his head back and shut his eyes. He still held the bloody shirt to his head. Really, he didnât look so good. She realized he needed help. And she was just sitting thereâ¦
Blinking away the last of her dizziness, she went for the latch on her seat restraint. For a moment, she thought it was jammed, that somehow, in the landing, which had turned out to be something of a crash, it had been broken and stuck shut.
Panic tried to rise. She bit the inside of her cheek, focused on the sharp little pain, and worked at the latch some more.
A second later, it popped open.
She was out of the seat and ripping off her white shirt without even stopping to think about it. She wadded the cotton fabric into a ball and crouched over his seat. âDax.â She caught his chin with one hand. âLet me seeâ¦â
He lowered his hand and she saw the deep gash at his templeâthe really deep gash. Beneath all that blood, she could see the ivory luster of bone.
And the blood? It was still flowing, lots of it, pulsing from the wound in great gouts. It ran down the side of his face, into his eyes.
âHere. Use this.â She gave him her own shirt.
He dropped the blood-soaked one and put hers over the wound. Through the blood in his eyes, he looked at her in her bra and shorts. A corner of his mouth twitched in the faint hope of a smile. âIâve got you with your shirt off, and Iâm bleeding too hard to do a damn thing about it.â
âI need a first aid kit.â
âIn the floor compartment behind your seat.â He held her shirt to his head, but it was already soaking through, turning a bold, bright crimson.
âKeep the pressure on that. Good and firm.â
âRight.â He did as she instructed without a word of complaint, without giving her any argument. It was so unlike him to be docile. And that terrified her, brought the reality of their situation too sharply home.
The fuselage, amazingly, remained intact. They were reasonably safe inside. But outside the battered plane, the rain kept on coming, in buckets. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. The windscreen was a thick, pearly spiderweb of cracks, obscuring the world beyond. And the window in Daxâs door was the same, but with a small jagged hole punched clean through itâjust possibly caused by whatever had sliced his forehead open.
However, she could see well enough out the window in her door. Too bad visibility past the window was poor. Nothing but sheets of rain and, indistinctly, a wall of green where the jungle started.
Not now. Donât think about whatâs out there nowâ¦.
She squeezed between the seats and had to spend several precious seconds tossing supplies, suitcases and equipment back toward the baggage area. Water bottles were scattered everywhere, broken loose from the case of them theyâd brought along, rolling around on the floor. But finally, she got the area cleared. She was able to get the compartment open and take out a large, black canvas-covered bag with a white cross printed on the front.
âHow you doing back there?â Dax asked. âNeed help?â
âIâm on it. Just stay in your seat and keep the pressure on that wound.â She cleared a space on one of the backseats and zipped the bag open. It was a really good kitâway beyond the basics. More like something a paramedic might carry. It even contained the necessary tools for sewing up a manâs head.
I can do this. I took first aid. And then there was that survivalist training weekend sheâd gone on once in her ongoing effort to prove to her dad that she was as good as any of the boys. Theyâd taught her how to stitch up a wound over that weekend. She remembered thinking at the time that she would never need to use that particular skillâ¦
She sucked in a breathâand shook her head, hard. No. No negative thoughts could be allowed to creep in. She knew what she needed to do.
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