Chapter 30: Whoever Bleeds Worst

I knelt by Bianca first.

I did it without deciding.

Her pulse was a thread under my fingers, and the dark stain on her coat was spreading, not still.

I cut the coat open with the shears and found the hole under her ribs on the left.

Blood welled up black and fast.

"Pressure," I said to the nearest nurse. "Both palms, here, and don't let go if she screams."

"Livia," Massimo said from the second door.

"Wait."

"Livia, take her, I'm..."

"I said wait."

I did not look at him.

I clamped what I could reach, and packed the rest, and called for the saline.

Bianca's eyes opened a slit.

"Livia?" she said. "Am I..."

"Not yet."

"You chose me."

"I chose whoever's bleeding worst," I said. "Lie still."

I worked on her for twenty minutes, with Ettore's own doctor beside me for the last of it.

When her pressure held, I sat back on my heels and found my hands were shaking, now that I was allowed.

"She'll make it to the hospital," the doctor said. "If the ambulance is quick."

"It'll be quick," said Adriano from the doorway.

I hadn't heard him come back.

He had a rifle on his shoulder and a stained bandage knotted over his arm.

Two of his men lifted Bianca's door and carried her out into the lamplight, with the nurse still walking beside her, pressing down with both hands.

I turned on my knees.

Massimo lay on his door and had not made a sound.

The cut across his belly was long and shallow. It had split skin and a layer of muscle, and the blood had slowed on its own.

"You waited," I said, and I pulled on a clean glove.

"You told me to."

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