Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel Mari Carr (great books of all time .txt) 📖

to flex her foot. Sadly, that could be a bad sign with ankles—cracked bones didn’t affect the ability of muscles and tendons to shift and pull, and as long as it wasn’t a major break, it might not even hurt. Then again, soft tissue injuries could be just as hard to heal, though patients enjoyed not having a cast, which meant showering was far easier.

Walt told the woman some of this, and then asked Agnieszka to get a stool so they could elevate the ankle. Just as he maneuvered the woman’s leg onto the stool, there was a shout from farther down the sidewalk.

The crowd shifted, surging either to or away from the noise, depending on if curiosity or avoidance was their primary reaction. A voice called out, and Agnieszka, his translator, touched Walt’s shoulder. “Someone has collapsed. Can you…”

“Of course.”

With a nod to the injured woman, he and Agnieszka rose. They sidled through the crowd, emerging into the center of a ring of people who were looking at the figure of a prone man. They were near the corner of the hotel, where a small lane, not large enough to be a proper street, separated the hotel from the building next door. The ring of gawkers was just far back enough that none of them felt any responsibility to do something. Of course, they were also close enough that they had a good view. People like this annoyed the hell out of Walt.

The figure they were staring at was lying awkwardly against the wall as if they’d slid down it before tipping to the side.

Jakob.

Walt leapt forward, dropping to Jakob’s side and hitting his knees hard enough on the pavement that he was going to regret it later.

“Help me,” Walt said, to no one and everyone. “We need to get him flat on his back.”

Agnieszka crouched beside him, hesitantly moving Jakob’s legs as Walt shifted his upper body and arm before rolling him onto his back. Walt wasn’t gentle. He was fast. Most people associated medicine with being careful and precise. Gentle, attentive contact. In battlefields, and emergency medicine, that wasn’t the case. The priority was to assess for critical injuries, and that meant grabbing and yanking when needed.

Jakob grimaced as he was being moved. He wasn’t fully unconscious, though his eyes were closed.

Walt checked Jakob’s pulse and breathing—fast and slow, respectively—and as he touched him, Jakob groaned, face contorted.

“Jakob.” Walt pinched his trapezius muscle, right where his shoulder met his neck. It was a safe spot to pinch that hurt enough to either wake people up or shock them into focusing enough to answer questions.

“Hurts,” Jakob said, barely moving his lips.

“You fell when you passed out. You might have hit something—”

“Didn’t pass out. Pain. Shoulder. Chest.”

Walt had seen men bigger and tougher than Jakob cry like babies while getting stitches, and tiny little women who could shrug off the pain of broken bones. Still, Walt didn’t think Jakob would say something hurt unless it really hurt.

“Shot,” Jakob said.

He’d been shot? Walt didn’t panic. He simply processed that information and adjusted his next steps.

Walt glanced at the staff member, then at the circle of people. “Does anyone have scissors or a knife?”

A second later, a pocketknife hit his hand. He sliced up the center of Jakob’s shirt. The fact that there was no blood on, and no visible hole in, the fabric didn’t matter. Clothes could hide injuries, and one of the most important elements of triage was to assess for yourself. Even when patients were awake and talking, there could be injuries they didn’t feel and therefore didn’t mention, especially if they were in shock.

A moment later, Walt had Jakob’s upper body exposed.

The only visible issue was a small area on his shoulder that was slightly swollen and flushed darker than the rest of his skin. There was no blood. No visible wound.

He hadn’t been shot. A bad feeling curdled in Walt’s stomach.

Walt bent closer, examining the swollen flesh. There was a small puncture mark. That plus the swelling…it looked like an insect sting.

Jakob’s forehead was damp with sweat, and as Walt watched, the muscles of Jakob’s arm and shoulder contracted. Jakob made a faint noise of pain so low, it was almost inaudible.

This kind of pain, the relatively small mark…

In medicine, when you heard hoofbeats you assumed horse, not zebra. In Krakow, Poland, an insect sting meant a bee or maybe a wasp. Saying that Jakob had been stung by a bullet ant, an insect that injected poneratoxin into the body, was like predicting a zebra was coming when you heard hoofbeats.

And yet…

The paramedics who’d been called for the woman with the broken ankle rushed over, pushing him out of the way. Walt had just a moment to decide. To decide if he should trust what his instincts were telling him. Instincts that insisted this was a bullet ant sting, despite their location in Europe and not an equatorial jungle.

“Tell them he’s been stung,” he said to Agnieszka. “He needs to be treated for neurotoxin poisoning, and, given the location, they need to check his heart. His blood pressure. It might cause cardiac arrhythmia.”

One of the paramedics glanced over. “What stung him?”

Walt was pathetically grateful to hear the man speaking English because that meant he’d understood what Walt had just said. “Bullet ant.”

The paramedic frowned. Either he didn’t know what that was, or he knew and now thought Walt was losing it, because how the hell would Jakob have gotten stung by a bullet ant?

Jakob let out a short scream when they got him to his feet. Sweat poured down his face. The sting of the bullet ant was the most painful sting of any insect. People who’d experienced it said it felt like being shot. Jakob started retching, and the paramedic whipped out a bag, holding it to his chin in case he vomited.

Right now, Jakob’s nerves were all firing, unable to stop sending his brain the pain signals, while his skeletal muscles contracted and tensed