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Every thirty seconds I counted his pulse through my fingers. Too fast. Too weak. The intervals between beats stretched and compressed. I adjusted my speed. Ninety-five on the straights. Sixty on the curves. The truck handled like shit above eighty. The wheel vibrated in my left hand. My right hand never moved from his chest.

“Remember last month when Hornet tried to weld the exhaust on his bike and set his boot on fire? Man hopped around the yard for ten minutes before anybody noticed. Freak just stood there laughing. You remember that?”

A sound. Not quite a laugh. An exhale with texture.

“Freak’s an asshole.”

Gunner’s mouth twitched.

The highway came up fast. I took the on-ramp at seventy and the truck leaned hard. Gunner slid an inch toward me. I caught him with my elbow and kept my hand on his chest. His heartbeat had settled into something that wasn’t good but wasn’t catastrophic. The rag was dark with blood but the seep had slowed. The tape held.

I kept talking.

Road names. Who was on gate duty. Who owed who money from last week’s poker game. The roster. The rotation. The headcount for Sunday’s ride. Anything with words in it. Anything that gave his brain something to latch onto besides the hole in his leg and the blood on the seat and the fact that we were still miles from County with a truck that smelled like death and a pulse under my hand that I could read like a gauge.

My hands were steady.

They’d been steady the whole time. No shake. No hesitation. The rag had torn clean. The tape had lain flat. My palm read his chest and my fingers held the wheel and neither one betrayed anything. I thought about that for half a second, and then I stopped thinking about it.

The exit for County came up. I took it at sixty and the tires chirped. The hospital lights were visible from the highway. A dull glow against the low clouds. Five miles. Four. Gunner’s breathing had changed again. Slower. Deeper. His eyes had closed.

“Hey. Open your eyes.”

They opened. Barely.

“We’re almost there. You hear me? Almost there.”

His hand moved. Found my wrist where it lay across his chest. His fingers closed. Weak. Cold.

The ER entrance threw light across wet asphalt. I parked at the curb and killed the engine. The sudden silence was louder than the road had been. I got out and came around to the passenger side. Gunner’s face was gray. His lips were white. The rag was black with blood and the tape was streaked with it.

I got him out of the truck.

He weighed nothing. I carried him through the doors and laid him on the first gurney I saw. A nurse appeared. Then another. Someone asked questions. I answered in single words. Gunshot. Femoral. Packed it. Taped it. The nurses moved. The gurney rolled. The brother’s eyes lifted to mine once before the doors closed, and then he was gone.

I went back to the truck.

Blood had dried on my hands. Brown, from wrist to elbow. The cab stank. The seat was ruined. I leaned against the front quarter panel and crossed my arms. Nobody came out.

I waited.

* * *

Four in the morning. I hadn’t moved. The truck’s quarter panel cold against my back. The cab still smelled. I’d left the windows down and the night air did nothing about it.

A nurse had come out twenty minutes ago. Young. Tired. Scrubs with cartoon characters on them. She’d stopped six feet from the truck and looked at my arms and then my face.

“He’s stable. Surgery went well. He’ll keep the leg.”

I’d said, “Copy” and nothing else.

She’d waited a beat, maybe expecting more, then turned and gone back inside. The doors had swung shut behind her. I’d stayed where I was.

Copy. Radio confirmation. Message received. In my head it had meant: the math came out right.

That didn’t mean I wanted to do it again.

Dread found me there.