The Facility

Lyle looked down at Harley, seeing his reddened muzzle and told the dog to lead them back to the van. Harley took off at a trot, pausing for them to catch up every thirty or forty feet.

Harley made quick work of getting them back to the van where Lyle laid Cass out on the bench seat, grabbed a shirt for himself and told the rest of the group to get everything ready for a quick swap, then headed off to look for a new vehicle for them.

The parking lot was mostly deserted, so Lyle went looking in outlying businesses that were still open, which were few at that hour, and limited to a few bars and a strip club.

Lyle opted for the strip club which had a slightly higher class of clientele, although not by much. There he found an almost new Denali in the lot and was about to bust a window when he decided to try the door. To his surprise it was open. Slipping in, he bent down to hotwire the it when he decided to check a hunch. Sitting up, he flipped down the visor and found nothing, but on this second try, the center console, he found what he was looking for – the keys. It started without issue.

Driving back to the van, he hopped out and had everyone put their stuff inside while he transferred Cass. He put her on the back bench seat, then told Maggie to drive to the nearest drugstore she could find.

It was not long before Maggie found one and stopped.

“Maggie, stay here. If you see anything suspicious, go and leave us. Gemma and Rudi come with and grab stuff to eat and drink. Try to get more than junk food. Cass will need sugar, but she will need healthy food to get better. Grab some of those sports drinks as well. The ones with electrolytes. Meet me up in front in five minutes, no more.”

Maggie handed him all the money she had, and the three got out, rushing into the store.

Lyle split from the kids, going back to the medications where he picked up things he might need: gauze, tape, aspirin in case Cass got a fever, betadine, a pack of absorbent pads, and a few other odds and ends that they might or might not still have from when they patched them up.

While going back up to the front to meet the kids, he made a side trip and grabbed some treats for Harley and then down the sporting goods aisle, grabbing a lantern type light, a small flashlight, batteries for both and a reel of the thinnest fishing line they had. He found a small sewing kit and grabbed that as well.

The kids were waiting for him when he got to the registers.

The woman at the register looked at him funny as the kids unloaded the food and he unloaded the medical supplies and lights. “Last minute camping supplies,” he said to the woman.

It looked like that seemed plausible to the woman who looked between Rudi, Gemma, and Lyle, each obviously not related.

Lyle added, “Big Brother program.”

The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing until she gave him the total. Lyle paid and they took the bags and left, going back to the SUV waiting outside.

Lyle put all the supplies on the seat in front of Cass, told Rudi to sit up front with Maggie and Gemma to sit on the seat in front of Cass with the supplies.

He next directed Maggie to find a hospital, since what he needed would not be found at the drug store. Following signs to the hospital, Maggie parked near the Emergency room and Lyle got out, telling them he would be back as soon as possible, but it would depend on the next incoming ambulance, or until he could come up with another plan, if none showed up soon.

Thankfully, one pulled up just as he neared the ER and he watched as two EMTs got someone out of the back and then went into the ER.

Making sure no one was watching, he jumped into the back and found the jacket of one of the EMTs. He put it on and hoped back out, walking into the ER like he belonged there. Back in his law enforcement days, he spent plenty of time in various emergency rooms, and he knew how they worked.

Standing just inside the automatic doors, he quickly scanned the layout of the ER. While most were different, the layout was always pretty basic, made around the flow of necessity.

Spotting the supply room, he nodded to a security guard standing around as he went in, closing the door behind him. Inside the twenty-by-twenty room, the walls were filled with racks of various materials use in the ER.

He spotted a nurse and decided on expediency rather than subterfuge. “Excuse me,” he said, “Can you point me to the IV supplies?”

“You new?” she asked and he nodded.

“Just transferred to this area from Virginia.”

She smiled at him and pointed to the wall across from her. “Just make sure you sign out what you take,” she told him turning back to get her own supplies.

Lyle looked around and collected a bag of saline and tubing, a few needles for the IV and then moved over to the gauze section.

The nurse finished up and started to leave, asking, “Finding everything okay?”

“Yes, thank you. Just getting a few small things” he answered.

She gave him a little wave and left the room.

Lyle stuck the items in his pockets, along with a few rolls of gauze and a large elastic bandage.

He found a suture tray and quickly opened it, taking out the sealed suture needle and thread, not sure if he would need it, but it beat the fishing line he had.

Near the locked med cart, he got lucky and found a small vial of lidocaine, along with a tube of topical lidocaine sitting out, so he stuffed those into his pocket with some small gage needles, pocketing them as well. Knowing that all this was a federal offense, he decided to go before anyone got suspicious. He hoped no one would get in trouble for the missing medicine.

He made his way out without attracting any attention and quickly walked back to the SUV.

