Blood in the Water

Nobody calls dispatch at three in the morning because things are going well.

When the radio on the dash of Medic 4 squealed with a water-rescue code, I was three minutes away from clocking out of a fourteen-hour shift. My partner, Milan, had already unzipped his boots. He had half a powdered doughnut balanced on the steering wheel and two energy drinks rattling in the cup holders.

"Don't touch the mic," he mumbled, powdered sugar clinging to his graying mustache. "If you touch that mic, Lenka, I will leave you on the curb."

The radio squawked again. The dispatcher's voice had that flat, nasal drone peculiar to municipal employees who had given up on caffeine and survived solely on spite.

Unit 4, we have a river rescue in progress. Pier Nine, downstream of the Old Iron Bridge. Harbor patrol reports a body in the current.

"Pier Nine is Zemanek territory," I said, reaching over his knee to grab the radio. "They don't let municipal rigs past the brewery gate."

"Then let them fish him out with a mash paddle," Milan grunted.

I keyed the mic. "Unit 4 copies. En route to Pier Nine. ETA four minutes."

"I hate your work ethic," Milan said. He slammed the ambulance into drive and swung the heavy rig across the rain-slick asphalt of River Street.

The city smelled like wet asphalt, sulfur, and the sour, yeasty reek of fermenting barley from the Zemanek industrial complex. Rain came down in thick, grey sheets, drumming against the windshield with the rhythm of a failing heart. Out here on the western bank of the Ostrov River, the streetlights were mostly shattered globes of amber glass, casualties of stray gravel from the grain trucks.

We hit the chain-link gates of Pier Nine with our sirens off. The Zemanek syndicate hated sirens. Two private guards in heavy canvas coats stepped out of the gatehouse, flashlights cutting through the downpour. They didn't ask for our badges. They saw the red crosses on the ambulance doors and waved us through with a jerky, urgent motion of their arms.

"That's new," Milan muttered, slowing the rig near the water's edge. "Usually they make us wait while they hide the contraband."

"Keep the engine running," I said. I grabbed my primary trauma bag and the portable suction unit from the rear compartment. "If someone went into the Ostrov tonight, we have about six minutes before hypothermia stops his heart."

The river was a black, churned mass of foam and grease. Timber pilings groaned against the concrete wharf as the current slammed into them. The storm had brought the river up two feet past flood stage, tossing debris against the dock: broken pallets, plastic crates, and thick coils of mooring hemp.

Then I saw him.

He was pinned against a cluster of rotted wooden pilings twenty yards out, chest-deep in the churning water. His hands were locked into the creosote timber with terrifying grip strength.

"Over here!" I yelled over the roar of the river.

Milan ran up beside me with a throw rope and a floating spine board. "He's not floating. He's holding on."

"He's losing his grip," I said.

The man's head rolled back. In the beam of Milan's spotlight, his face looked carved from wet chalk. His dark hair was plastered across his forehead, and his lips were an unnatural, bruised purple. But it was his chest that made my stomach drop.

His heavy wool coat was shredded down to the lining. Four long, parallel gouges tore through his chest, from his left collarbone straight down across his ribs. The lacerations were three inches wide, edges ragged and weeping thick, dark blood into the river foam.

"What did that?" Milan yelled, securing the rope to an iron cleat on the dock. "A barge prop?"

"Propellers chop," I said, kicking off my boots and securing the harness around my waist. "They leave blunt crush patterns and fractured bone. Those are clean tears. Like something pulled him through a meat rake."

"Lenka, wait for harbor patrol!"

"He's slipping, Milan! Slack on the line!"

I didn't wait for him to argue. I scrambled down the slick wooden ladder bolted to the pier face. The river hit me like an iron fist. Cold water tore through my uniform, knocking the wind out of my lungs and stealing every ounce of warmth in a single second. The current wanted to drag me south toward the industrial weir, but the harness held.

I kicked hard against the pilings, reaching for the man's coat collar. "I've got you!" I shouted. "Let go of the timber!"

His eyes opened.

They weren't the dazed, glassy eyes of a drowning victim. They were a vivid, burning amber, pupils dilated until almost no iris remained. For a split second, a low, rattling sound vibrated in his chest—not a cough, not a gasp for air, but an animal growl that vibrated straight through the icy water into my ribs.

His fingers unclenched from the wood. He collapsed into my arms, dead weight, heavy as lead.

"Pull!" I screamed upward. "Milan, haul us up!"

The rope snapped taut. Milan threw his back into the winch line on the dock rail. I wrapped both arms around the stranger's torso, kicking against the slimy dock wall to keep his head above the black water. Every time my chest pressed against his torn jacket, the copper smell of his blood cut through the stink of the river mud. It was thick, unnaturally hot against the freezing rain, and smelled faintly of scorched pine.

