“I’ll tell you how bad it is,” she said, pulling a bottle of saline out of her bag. She squirted the saline along his hairline until she found the injury. She had a hard time telling the difference between his blood and the grease paint. It looked like a bullet had cut through his right temple, nicking the tip of his ear. “You need stitches,” she said, grabbing Betadine out of her bag. “I can clean it, but I can’t stitch it here.”

He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.” He released her hand and strapped himself into the seat. “Just take care of Ozzy.”

“Ozzy’s as taken care of as he can be,” she said. “Let me clean this and I’ll stitch you up when we get there.”

“I’m sure there’s a doc there who will take care of it.” He glared at her as if daring her to retort.

She didn’t understand why he refused her help, but she wasn’t going to beg him to let her put a needle in his head. He was probably pumped up, with adrenaline flooding his thoughts and senses. She wondered how hard he found it to sit still, strapped into a seat, after the last few weeks. It made sense that he wouldn’t want someone to poke and prod him right now.

She sat next to Sanders. “How are we doing, Sergeant?”

“Like a blue tick on a coon hound,” he said, his voice raspy. She didn’t like his color. As she pressed her fingers to his neck to check his vitals, he said, “You did good out there.”

She pulled her stethoscope out of her bag. “Your captain doesn’t think so.”

Sanders snorted. “Yeah, right. He’s as proud of you as a beauty queen’s mama.”

She listened to his heart. Steady, strong. “Why don’t you lie down for me? I’m sure Sergeant Waller could set you up.”

With an insistent shake of his head, he said, “All due respect, Doc, I’m walking off this bird. I’ll go all the way to medical and collapse there, if you don’t mind.”

The men on this team made rather odd medical choices. “No problem,” she said with a sweet smile. She worked her way back to Ozzy. As she listened to his chest, she looked up and spotted Waller watching her. She held his gaze while she analyzed the crackling sound magnified by the stethoscope. She slipped the earpieces out of her ears. “Rales on the right side,” she said, running a hand over Ozzy’s forehead. “How long is the trip?”

“’Bout an hour.”

“Wow. It took me about eight hours to get out here when I first came.”

“Did you come by boat or truck?”

“Both. It was faster to do the first leg over land because of the way the river bends.”