Excerpt
“Somebody call an ambulance!” rung out in a thick Chinese accent.
Judah looked around trying to place the location of the voice. In the dim light he saw Mr. Chong, kneeling beside the body of his wife and pressing his hands against her chest. She lay face up on the ground, gasping for air and shivering, blood oozing from between her husband’s fingers, saturating her flowered sun dress, and spilling in rivers onto the floor around her.
“Mrs. Chong!” Judah exclaimed, hurdling the bar. He dashed to the side of the bleeding woman, ripping off his shirt in the process. “Wallace!”
Wallace nonchalantly sauntered out of the back room, carrying three light bulbs in each hand. “Hey Judah, this is all we got lef—“ He stopped midsentence, dropping the light bulbs to the floor as his eyes landed on the bleeding Mrs. Chong. “Oh. My. God.”
“Back room! First-Aid kit now!” Judah demanded. As Wallace turned to comply, Judah knelt down by the side of the bleeding woman. He moved the trembling hands of Mr. Chong away from the wound, and shoved his shirt over it instead. “Hold this on the wound.” He directed Mr. Chong who, still trembling, obliged.
Sampson and Vince Santori knelt down by Judah’s side, and started to help. Sampson had grabbed a clean towel from behind the bar and a bottle of whiskey. He handed the towel to Judah, who immediately replaced his shirt with it. “We got to sterilize it”, Sampson said, offering the bottle of whiskey.
“That’s a myth.” Santori stated. He had stripped off his jacket and was doing his best to slide it under the woman, without doing too much to disturb her. “We got to keep her warm though. We can’t let her get cold. Help me get this around her. And somebody call an ambulance!”
About forty cell phones appeared and began frantically dialing the same three digit number.
Wallace came rushing out of the back room, nearly slipping on the glass fragments. He recovered quickly, hurdled the bar, and came rushing to Judah’s side clutching the small first aid kit. “Here you go boss.”
Judah grabbed the box, flipped it open, and looked at its meager contents.
Sampson looked over at the box from where he was helping Mr. Chong apply pressure to the wound. “The hell you planning to do with that?”
Judah shot him a frustrated look. “I don’t know.”
Wallace grimaced as he saw Judah’s blood stained shirt, and the towel, which had quickly turned from sparkling white to blood-soaked red. “That looks bad man,” he said,
“Shut up Wallace.” Judah demanded. “We just got to keep the blood loss to a minimum until the paramedics get here. She’ll be alright.” Even as he said this, he tried hard to not look up at the fear inscribed on Mr. Chong’s face.
Sampson nudged him. “It’s the hood man. You know they’ll never make it here in time.”
Judah went silent, staring at the scared, bleeding, and shivering woman on the floor in front of him. She was barely drawing in breath. The bullet must have punctured her lung. There wasn’t much time left for her, and he knew it. And Sampson was right. This deep in the hood, the paramedics would take their sweet time to get there, if they came at all.
He looked around at the nervous faces around him. Vince Santori held the jacket tight around her, trying to keep her warm. Sampson applied pressure on the wound, which wouldn’t stop gushing and bubbling out blood. Mr. Chong, tears streaming from his eyes, spoke softly in his native tongue to his wife, who fearfully met his gaze, and said nothing. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do. Everything humanly possible had been done, and it had failed.
Humanly possibly. Verily verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do; and greater works than these…
Perhaps it was time to stop trying to do anything human at all.