Free Bad Hair Day by Carrie Harris Page A

a minute to figure out which lump was the Adam’s apple. I hoped I was doing this right;I’d practiced this procedure on my Cabbage Patch Kids, but it wasn’t exactly the same.
    I tore open a scalpel. It would have felt so cool if it hadn’t been for the fact that my hand was shaking like I was a crackhead with a tremor. And when it was time to make the incision, I froze. I was a high school student, for god’s sake. I didn’t care how big a med geek I was; I should not have been doing makeshift surgery on my best friend’s boyfriend. If I killed him, I would never be able to face Rocky again.
    But he’d die if I did nothing.
    That did it. I made the cut decisively, forcing my hands to remain steady. Then I wormed the pen tube into his neck. There wasn’t much resistance; this whole process was a lot easier than I’d expected. Of course, I’d probably jinxed myself by thinking that. I said a quick prayer and puffed into the exposed end of the pen. His chest rose and fell as the air filled his lungs. Hallelujah.
    I settled down next to him on my knees, the end of my braid skimming the pool of blood on his face. It was twenty kinds of gross, but I would have hated myself if I’d let worry about my stupid hair get in the way of my job, and my hands were so gory that I’d only make it worse if I tried to pull my braid out of the way.
    Between puffs, I asked for some gauze. Rocky stared at me like I was speaking Swahili. Frankly, I was surprised she’d held together as long as she had. I groped around for the gauze myself.
    The stupid car alarm was still going off, but no one came to investigate. I thought someone ought to make a car alarm thatrepeatedly shouted, “Free beer!” I bet loads of people would come for that.
    I mopped the blood off Bryan’s face with one hand, held the pen steady with the other, and periodically breathed into it until he started respirating on his own again.
    I felt like a total rock star.

T he EMTs arrived after what felt like an eternity. The ambulance was too wide to fit through the gate, so they had to park at Legs and Eggs. If I’d been in charge, I would have driven monster truck–style right over the stupid fence, but I obviously had different priorities than most of the world’s population.
    Besides, I couldn’t complain. Bryan seemed stable; Rocky was content to hold his hand and repeatedly brush the hair from his forehead, and the slight delay gave me a little time to investigate. I was more determined than ever to find the person or thing that had done this. And then I’d kick its butt.
    I kept a steady grip on the pen so it didn’t go all wonky on me while I looked around for evidence. Bryan had a bloody knife gripped in his hand; I nearly stabbed myself in the thigh when Ileaned over him. I made a mental note to search the attack victim for pointy objects the next time something like this happened.
    He must have done some serious damage with that knife if the blood pool was any indication. I had no idea how the bad guy could have gotten over the fence after sustaining such a massive injury, but it didn’t matter how far he ran. He wasn’t getting away from me, damn it. He should have known better than to mess with the science geek.
    I groped around in the scattered med supplies for a spare specimen vial. I’d started carrying them around with me after the almost-zombocalypse. EDTA tubes would have been handy, because they keep blood from clotting, but there was geekery and then there was obsessive-compulsive straitjacket territory. A dangerous line, but I toed it well.
    A quick flick of my thumb and the vial popped open. I let the knife drip into it. A clump of something wiry stuck on the edge of the vial. When I tried to remove it, it stuck to the side of my red-streaked finger. Great.
    The EMTs shoved their gurney onto the gravel; it bounced and rattled over the uneven ground, but they were still closing in on us fast. I needed to hide my samples pronto, or