We cleared the dock lip in a tangle of wet canvas and scraping boots. Milan hauled us both onto the rough concrete pier.

"Is he breathing?" Milan panted, dropping to his knees beside the victim.

"Barely," I said, rolling the man onto his back. "Agonal respirations. Pulse is thready, over one-sixty."

My hands were shaking from the cold, but training took over the instant my knees hit the wet concrete. I tore open my trauma shears and sliced his coat and shirt down the center.

The injuries were catastrophic. Four distinct trenches dug across his pectoral muscles, exposing the gleaming white ridges of his ribs beneath. The third laceration had pierced the intercostal muscle. Every time he tried to draw breath, pink foam bubbled from the wound.

"Sucking chest wound," I said, snapping on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves. "Torn subclavian branch. He's bleeding out internally."

"Setting up the monitor," Milan said, fumbling with the lead wires in the rain. "I'll get an IV line started."

"No time for an IV here. Hand me the chest seals and the hemostatic gauze."

I ripped the packaging off a vented occlusive seal with my teeth. The wind tried to tear it from my fingers, but I pressed the adhesive square firmly over the bubbling hole in his ribs.

"Hold pressure right here," I told Milan. "The vessel is deep. I have to pack the wound."

I shoved three rolls of kaolin-impregnated gauze directly into the cavity beneath his left collarbone. The bleeding was terrifying. Most arterial bleeds pulse in bright crimson spurts, but this blood was dark as motor oil and radiated an intense, unnatural heat. It soaked through my gloves within seconds, steaming slightly against the icy rain.

As I jammed my fingers deeper into the wound to compress the torn vessel against his first rib, a sharp, jagged edge caught the meat of my left palm.

A shard of broken bone or torn cartilage sliced clean through the nitrile rubber.

Pain flared across my palm, sharp as a needle. The man's hot, dark blood poured directly into the open cut between my thumb and forefinger.

Thump.

My heart didn't just beat. It slammed against my ribcage like an iron piston.

The sound of the pouring rain vanished. The wind howling off the river cut out, replaced by a sudden, deafening silence that made my ears ring. The world didn't go dark; it erupted into blinding, razor-sharp focus.

I could see the individual drops of water hanging in mid-air above the man's chest. I could smell the salt in Milan's sweat three feet away, the burnt sugar of his doughnut, the stale nicotine in his jacket, and beneath it all, the terrifying, metallic tang of the blood soaking my skin.

A wave of blistering heat tore up the nerves of my arm, racing into my neck and locking my jaw tight. It felt like someone had injected liquid copper directly into my veins.

Get off him, a voice rasped in the back of my skull. It wasn't words. It was an instinct, raw and snarling, clawing at the base of my brain like a trapped animal trying to dig through floorboards.

"Lenka?"

Milan's voice sounded warped, slow, like an audio tape dragged through molasses.

"Lenka, your hands!"

I forced my eyes down. My fingers were locked into the man's chest wound, pressing the gauze with enough force to crack bone. But beneath my bloody palms, something impossible was happening.

The torn flesh wasn't just clotting. The ragged edges of his muscle tissue were pulling together, black veins writhing beneath the pale skin like submerged roots. The deep, fatal lacerations were sealing themselves from the bottom up, pushing the packing gauze out of the cavity as the tissue knitted shut.

"What is that?" Milan whispered, his face going entirely bloodless. "Lenka, look at his chest."

I pulled my hands back as if the man's skin had caught fire.

My own cut—the deep slice across my left palm—was burning with a white-hot itch. When I peeled off the shredded nitrile glove, the blood was already drying into a black crust. Beneath the crust, the skin was smooth, pink, and completely whole.

No scar. No wound. Nothing.

My breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. My internal temperature was skyrocketing, a fever so sudden and violent that steam rose from my wet uniform sleeves.

"He's stabilized," I managed to say. My voice sounded deeper, rough around the edges, like I had been swallowing smoke. "Look at the monitor."

Milan stared at the screen of the portable monitor. The flat, erratic rhythm had resolved into a steady, powerful pulse. Sixty beats per minute. Textbook normal. For a man who had two liters of blood floating in the river three minutes ago, it was medically impossible.

"We need to get him into the rig," Milan stammered, his eyes darting from the man's chest to my face. "Right now. Before dispatch asks why we haven't transported."

I reached down to gather the empty gauze wrappers from the wet dock. As I pulled the man's soaked coat straight to roll him onto the backboard, something heavy rolled out of his inner pocket and clattered against the concrete.