[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/AtIxTRk.png[/img][/center] The SRHRT sat around the conference table in the tactical operations center, Alpha Team on one side and Bravo on the other, waiting for Harkins to start the brief. The eight men sat casually in the room, some reclining back, some with their feet up on the table, to the perpetual consternation of Elaine Townsend, the Chief of Operations. However, she knew better than to set herself up to be insulted by complaining about the men’s lack of discipline. She eyed the Alpha Team leader covertly from the head of the table, concealing her gaze with a stack of papers she was pretending to organize. Director Harkins came in before Elaine could indulge in any of the usual thoughts she had about the man. She pushed her blonde hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, we have a hostage situation on going in the Warehouse District,” he said indicating to the live feed on one of the big monitors in the back of the room. “The Chimera goon we nabbed awhile back finally coughed up some actionable intel on another one of their computer geeks, but as you can see he got tipped off somehow.” The live feed showed New Haven PD surrounding the place already, setting up a perimeter. It was an older storage warehouse that had not yet been renovated, set against the edge of the river. “All the necessary surveillance will be in place soon,” Elaine said avoiding speaking directly to Alpha One. She adjusted her thick round spectacles. “We will have to generate the map as we go. We didn’t have time to get a thorough recreation uploaded.” “Alright,” the Bravo Team leader said standing up. “See you guys there.” “One more thing,” Director Harkins said. “New tactical policy from FBI brass says we have to start taking field medics with us. Her name is Daphne Davenport. She will be waiting for you on site. Try not to break her. She’s on loan from civilian EMS. Don’t’ worry, she’s a graduate of the international school for tactical medicine. It’s this new thing, I don’t fucking know.” He threw his hands up helplessly. “A chick Doc,” Michael said nudging Cameron with an elbow. Cameron shook his head with an exasperated smile. “Alright, you know what to do,” the director said. He trusted his team enough not to micromanage their tactics. As they all got up to leave, he added, “Oh, and don’t start firing off that fucking fifty-cal.” Everyone in the room chuckled at the director’s irritation. “You got it,” Bravo Team leader said with a goofy salute, which did not instill any amount of confidence in the director whatsoever. [center][h3]________________________________________[/h3][/center] “Well, we’re in the shit now!” Cameron called to Sebastian from across the warehouse floor. They had made contact with Chimera security as soon as they breached the building, and were now taking cover behind pallets of boxes near the stairs that would lead them to the administrative offices. Gun fire was ringing out everywhere as Richard and Michael flanked from the other side with the medic, Daphne Davenport. Sebastian gestured at him by putting both hands around his neck, and Cameron understood. While Sebastian leaned out to provide cover fire, Cameron pulled a chemical smoke grenade off his vest and threw it as hard as he could up toward the second story walk way. It sailed through the air and smashed a window out of one of the offices. As the chemical smoke billowed out in dark yellow clouds, the two got to their feet and ran up the stairs, popping off shots as armed security came running out coughing their lungs up. The two veterans had become immune to the stuff and they swept through the complex of offices, which the TOC had not yet been able to get eyes inside of. They found their HVT and his hostage in one of them. It was a girl. She was coughing so hard on the floor that she couldn’t move, and when the man saw them rush in he pointed his MP5 at her. Sebastian threw himself across the floor and scooped the girl into his arms as the man pulled trigger in desperation to not go down without doing some damage. The automatic weapon fired a long burst of nine-millimeter before Cameron emptied the rest of his magazine into the man, realizing that in doing so he had extinguished their next source of information. He would answer for that later, though. Cameron rushed to Sebastian, who was already getting up. “I’m good!” he said. He and Cameron ushered the girl out of the office and to the top of the stairs where the smoke was not as heavy. “You have to run,” Sebastian told the girl through her screams. “Run down the stairs and out of the building. Go!” He knew that the New Haven PD would be waiting for her with open arms. The girl complied, screaming when she wasn’t coughing. A look of pure confusion had come across Sebastian’s face. “Let’s go," Cameron said. “Hey, what’s the problem?” Sebastian looked into his friend’s eyes, slumped against the wall, and collapsed to the floor. “Maybe I’m not good,” he groaned. “Motherfucker,” Cameron gasped. [center][h3]________________________________________[/h3][/center] When the battle was finally over and the gunfire had ceased, Cameron pulled Sebastian across the warehouse floor by the handle on the back of his plate carrier with one hand, and held his friend’s HK416 in the other, desperately trying to get him back to his teammates and the medic that had accompanied them. “Doc!” he screamed. “Doc, we got wounded!” “Shit,” he heard Richard say from somewhere in the warehouse, and the man appeared from behind the crates that they had been using for cover. Michael was right on his heels, both of them