“Let’s get going,” he said to Maggie once inside, while getting Harley to move out of his way. It was like he was keeping watch over Cassidy while Lyle was gone.

Lyle emptied his pockets and had Gemma put batteries in the lantern and flashlight while he was doing that. Once gone, he set the lantern on the floor with his hospital loot and quickly assembled the IV.

It had been a while since he had done it, but he managed to insert the needle and canula into Cassidy’s arm on the first try. He removed the needle and taped it all down before he hooked the IV onto the hanger hook and set about his next task. Cass was now getting much needed fluids into her.

“Hand me all the medical stuff from the store,” he told Gemma, who did it. “I want you to hold the flashlight down on Cassidy’s wound so I can see it. The lantern is too low, so it is not enough light, okay?”

Gemma nodded solemnly. “There is going to be blood. Are you going to be okay?” he asked. Gemma swallowed hard but nodded.

Lyle tucked some absorbent pads under Cass and put her free arm across her chest. The other stayed straight where it was since it was out of the way.

The next part was why he asked Gemma to help out and not Rudi – to give Cass a little privacy. Lyle undid his belt and carefully pulled off his shirt, noting the amount of blood on it. There was plenty of blood, but no sign of an artery being hit or she would have bled out by now. There would have been nothing he could have done if so.

He felt her pulse, which was a little fast, but steady. Lyle untied her sweats and gently pulled them away from the wound and down her legs so he could see what he was dealing with.

Gemma let out a little gasp and Lyle looked at Cass’s side. Just under her hip bone there was a three inch long, eighth inch deep furrow in the meat of her hip.

Lyle knew it would leave a pretty ugly scar but considering the damage it could have done if it was just a little higher, or inward, a scar was nothing in comparison.

It was too shallow to suture, so Lyle opened the betadine and gauze and poured it into the wound.

Cass moaned and tried to shift away from Lyle, and he brushed her forehead and ran his hand over her head. “Shh, it’s okay. I know it hurts. I am going to make it stop, but by doing so, it is going to hurt a little more for a minute. I need to give you an injection… or a few actually. It will burn for a few seconds, then stop, okay?”

Cass did not answer him but he knew he had to clean out the wound and it would hurt.

He opened and filled a syringe with the lidocaine and said, “Little stick and a little burn,” to Cass. He put one hand on her thigh to try to stop her from jumping and pulling away and slid the needle into the wound and injected a little lidocaine into it. He had intended to use the topical lidocaine but doing so would have caused more pain than the injections.

“Ow,” Cass whined, trying to pull away. Her eyes were still closed so Lyle pressed down on her leg so he would not stick her or himself.

Cass opened her eyes a little and he said, “Relax. It will stop hurting soon, but I have to do this to get it to stop.” He patted her hand lying on her chest, then he took hold of it.

He quickly injected the lidocaine along the lines of the wound, causing Cass to squeeze his hand and whimpered each time he injected her. When he finished, he waited a few minutes for the anesthetic to take effect, then said, “I am going to press on your leg. You should be able to feel the pressure but not any pain. Let me know if you do.”

He pushed around the wound and she did not jump or try to pull away, so he told her, “I am going to clean the wound now.”

Lyle poured some betadine into the wound and rubbed it with the gauze, causing the bleeding to start up again. He cleaned the wound out and then wiped the blood off her leg.

Her underwear were blood soaked but he was not comfortable trying to change them. She could do that herself later.

Wiping the betadine off her leg outside of her wound, he put antibiotic ointment int the furrow and covered it with gauze. He used the gauze rolls and wound them around her waist to hold the gauze pads on. Over that, he wrapped the elastic bandage to apply pressure to it all.

He had Gemma get out a pair of stretch pants that Cass had bought and put those on her, adding to the pressure of the bandages.

Lyle gave her some water and two aspirin and then cleaned up, putting all the bloody things in a bag to throw out later. He switched positions with Gemma and told Maggie, “She will be okay. It will be sore for a while and she will have a nasty scar, but as long as it does not get infected, she will recover. Right now, she just needs rest and liquids.”

Lyle looked back and saw that Cass’s head was resting on Gemma’s leg and Gemma was rubbing her friend’s hair. Harley had moved so he was standing next to her in the leg are with his head on her knee.

Maggie pushed a few buttons on the dash and a built-in GPS system lit up. “If we do not make too many stops, I figure we are probably a day or so from Millen. Cassidy was not real specific, so I do not know exactly, but I do not think it was too far from there,” Maggie told Lyle.

Lyle thought about it. The SUV was big enough that they could sleep in it, so they would only need a place to use the restroom, which they could do when they stopped to get gas or to eat. They is what they would do.

Cass dozed as they drove and everyone kept an eye on her, occasionally feeling her forehead to make sure she had did not get a fever, indicating infection.