Love Me Long (Love Me Book 4)

Chapter 6

It was late when the shelling started. At first, it was far off in the distance, but it steadily grew nearer as the early morning dawned. They were sleeping in shifts so that someone would be able to alert the others when the time came.

It came just before dawn with the roaring of trucks as they started to bring in the injured. It took those sleeping only minutes before they were in the hospital tents with gloves on, ready to go into action.

Chloe was at the entrance to the tent, assessing every man as they crossed the threshold. She would send them to the left to Cindy, who was dealing with non-life-threatening injuries, to the right with Trina for those whose injuries could become life-threatening if left too long, or straight ahead to Alena and Nadia if they were potentially fatal. Truck after truck came, and all Chloe could do was think about the present and each patient as they entered the tent.

Robert, Don, and Dr. Petrov had taken the first few significant cases to the operating space and started work right away.

"I need a nurse!" Robert yelled at one point, and Chloe had been forced to send Nadia to him since Nurse Marks hadn't yet shown up to help.

Chloe lost all sense of time, and they were run off their feet. Marks eventually showed up and started to help Cindy with the minor cases, so Chloe moved Cindy to help the doctors with the understanding that she took a quick break and then relieved Nadia for a quick break.

It was a backbreaking messy business keeping men alive, and Chloe couldn't help but think that it was a bit too messy for a war that was supposed to be over.

Night had fallen, and things had eased, allowing Chloe to send nurses on breaks and give them a rest. After midnight, a truck pulled in and started to offload a single patient. At the same time, she noted that the soldiers who had made it through the battle unscathed here were slowly beginning to return. Chloe only allowed herself a brief minute to hope that Juric was alright before she met the injured man at the front of the tent.

"Stepped on one of his own mines!" one of the soldiers said in Russian. He probably didn't care if Chloe understood him or not since he was the enemy.

The patient was awake and bleeding badly, and his eyes were wild as he searched for an escape route.

"Do you speak English?" Chloe asked as she started to cut his clothing away from his body.

His eyes fastened on hers as recognition that she was not the enemy hit.

"Da! They kill me!" he insisted. He was a massive man with a bald head and a thick beard.

"You don't look dead," Chloe said as she began to take stock of his injuries.

He looked lucky to Chloe. The only major thing she could see wrong was his thigh, but it was a doozy of an injury. Something had cut into a major artery, and he was lucky to be still conscious, much less alive, thanks to a field tourniquet that someone had applied.

"Nadia, find one of the doctors," she urgently called as she started to tie off the limb with another tourniquet.

Chloe was pulling and twisting with all of her might, but it was not working. Petrov walked up behind Chloe, took one look at the man, and spit on the ground next to him.

"He needs help!" Chloe insisted. She felt his pulse and noted that it had grown weaker in the matter of minutes it had taken her to add a second tourniquet.

"No," Petrov said and walked away, refusing to help.

"Where's Robert!" she called.

"He's in surgery!" Cindy called back, racing to help her. "What was that all about, won't Petrov help?" she asked as she began to help Chloe pull on the tourniquet. The man's leg was massive.