rushing to help Cameron move their injured leader. All three of them picked Sebastian up and took him back to where their medic had taken cover during the engagement. “Oh my god,” she said when they put his still body down in front of her. She took her helmet off and pulled her brown hair back, then pressed her cheek and ear against his face and took one of his wrists in her fingers. Seconds later she was pressing them against his neck. “He’s still breathing but no radial pulse. He’s bleeding out from somewhere. Help me get his gear off.” The three worked quickly to disconnect and remove Sebastian’s helmet and to take off his plate carrier. The rear ballistic plate was shattered from absorbing multiple bullets. Daphne pulled the bandage scissors off her kit and cut Sebastian’s combat shirt down the middle, then pulled it away from his torso. There was a hole in his left flank with blood coming out of it. “One went right under his fucking plate,” Richard said. “Cam, you gotta call it up,” Michael told him. With Sebastian down, Cameron was the next ranking operator. Cameron backed away from his friend slowly, watching Daphne pull medical supplies out of her vest pouches to begin working. “Cam!” Michael shook him by the shoulder. Cameron shoved him off. “I fucking heard you!” He took a deep breath and got on the headquarters frequency: “TOC, this is Alpha Romeo. Alpha One is down. I say again, Alpha One is down. Requesting MEDEVAC.” Silence on the net, and then Elaine’s voice, shaky and strained: “I… Roger…” “TOC, we need a fucking MEDEVAC, right now!” Cameron yelled over the net. “How copy!?” “I got it, Alpha Romeo,” Elaine responded quietly. “EMS en route. ETA: 20 mikes.” “We don’t have-!” Cameron started to respond, but he cut off his own transmission before he screamed at the girl unnecessarily; it wasn’t the TOC’s fault. He stormed back over to Daphne, who had directed Michael to hold pressure on the gunshot wound, and was peeling a big square of plastic out of its wrapper, the aid bag she had been carrying open at her side. “What’s going on, Doc?” he asked urgently. "Jesus, he was bitching at me to leave him alone just five minutes ago.” He looked anxiously at the pool of blood that had formed on the floor. “His left lung is collapsed.” Daphne pushed Michael's hand away and placed the occlusive dressing over the hole. She handed him her roll of three-inch nylon tape and he began placing strips of it on all four sides of the dressing to keep it secure. Both of them carefully lifted Sebastian’s torso up. She checked for an exit wound and removed the remains of his shirt. There was not one and they carefully set him back down. “Then drop a needle in his chest, already,” Cameron told her. “Your buddies are on the way.” “It’s too late for that,” Daphne said donning a pair of latex gloves. Sebastian’s skin was cool and clammy and she could see his jugular veins beginning to distend from the pressure against his heart and trachea. “He’s bleeding internally. I have to put in a chest tube to drain it and give his lung some room to expand again.” Daphne was already pulling out the necessary supplies as she explained the situation. She tossed Cameron an IV kit, normal saline with all the necessary needles and tubing. “Start that.” As Cameron started fishing for IV access in Sebastian’s right arm, Daphne proceeded with the chest tube, talking herself through it in her head as she went. [i][b]Fifth intercostal, mid axillary. Posterior and lateral to the pectoralis.[/b][/i] She wiped the area with chlorhexidine and placed the sterile sheet that came with the kit around the wound. [i][b]Now the lidocaine with epi.[/b][/i] She injected the incision site liberally with a 25g needle and syringe, then pushed the needle between his ribs and into the pleural space. It filled with blood as she aspirated it and she knew she was in the right place. [i][b]Let’s go, Daphne.[/b][/i] She cut a three-inch incision into Sebastian’s flank, put her scalpel down, and picked up her 9-inch Kelly clamp. She pushed it into the incision, between his ribs, until it popped through the parietal pleura and into the space filled with air and blood. She spread the clamp open in one direction, twisted it and opened it in the other direction, creating a big enough hole in his body for the tube to fit. She pulled the clamp out and stuck a gloved finger in the space, feeling and pulling to confirm without a doubt that she had the right location. [i][b]Nice and easy, girl.[/b][/i] Daphne pulled the thick plastic chest tube out of its wrapper and began inserting it into the hole. She went in slowly until she saw condensation in the tube, indicating it was properly placed. [i][b]Shit.[/b][/i] “Hold this,” she told Michael. He handed the bag of fluid to Richard and quickly stepped over to hold Sebastian’s chest tube. She nodded gratefully as she saw the saline successfully infusing into Sebastian’s arm. In a couple quick steps Daphne pulled the pieces of her portable suction drain out and assembled it, beating herself up inside that she hadn’t already prepared it, and then relieved Michael of the chest tube and connected it to the device. [i][b]Tie it up already![/b][/i] She pulled out some sutures and began approximating the edges of the incision site until they were snug against the tube. Another suture horizontally, then she tied it off in a surgeon’s knot. “Let’s move, Doc,” Cameron urged. “I’m done. Just need to dress it.” Daphne watched her drain. It was pulling out blood. She sighed heavily and dabbed away the sweat on her brow with a sleeve. His breathing was shallow and his carotid pulse was weaker than before, but he