Dictator s Daughter by Lorena Angell

her
shoulder.
    The drive was long and silent filled with
anticipation and worry. Sean’s eyes were glued to the rear-view
mirror more than the road before him. It took exactly fifteen
minutes to reach the cabin his family called ‘the hide-out’. It
appeared like an ordinary vacation cabin but was far from it with
bulletproof windows, extensive food supply, and a state of the art
alarm system. Sean wondered why they didn’t just live there,
instead of in town.
    He jumped out of the car to enter the code
for the garage door. After it opened, he quickly drove inside. Sean
got out and hurried around the car to the passenger door, hitting
the button on the wall in the process to close the garage door. He
was surprised to find Eliwese still unconscious and he worried her
condition was far worse than he thought.
    As he carefully pulled her out of the car, he
was relieved to see minimal blood on the seat. He carried her
unconscious body into the cabin, and headed for the specially
designed medical room. Dr. Randall and Sara had equipped the room
years ago with all manner of first-aid and triage supplies.
Cupboards along one wall held medical supplies and a small
refrigerator contained medical solutions. Several thick reference
books and binders leaned against the wall by the small sink.
    Sean laid his patient on the prep table and
unzipped her jacket to get to the wound. Under the jacket she wore
a tee-shirt. He grabbed a pair of scissors and carefully cut the
shirt right down the middle of her abdomen. Just as he suspected,
he found a flesh-colored formed body suit which gave her the shape
of a male, right down to developed abs. Sean saw the bullet hole on
her lower left side. He began cutting the padded suit up the center
to expose the wound and as he cut, he would tear as much as
possible. When he reached her breast area, he found she was wrapped
tightly with ace bandage and he did not cut through it.
    As he opened up her padding, his heart sunk.
The foam had acted as a sponge to absorb the blood that poured out
of her wound. It was now clear to Sean why she was still
unconscious; she was bleeding to death. He turned her on her side
and saw she had an even bigger wound where the bullet had exited
her back. The skin was shredded and it nauseated Sean. She needed a
doctor.
    He applied clean gauze on her wounds and
pulled her arms out of her sleeves. He removed her pants, leaving
her boxer shorts on and carried her lifeless body to the main
bedroom just off the kitchen. He placed her on the bed and ran back
to the prep room to gather more supplies.
    He came back with a box full of items and
applied more gauze to her wounds as blood had seeped through the
others. He threaded her arm into a blood pressure cuff and set the
machine to automatically respond. He waited anxiously for the
results which seemed to take forever, but finally the dismal
numbers flashed on the machine, setting off the alarm. Sean reached
over and disabled the annoying beep.
    She’d lost too much blood, what should he do?
He thought about all the extensive first aid training he’d learned
over the years and he knew what she needed was an IV.
    He wished he had paid better attention when
Dr. Randall taught him this procedure. He set up the items
necessary, prepped her left arm and made his first attempt.
    Failure.
    He tried again and again but her veins were
flat. After five attempts, he finally succeeded. He opened up a
large flow of saline to help flood her veins. He inspected the mess
he’d made of her arms and shuddered. She would be covered in
bruises at each IV attempt site very soon.
    The blood pressure machine clicked on again
and he waited for the reading. A wave of relief swept over him as
her numbers weren’t any lower than the previous reading. He took a
big breath hoping she’d stabilized and let out a sigh as he
exhaled. He checked her bandages and applied more gauze and pulled
the sheet up and over her tucking it around her