22. Davis

Fuck .

Davis had been trained in first aid since a high school class, had maintained his CPR and first aid certs every year since he had started interning with state parks in college. Hell, just a few years ago, when the world was waking back up, Davis had spent a week struggling through a wilderness first responder course, learning how to set broken bones and to properly carry someone who had had their pelvis crushed by a falling tree. He had assisted on a lot of injuries and rescues, had found people who followed their GPS down an abandoned access road to a mine back in West Virginia.

But his stomach had never dropped like this. He had never felt an entire chill course through his body and render him motionless like he did when Jeremy hit a rock and flew over his handlebars.

A credit to Jeremy, though, to the way that he was able to tuck his body and roll so his shoulder and side took the brunt of the fall. Davis ditched his bike to the side and scrambled down the mountain, pulling at the pack he had grabbed at the last minute.

“Ow, dammit,” Jeremy was saying, taking a few seconds to stand up. He was moving, he was talking, which meant he was breathing and hadn’t hit his head in any significant way.

“Don’t move,” Davis said, his voice coming out sharper than he intended. Jeremy, to his credit, sat back down, legs out in front of him. He had torn the knee of his leggings, bright red blood showing through, and the shoulder of his shirt was torn and his wrists were muddy. But Davis wasn’t thinking of any of that as he tossed his bag over to the side and pulled up Jeremy’s shirt, exposing a pale, toned abdomen.

“What are you—” But Davis wasn’t listening to any protests. He remembered a scenario in his wilderness first responder class. He had been playing the victim of a mountain biking accident for the other members of the class, and the instructor had pulled his shirt up and used stage makeup to paint a tiny bruise on the right side of his stomach. When none of the “rescuers” had managed to look for that type of injury, the instructor had grimly informed the class that, in this scenario, Davis would have died.

Handlebars on mountain bikes are incredibly dangerous. They often press into the stomach and cause the appendix to rupture.

And while Davis couldn’t remember shit from most textbooks, he could remember things from hands-on practical experience, even though he had never anticipated that he would have to use these skills on someone he cared about in this way.

Pulling Jeremy’s shirt up toward his chest, Davis looked over his stomach for any immediate bruising that would indicate internal bleeding of any kind. “Let me know if you feel anything painful,” he said sternly to Jeremy, gently pressing his fingers into the soft skin of his stomach in various places.

“Other than my fucking hands and knee,” Jeremy grumbled.

“Those aren’t important,” Davis said, continuing his investigation of his organs. His fingers moved up, pressing against his ribs, until Jeremy let out a painful hiss.

“God damn, they’re important,” Jeremy replied. “I’m a fucking artist, and my hands— ow!”

“No internal bleeding. Organs seem good. Now I need to check bones—” Davis spoke more to himself than to Jeremy, trying to keep his mind on the task in front of him instead of the image of Jeremy’s lean body flying through the air. “Jeremy!”

“Yes?”

“Can you breathe?”

“Well, obviously. I’m talking to you.” Jeremy took a breath, as if to prove a point. “Ow, fuck.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Breathe? Davis, you can say my hands aren’t important, but I do need to breathe—”

“No, just not deeply. You’ve probably bruised a rib.”

“But how are my hands?”

“You won’t care about your hands if you’ve broken a rib and punctured a lung,” Davis responded, definitely harsher than he intended. He finished his assessment of Jeremy’s torso with a sweep of his collarbone, then finally felt like he could breathe again. He sat back on his heels and swiped a palm over his face. “Sorry, I just—” He took a deep breath in and out. “I wanted to see if I needed to radio SAR or anything.”

“SAR?”

“Search and Rescue.”

Jeremy scoffed. “I don’t need to be rescued.”

Davis couldn’t help the skeptical look on his face and the way his eyes darted to Jeremy’s shoulder and knee. “Do I need to recount what just happened?”

“Well, you know, this was a bit more, uh, intense of a trail than I anticipated,” he said, looking away.

“It’s not your fault you caught a rock,” Davis said, making sure his voice was more gentle. He had a tendency to turn gruff and almost mean when he was worried about someone.

“It’s more the fact that I wasn’t entirely honest with you,” Jeremy said, looking back at Davis. He was surprised to see Jeremy’s cheeks turning bright red.

“How?” Davis reached for his bag and unzipped it, looking for his first aid kit.

“Well, I might have not had the same type of experience with mountain biking,” Jeremy began.

“I mean, biking around the city is fine—”

“I tend to bike more stationary,” Jeremy admitted. “Like in a room with thirty other people and loud music. Or on my Peloton at home.”

“What good is a bike that doesn’t go anywhere?” Davis said without thinking.

“Uh, it’s great cardiovascular fitness,” Jeremy sniffed.

“I didn’t mean that,” Davis said apologetically. “You could have just told me that you didn’t want to go mountain biking.”

“Yeah, but…” Jeremy looked away again. “You seemed so excited about it. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Davis didn’t know what to say to that, so he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Let me fix up your knee so we can hike back.”