Chapter 2

Dahlia felt her heart fly out of her chest at the heaviness and loud voice of the man who had just spoken. He was a hefty man and had a hard look on his face, such that elicit fear from anyone who saw him. His accent had been laced with a heavy Spanish tone, which gave Dahlia the indication that the man wasn't from around. His body and breath reeked of met******ine which meant that he had been drinking and smoking before bringing the half-dead man in. Dahlia was a little afraid of the man but she wasn't about to be intimidated.

"Who are you?" She asked, looking at him squarely in the face.

Matteo tried to relax the feature of his face when he saw that the woman before him was afraid. But the problem was that he didn't know how to do such things. He was a hard man that had adapted to the circumstances life had thrown at him. Still, he relaxed his shoulders or at least he tried to. He stared at the woman in front of him and saluted her courage inwardly when she didn't look away from his gaze.

"My name is Matteo, and I am a brother to the man on the stretcher." He said as a way of introduction, his breath short and heavy. He cursed under his breath as he realized that he had just given out his real name. But the woman wasn't paying any attention to him anymore. She had rushed over to his brother's side and rested her head on his chest to listen for a heartbeat. When she was done with that, she placed two fingers on a side of Elio's neck and remained like that for some seconds. Seconds that seemed too long to Matteo and he spoke up.

"Aren't you supposed to use a heart reader or whatever it is you medical personnel guys use?" He asked.

Dahlia ignored him and his question completely. Something about the man looking very worried had compelled her to help his brother try and survive. She hooked a string to the wrist of the unconscious man and watched as the monitor came alive. It began to read the man's heartbeat and Dahlia saw that it was a very low read. As she turned to clip the pulse reader to the man's finger, she saw the older brother almost in her face.

"That looks like a clip. Wouldn't it add to his pain and hurt him some more?" Matteo asked her in a worried tone.

Again, Dahlia ignored him and clipped the younger brother's middle finger. She noticed that his pulse was also low and became worried. How was she supposed to revive a man with such low vitals? The man was hanging on a thread hold. One little mistake and he would be cut off like he never existed in the first place.

"Is he going to live?" Matteo asked when he saw the worried expression on the nurse's face. He became afraid for the life of his brother.

Dahlia nearly cried as she thought about how to revive the unconscious man. Why had all her coworkers taken a break off duty this one night when such a critical patient had visited them? She cracked her head and tried to remember all her lessons about treating an emergency patient at the nursing college. The first thing to do was to locate all the locations of the injuries and how deep the wounds were. She stared at how bloody the man's clothes were and shook her head. To check him for wounds, she had to cut the bloody clothes off him.

Matteo stared in doubt at the woman who called herself a nurse and doubted if she was capable of taking care of his brother. Twice, he had seen her shake her head and looked like she had lost in defeat. Or was it too late for her to save his brother? When he saw her take a knife from the table, he stood protectively around his brother.

"What do you think you are doing?" Matteo asked her. He had her sigh before she replied.

"I need to cut the bloody clothes off him so I can clean his injuries," Dahlia answered.

She was already at the end of her wit and she didn't need the trouble of the brother acting like a mother hen over her patient right now. She pushed the hefty man away gently and began the cut at his arm where it still dropped some blood a little. That appeared to be the site of his biggest injury. She slashed the fabric around the place as gently as she could and gasped when she saw a gunshot wound decorating the arm. Dahlia turned to the man who had claimed to be the older brother in surprise.

Matteo nearly grunted as the nurse turned over to him. He knew what she was going to say the moment he saw the bullet wound himself. He began to deliberate on what answer to give when she asked her next question, but he came up with none. No matter what lies he told, he knew that she would still request for a police report. Perhaps, he should lie that he lost it on his way while he drove Elio over here. He shook his head against the idea, the woman would simply ask him to go back and get a new one. What would be the best approach to get the nurse to continue with the treatment? He thought.

"Where is your police report?" Dahlia asked. She couldn't believe that she had been almost foolish enough to treat a gunshot patient without asking for the police report. What if the man later turned out to be a criminal wanted by the law? She would have aided a wanted man then and implicated herself without knowing.

"I don't have one with me," Matteo said with a sigh.

"You don't? Then, I can't help you," Dahlia told the hefty man.

Matteo closed his eyes and sighed. His worst nightmare about the whole situation was becoming a reality. He opened his eyes and looked at the nurse with a look that implored her to try to understand him.

"I was rushing to save his life. I forgot about the report," Matteo said in a low voice.

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you. Please leave." She told him and began to walk away.

Matteo held her arm to stop her. He had to make her see the reasoning and help him. He couldn't afford to lose his brother at this period he was in. He rushed to her front and pleaded with her with his eyes. She's got to help him since there was no hospital he could go to where they would even glance at his brother without a police report not to talk about checking to see if he was alive. This nurse seemed to be his last hope that he mustn't lose.

"Please." He said in a low voice.

Dahlia nearly gave in at the pain visible in the man's voice, but she knew that she had to be firm in her decision. If she took pity on him and treated the conscious man, how would she explain the circumstances surrounding the decision to her seniors? What about if the man died while she was treating him and the brother claims that she killed him? What would she do then?

"Please," Matteo managed to croak out. His voice laced with the emotions of the past weeks he had been trying to keep in rein.

