m close enough for him to reach me if he needs to.
“You’re doing great,” I say, low enough that it’s just for him. “Breathe through it. Almost done.”
His hand shoots out and grabs a fistful of my scrub top.
The fabric bunches and pulls under his grip, forcing me to crouch lower to compensate, close enough now to hear exactly how hard he’s working to keep his breathing controlled.
His knuckles have gone white around my scrubs. I don’t say anything about it.
“Bradford, hold retraction here while I assess the depth,” Dr. Fernandez says.
I position myself so I can use both hands to hold the wound apart, giving Dr. Fernandez a clear view of the underlying tissue. George’s hand releases my scrub top, but the tremor when it lands against my thigh is unmistakable.
“Charlie, my co-worker, has had a crush on you for months,” I say, keeping my focus on Dr. Fernandez as she works. “She asks about you every shift we work together.”
George makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.
“She keeps asking if you have a girlfriend, whether I’ll set you two up,” I continue. “You’ve got a real head start now. Getting stitched up in the ED is a hell of a conversation starter. You could coast on this for weeks, and us nurses would eat it up.”
“I’m sure injuries come up a lot,” George says, and this time the laugh is clear.
Dr. Fernandez lets out an amused sound without looking up from her work. “Bradford, are you using my trauma bay for matchmaking?”
“Just keeping the patient calm, Doctor. All part of holistic care.”
I hold the edges of the wound and count the stitches as Dr. Fernandez places them, fourteen in all, precise and even.
I keep my eyes on the wound and my mind away from the margin by which this could have gone differently.
At some point George stops fighting the pain, and starts breathing through it instead.
George is watching me. I feel it before I even look, some kind of attention he doesn’t give out to just anyone. I’ve known it long enough to recognize it without seeing it.
When I glance up, just for a second, our eyes meet.
Something in his face is different, underneath all the pain. Nothing to do with the morphine, or the too-bright fluorescent lights overhead.
I drop my gaze back to the wound, but I can still feel it on me.
“You okay?” I ask, because it is a safe, clinical, completely reasonable question.
“Yeah.” His voice has dropped. “I’ve never really seen you in action before—not like this.”
The comment lingers too long, and my mouth opens before my brain can slam on the brakes. “Well, you’ve seen me in action before,” I say, teasing. “But in a much different context.”
George’s eyes widen slightly, and I can see the exact moment he realizes I just referenced it.
Azure Tides. The nights we haven’t spoken about once since they happened. His breath catches sharply. Mine follows it immediately, which is spectacularly bad timing given that I’m supposed to be managing his pain levels and not creating new problems.
I clear my throat, pull out the grin I keep for emergencies, and let my eyes go narrow in warning. “Hopefully this is the last time you see me in this particular context. Try not to have any more shelving units fall on you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Dr. Fernandez finishes the last suture and leans back to assess her work. “That should hold nicely. Let’s get those X-rays of his hand. Bradford, start him on pain medication and antibiotics.”
The portable X-ray tech arrives, takes the films, and a few minutes later the images fill the monitor showing a severe sprain of the fourth metacarpal with significant soft tissue swelling throughout the hand.
No fracture, which is the good news. Painful, but it will recover with proper immobilization and time.
Dr. Fernandez examines the images and nods.
“Three weeks in a splint, minimum,” she says, padding his hand carefully before applying the hard splint.
“No heavy lifting, keep it completely dry, and follow up with orthopedics in a week to make sure everything is settling correctly. The thigh wound will need daily dressing changes for the next ten to fourteen days.” She looks up at George.
“Do you have someone at home who can help with that?”
“I can manage it myself,” George says, wincing slightly as she makes a final adjustment to the splint.
“Oh, I can do it!” Charlie’s voice comes from just outside the trauma bay.
I turn to see her lingering near the doorway, a patient chart in her hands.
She must have been passing by and caught the end of our conversation.
“I don’t mind making house calls for wound care. It’s actually kind of my thing.”
The irritation moves through me before I can get in front of it. I keep it off my face.
Dr. Fernandez is watching this entire exchange as if she’s seen this exact scenario play out in her ED many times before.
“We have community nurses for home visits. I was thinking more along the lines of someone close to you who can step in if needed. If there’s no one, we can organize nurse visits. What do you think, George?”
He glances at me, then across at Charlie, navigating the polite path to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.
“I can do it,” I say firmly, even more decisive than I intend. “We know each other, and I know where he lives. I’m off tomorrow morning so it’s not an issue.”
Charlie’s expression falters for a split second before she recovers with a professional smile. “Oh, right. If you need someone to cover a day, just let me know.”
“Will do,” I say, with the intention of handling every dressing change, rain or shine.
Dr. Fernandez finishes wrapping the splint, sits back, and strips off her gloves, already mentally moving to the next patient. “Bradford is an excellent nurse. You’re in very good hands.”
“Good hands,” George repeats, and there’s something in his tone that pushes heat up the back of my neck. “Good to know.”
“You’ll be sore for a few days, but you’ll heal up fine as long as you follow the instructions carefully. Bradford will coordinate your wound care.” Dr. Fernandez pauses, and the faintest amusement crosses her face.
“Thank you, Doctor,” George says, sounding grateful even with the morphine taking some of the bite out of him. “Appreciate you not letting me bleed out.”
“That’s what we’re here for. Try not to make this a regular occurrence.”
Carter helps George into the wheelchair that hospital policy requires for all discharging patients, and I find myself walking with them toward the exit despite having three patients still waiting on me.
The automatic doors slide open and the night air comes in, warm and carrying the faint salt edge that San Diego evenings hold onto long after the sun is gone.
It’s past eight-thirty and the parking lot sits under amber floodlights, the sky above it a deep, flat blue that hasn’t decided to go fully dark yet.
George looks up at me from the wheelchair, his eyes still a little unfocused but clearer than they were almost an hour ago.
“Thanks,” he says.
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning around ten,” I hear myself say. “I’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need set up.”
Our eyes stay on each other for a moment, neither of us filling it with anything.
Carter clears his throat. “We should probably get going, and I need to figure out what the hell we’re doing about the shop and that death trap of a shelving unit.”
I watch them go, Carter pushing the wheelchair across the lit asphalt as their voices carry a mix of insurance talk and workplace safety. When they finally disappear around the corner, I notice my hands are shaking.
I hadn’t noticed them shaking before that.