Trauma Queen: A NCIS Fanfiction

Chapter Seven

Warning: Descriptions of bad injuries.

After a long day of work, I was happy to finally get home. Tim and I had arrived back at our building around the same time so we were walking up the stairs when I got a phone call from Jon. I looked at the screen, confused. I had switched to part time at the station since starting with NCIS and I wasn't scheduled to be on call until next week. Maybe I got the day wrong though.

"Hey Jon, what's up?" I said into my phone.

"Naomi," Jon weakly muttered. "Naomi I've been in an accident. I need help."

"Jon call 911. Where are you?" Panic rose in my voice.

"Corner of Maple and Main. Hurry, please." The line went dead.

"Oh my god I've got to go." I turned back around and raced down the stairs, my heart pounding in my chest.

I got to my car and flew into the driver seat, barely able to buckle my seatbelt I was shaking so much. Jon was one of my closest friends and I couldn't imagine not having him around any more. As I was turning on my blue light, the passenger door to my car opened and Tim sat down.

"I'm coming with you," he said, buckling in.

I didn't say anything as I floored the pedal, and raced off to where Jon said he was. The whole drive was silent. I stared straight ahead, imagining what the scene would look like. Jon, mangled and bloody, unresponsive in the front seat. The car would be all smashed up and I'd have to climb in through the passenger side or through his trunk. I imagined putting a C-collar on him and I shuddered at the thought. I hoped it was just a little fender bender.

I rounded the corner onto Main and saw the sight I was expecting. A Chevy Silverado had T-boned Jon's Subaru Impreza. I inhaled sharply and barely stopped the car before jumping out, running to my trunk. I always kept a First In Bag in my trunk, fully stocked with everything I would need, including gloves. Rule one of EMS: always be prepared. I threw on my American Medical Services jacket and an NCIS cap and ran to the scene of the accident, Tim following behind me. There was a throng of bystanders, awestruck at the sight.

I ran first to Jon's car and saw the driver side doors were completely smashed in. Luckily, the passenger side was untouched and I climbed in through the front side door, throwing my bag down on the road. Jon was slumped over, his head on the steering wheel and his breaths sounding bubbly.

"Jon? Jon can you hear me?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral. He groaned. "Jon it's going to be okay. I'm here." I saw Tim approach the car. "Call 911 Tim. Now!"

I turned back to Jon and did a very rapid assessment on him. I ran my hands around his head and down his neck, looking for crepitus. His shoulders and upper arms were intact. He had an open fracture on his right forearm and I could see the heavy bleeding leaking all over his pants. His stomach and chest, well what I could reach, we're fine. His legs seemed okay, but I could only get down to just below his knees.

"Tim, get the C-collar from my bag. It's in the yellow pouch. Also, I need three triangle bandages, an arm board, and two 5x9 bandages along with a gauze. In the orange and red pouches."

Within a few minutes, he handed me what I needed and opened the back door of the car. I put everything but the collar on the dash.

"What do you need?" Tim asked as I measured the collar to his neck.

"Get behind him in the seat. Take the head rest off. We need to sit him up." I set the collar to "long" and placed it on the dash. "You're going to reach over and grab his head on either side." I took his hands and placed them where they needed to be. Thankfully, he was smart enough to put on a pair of gloves. "I'm going to push him up. When you count to three I'm going to move him, okay? It's going to be one slow motion."

Tim nodded. "One. Two. Three." Tim kept Jon's head stable and I pushed his body up slowly, making sure not to hurt him further in the process. If Tim wasn't there supporting his head, we wouldn't have been able to have him keep his head up. At this point, he had fallen totally unresponsive.

"Keep holding his head like that. I'm going to put the collar on him." I slid the collar behind his neck and velcroed the sides together so he wouldn't hurt his neck further. "Don't let go. I'm going to splint his arm now."

I took Jon's arm and slowly pulled it towards me, trying to get the bone to go back to its normal position. Thankfully it went and I smiled as I put the two 5x9 bandages on him and unwrapped the gauze. I made a pressure dressing, trying so hard to stop the bleeding. There was a lot of blood and it was getting all over my pants as I worked on his arm. I took the arm board and placed it under his forearm, his hand curling around the end of it. I held the board to his arm with my knee as best I could and tied it to his arm. Placing the arm on his right leg, I took a sigh of relief.

"I'll take the head, you go get the medics." I crawled behind the seat and took Jon's head from Tim and he slid behind me with a little difficulty, accidentally grabbing my ass in the process. While Jon and I waited for the medics, I talked to him. "I've got you Jon. American is here, they're going to take you to Washington. You're doing great. Just keep breathing for me buddy." Blood was dripping from his mouth and I knew there was blood in his lungs. I was so worried about him, but I couldn't let anyone know that. Rule number two of EMS: never panic in front of a patient.

"Cahn," I heard a voice say. I turned my head to see my chief looking at me with a confused face. "What are you doing here?"

"He called me chief. I've got a collar on him and splinted his arm. He's got blood in his lungs and probably mouth. He needs to be suctioned when we get him on the bus." I didn't even bother worrying about my ass because I was helping my friend.

"All right. Fire is coming to extricate him, you've gotta get out of the car." He looked at me with a worried expression.

"Sir, I can get the KED on him if someone holds his head. I know I can. We can't wait for an extrication. He needs to be moved now."

My chief nodded, and before I knew it, a medic who I recognized as Yasmin Jive was switching with me for head stabilization. I crawled back up front when Chief handed me the KED. A third person climbed in the back seat of the car and I didn't even bother looking at who it was.

After getting Jon all strapped in to the extrication device, we pulled him out and onto a backboard. I held the board at the head, trying desperately to keep the weight up. My team strapped him into the board and we carried him slowly to the stretcher, loaded him in the ambulance, and shut the doors.

"Good work Cahn. You're a good EMT." My Chief patted my back as he went to get into the rig. "Is Jon allergic to anything? Does he have a medical history?"

"Penicillin and Sulphur. He's Type Two Diabetic sir. On Metformin, 2000 mg per day," I repeated the information Jon had given me one day when he was sick with the flu. I had to take him to an urgent care doctor and had to do all the talking for him.

"Thanks. I'll call you when I get information on him." And then he left.

The sirens blared through the streets of Washington and I felt a single tear drop down my face. I stared at the back of the rig until it was just a sound in the distance before taking my gloves off and throwing them in the nearest trash. Picking up my bag, I waked back to my car, zipping and placing it in the trunk.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Want me to drive?" Tim asked in a very calm and quiet voice. I nodded my head slowly as I turned around and fell into his chest. And then I just started sobbing. I was so worried about Jon. I knew my team would take good care of him, but I couldn't help but still be nervous. He was a good kid. "It's okay. He's going to be fine." Tim wrapped his arms around me and just hugged me as I cried into him.

"Thanks for your help," I whispered, barely able to speak.

"That's what I'm here for Naomi. We're team mates; we stick together."