Dahlia made the mistake of staring at the man holding her. His hard-looking face had softened considerably. And in his eyes, pains, worries, and panic reflected in them all at once. She looked back at the unconscious man still hooked to a monitor and back at the man who held her. Well, that could have been a member of her family lying there and she knew that she would have done everything she could to save them also. Perhaps, she should help save life first. She would cross the hurdle of telling her seniors why she had saved the man without a report later when she got to the bridge.

But first, she had to make the policeman who monitored her every moment sit down if she wanted to get any work done. She freed her arm from the man who held her and she saw that she was able to do that freely. Perhaps, the man wasn't as hard as he looked after all, she thought as she walked over to a corner of the room. She took the single chair there and brought it over to the hefty man. She dropped it in front of him and gave him a hand motion to indicate that she wanted him to sit. When the man didn't respond, she spoke.

"Sit. And I don't want a single word out of your mouth until I'm done treating him," Dahlia commanded him.

Matteo plopped down the plastic chair immediately, the tension leaving his body. He had thought that he had lost his brother when she had forced his hand away from her arm. The few moments he stood alone, he had even thought of forcing her at gunpoint to take care of his brother. And he might have done that if she hadn't said what she did just now. If it was silence she needed, then Matteo was ready to give her all the silence she needed. If even as much as a fly flew by to distract her, he would kill the fly as an apology to her.

Dahlia rushed back to the patient and examined how deep the bullet wounds were. She saw that there would be a need to extract the bullet and then stitch the open wound close. She tore the clothes away from his body bits by bits to minimize the discomfort he might feel from the activity. When she was done, she examined his body to see if there were more bullet wounds and sighed in relief when she couldn't find any. The rest of the wounds were just cuts from a knife, and only about two were deep. The rest were shallow wounds that only required cleaning and disinfecting, and she started with those.

Matteo watched restlessly as the nurse began to work on Elio. He was tempted to ask if she needed his help or if she was sure if what she was doing was right, but her warning kept ringing at the back of his mind, and he kept shut. After sitting still for ten minutes flats, he couldn't hold it anymore. He couldn't just sit still on a chair, doing nothing other than worrying and waiting. The others would probably be worried about the two of them anyway, especially about Elio. So, he brought out his phone and placed a quick call to his second brother. The man picked even before the first ring ended.

"Hello." He said in a hushed voice, careful not to disturb the nurse. "No, we are at…" He saw the nurse pause in her task to listen to his conversation and he switched to South Korea immediately.

Dahlia continued her task after the other man switched over to some strange language she couldn't understand. She had tried to eavesdrop before because she had wanted to hear if the man would accidentally give away their identities and how his brother had ended in such a critical condition. She opened her patient's eyes and flashed a tiny torchlight into it. Deciding that it was safe to give him some anesthesia, she passed some and injected it into his vein. She disinfected her hands and the site of the injury she wanted to operate on, wore sterile gloves, and picked up the sterilized operation knife. She made a tiny opening at the gunshot site, then using the tiny light she helped at one hand, she fished for the bullet with the knife in the other hand. Thirty seconds later, she took out the bullet and dropped it in a tray beside her, followed by the knife. She picked up the surgical needle and began to stitch the wound. When she was done with that, she stitched up two more places on his body. One at his thigh, the other at his right chest.

She examined his ribs to see if he had any dislocation and she found a tender location at his left ribs. Dahlia beckoned to the brother who was still rattling away on the phone and he quickly disengaged from the conversation. She told him what she wanted him to do, and together, they bandaged the ribs. The man carried his brother, while Dahlia bandaged his upper stomach. As soon as the man dropped his brother on the bed, he resumed back to making his calls, this time in another language that sound even stranger to Dahlia.

She examined the unconscious man's swollen head to see if there was a cut. She turned his head about slowly, swiping up his hair to see if there was any hidden wound. She didn't find any except for the swollen forehead. Dahlia applied a cold compressor to reduce the swelling. She would apply the compressor for five minutes, then take it away from his forehead for thirty seconds, then repeat the action. She continued in the line until the slowness reduced in size visibly. Dahlia bandaged the head with a sigh.

When she was sure that all the injuries had been taken care of and given adequate attention, she removed her glove and checked if her patient was running a fever. She felt the rise of one and sighed. She signaled to the other man that she needed to get something and would be back soon, then went out without waiting for a response from him. She went into the pharmacy and got a drip, some vitamins to pass into it, and also some injections to curb the fever.

Matteo told his assistant that he would call back in five minutes when he saw the nurse going out and hung up. He monitored her to make sure she hadn't gone to call the police on him and his brother. He relaxed visibly when he saw her enter a medical room. When Dahlia refused to return after five minutes, he became apprehensive as he thought about what could have held her up. Or had she killed his brother and run off? Matteo rushed to his brother's side and looked at the monitor. He couldn't comprehend the numbers running through the skin, so he placed a finger close to Elio's nostrils. When he felt some air on his finger he relaxed.

Dahlia walked into the emergency room and met the hefty brother examining his brother for signs of life. Had he thought that she had killed his brother? The guilty look on the man's face when he looked at her told her that she had guessed correctly. The man smiled at her apologetically and she shrugged. She would have behaved in the same manner too if the reverse was the case. Dahlia walked into the room, went over to the unconscious man, and gave him the antibiotics injection. She injected the vitamins into the drip and passed it into a vein in his hand. When she was done, she sighed and looked at the other brother.

"Will he be okay?" Matteo asked her when he saw that she was done.

"Well, we just have to wait and see what happens," Dahlia answered.