was still alive. She wrapped some petroleum gauze around the tube’s insertion site. [i][b]Antibiotics, now. No morphine or you’ll kill him. [/b][/i] She opened a new needle, drew a syringe full of saline from the port on the IV bag, and injected it into a bottle of Levofloxacin powder. She quickly mixed it, pulled it back out with the syringe, and in injected it through the port and into the bag of saline. The moments they waited for EMS to arrive seemed like an eternity. Sirens finally came screaming down the street and stopped in front of the warehouse. The team, carefully but quickly, carried their fallen leader to the ambulance and rode with him to New Haven General. [center][h3]________________________________________[/h3][/center] Stephanie Albright had just finished charting on her last patient when the head nurse, Claire, had asked if she would take another one that was incoming. It was a gunshot wound, one of many that they had seen in the last few days in the emergency room. Claire had told her that she already called the OR to get ready. “Sure, why not?” She walked from behind the nurse’s station to start getting a bed ready. “Just another day at the office.” New Haven General had been more of a trauma center in the last few days than anything. It was great experience but it was exhausting. Stephanie was working her fifth twelve hour shift of the week, and all she wanted to do was get home and into a bubble bath. But the doors to the ER drop off site swooshed open then, and Stephanie went to get the report. When she saw the faces of the men escorting the gurney, Stephanie froze in her tracks and the deepest feeling of dread began to wash over her. She had met them a couple times before. They recognized her, and the look in their eyes told her all she needed to know. “No!” she cried and tried to run toward the gurney as it wheeled into the ER. The girl with them was spitting out her report but Stephanie did not hear a word of it. Before she could reach the bed, one of the men intercepted her and held her back as she began to sob hysterically. Her brother, Sebastian, was on that bed, and he was on the verge of death. “You said you would take care of him!” she screamed as she pounded her fists against Cameron’s vest. “You said you would!” There were no words for him to say that could possibly be enough. All he could do was wrap his arms around the girl to control her, gritting his teeth against the stinging in his eyes as his friend’s sister sobbed and cursed him for failing to protect her brother. Claire came to see what all the commotion was about. She told Cameron to get Stephanie out of the ER, and he dragged her away screaming. The hours that past after that were the longest of their lives. [center][h3]________________________________________[/h3][/center] Cameron, Michael, and Richard sat with Stephanie Albright in the ER waiting room. She was crying on and off, but had calmed enough for them to tell her what had happened. Stephanie nodded through her tears as they told her what details they were authorized to disclose about their assignment. When there was nothing left to be said about it, silence reigned for many minutes. Stephanie finally looked up at Cameron. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “I know it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said all of those things.” She could see that the men were deeply grieving their leader in their own way. “You’re fine,” Cameron told her gently. “He’s your brother.” “And he’s a goddamn hero,” Richard added emphatically, and Michael clasped a hand on his shoulder in agreement. A surgeon came out of the ER then and walked over to them. They all stood up in anticipation of the news. Stephanie was wringing her hands like a nervous wreck. “We were able to stop the bleeding,” he said, and they all released a heavy sigh of relief. “Whoever put that chest tube in bought him just enough time.” Daphne Davenport had been released back to the unit for a debrief. They made a mental note to buy her a beer or five after all of this was over. “He’s in the ICU for now,” the surgeon told them. “But you guys can’t roll in there in there with all that hardware. Come see him tomorrow on the recovery ward.” He smiled and shook all their hands, giving the nurse he had worked with many times before a hug before heading back through the ER doors. [center][h3]________________________________________[/h3][/center] The next morning, Daphne was awakened in the chair of the patient room on the surgical recovery floor that the staff had allowed her to wait in for her brother to get transferred from the ICU. Claire was standing over her, and she told her that Sebastian had arrived. Stephanie jumped up and hurried to the room they had put her brother in. She stopped at the door for a moment to collect herself as she caught sight of the man in the hospital bed. But he wearily turned his head and looked right at her, and she rushed in to see him. She hugged him and cried, so happy that he was still with her. His wincing was the only reason she let him go. “A Little banged up, here,” he said. When she pulled away he looked into her teary emerald eyes. “I told you I’d come see you at work soon. Here I am.” She laughed in spite of her tears. “I can’t stand you.” In this rare moment Sebastian smiled. “So do I get to put on a shirt?” he asked looking at all of the wires and bandages on his bare torso. Stephanie eyed her brother shyly. “I think you’re doing just fine.” Sebastian shook his head. “I’m sure.” It would be many hours before Stephanie left her brother to go home, happy that she would get to see him again the next day.