In The Name Of Love

Chapter 32

His heart stopped again. The paramedics took two minutes to revive him. I sat there being held in place by Elisabeta. She was as scared as I was, but somehow she was thinking clearly. She put both her arms around me and I clung onto them tightly feeling like I was falling apart all over again. But I had to stay strong. Strong for Mircea.

I sat up and took my head off her shoulder to look into the bathroom at precisely the wrong moment. They'd moved Mircea from the showers to get more room and what I saw terrified me more than anything else I'd ever seen.

Andy was wearing gloves now and had rolled his sleeves up. He had a scalpel in hand and was making a line across Mircea's body below his ribs. I'd seen enough programmes to know what was going to happen next. I supposed I should have buried my head in Elisabeta's shoulder and cried. Instead I sucked it up and walked over to the entrance to the bathroom where I stopped and leaned against the doorframe gripping it with both hands.

Andy slowly eased his hand inside the cut he'd made so that he could massage Mircea's heart. It was horrible to watch but I couldn't take my eyes away. There was a mask on his face so the medic could pump air into his lungs with the motion of breathing to go along with it, the other medic was preparing a syringe and Andy was...

There wasn't much blood. Somehow that was the most horrific thing. If there was no blood that meant that it wasn't moving and if it wasn't moving...

It seemed to take forever for anything to happen. It all happened so slowly. I could track every movement. The man doing the breathing bag opened and closed his hand in a regular rhythm, the other man injected my husband-to-be's arm, but nothing happened. He was getting bluer and bluer and I could imagine him getting colder by the moment.

A couple of people pushed by me, more medics with more kit. They began working and all the medics spoke in rapid Romanian. I didn't know what was going on and I hated it, but I didn't interrupt. They were working quickly, doing things that were saving Mircea's life. They needed to concentrate and having a hysterical woman begging them to speak in German wasn't going to help.

"Got him!" Andy exclaimed and carefully pulled his hand out of Mircea's chest.

It was covered in green and brown puss. It was all up his arm and it was thick and gloopy. He saved some in a phial and put it in his pocket.

"You marine?" a medic asked him in very uncertain English.

Andy turned around looking for something and then his eyes landed on me. "Wyn," he said and pointed me to a position by his side. "German. Translate for me."

I turned to the medic and listened to his plan. We talked it though a couple of times whilst Andy washed his arm off. When I was sure I had all the details memorised I went over to the sinks where Andy was still washing his arm. His face was set into concentration which was a little too brittle for my liking.

"You good?" I asked.

"The last time I did that bombs were raining down about two miles from here. What the plan?" he asked.

"The helicopter is already here. I'm gonna go down in a sec. Then one of the medics is gonna winch up, then a stretcher is coming down for Mircea, they're going to take him out the bedroom window, but they need you to go up with him to get him out the building safely. Then they're going to get the other medic and we're going to fly straight there."

"Ok," he nodded. "Get some shoes on."

"Focus on the now. You can break down later." I squeezed his arm, passed him a towel and went back into the bedroom.

Elisabeta was pacing, too worried to have heard what was going on properly. As soon as she saw me she asked questions, struggling to stick even to German. I talked over the plan with her as I struggled with my shoes. I was still in the big dress and I kept getting the material caught around my feet. In the end I sat on the floor and hoiked the bloody thing up perhaps too far, but I got the shoes on and we both hurried down the stairs knowing the faster I got to the helicopter the sooner Mircea could get on it.