Lester could not move or speak. His veins had turned cold and thick, his lungs empty of air.
“Nakhreh! Nakhreh! Nakhreh!”Behrani was screaming, crawling past Lester, blood already spreading out around the boy’s shoulder and arm and down his bare leg. Then the two deputies came into view, both of them still pointing their weapons at Esmail and now the colonel, who was wailing, holding his son’s face, then turning him onto his back and pressing with both hands on the wound in his upper chest. “Hospital! Call to hospital!”
Lester’s gun lay at his feet and he felt it like a pointing finger. One of the deputies crossed in front of him, rested his foot on the gun, and began to pull on protective gloves. The other had holstered his service pistol and was already on his hand radio calling for an ambulance or fire squad, and they were both young, in their mid-twenties, the one near Lester tall and thin, the other short and fair-skinned, and Lester had trained neither of them. They were failing to take in the wider picture, and Lester knew he could slip out of the entryway and disappear into the crowd right now. But the colonel was moaning, pressing down so hard on his son’s wound his shoulders were hunched, and he was rocking slightly too, acting as a pump instead of a plug, blood leaving the boy’s hip wound in pulsing gushes. The deputy near Lester had finished pulling on his glove, but instead of starting first aid, he bent down to pick up the gun at his feet. The radio deputy had finished making his call, but now he was fumbling with his own protective gloves and for Lester everything began to move again, he was as light and diffuse as smoke, his heart in his face, brushing by the deputy: “Goddamn you, the kid’s bleeding to death.”
Lester knelt by the boy and pulled Esmail’s shorts down past the entry hole, then yanked off his own shirt and thumbed some of the material into the wound. The colonel didn’t turn around but stopped rocking and was just pressing down, sniffling now, saying the same Persian sentence over and over again to his son. The colonel’s shoulder and back were so close to Lester he couldn’t see the boy’s face, and he didn’t want to. He lowered his head and put all his weight into his hands, which were streaked and spotted red. The two deputies had finished protecting themselves and were now pushing back the crowd, making a hole for the paramedics. He could hear the sirens of the fire squad only five, maybe six blocks away. Esmail’s shorts and underwear were pulled almost to his penis, and Lester was looking down at the boy’s pubic hair, just a small patch of black. He closed his eyes and pressed so hard his hands began to ache.
It took seconds and years for the siren to cut through everything, then fall quiet, and he heard the doors open, the stretcher wheels hitting the pavement. Someone touched his shoulder and he stood, watched as a man and woman from the fire squad knelt by the boy. The man pulled Lester’s shirt away, then put it back and wrapped a yellow tourniquet around Esmail’s thigh while the woman slipped an oxygen mask over his face, and the colonel was still pressing, crying, and he wouldn’t move. The woman had her hand on his and she was saying something to him, but still the colonel didn’t seem to hear her. The tall deputy came up behind him, then bent down, and Behrani sniffled and finally let go, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on his son. The deputy took the colonel’s arm and helped him up while the paramedics slid the boy onto the stretcher, raised it, and rolled it past all the people to the street.
The boy’s feet were splayed out, the soles of his basketball shoes dirty and worn almost smooth, bouncing slightly as the stretcher was pushed into the paramedic van. The colonel tried to follow but the tall deputy held his arms, and as the van pulled away, Behrani strained forward, the siren coming on again, the radio deputy stepping up to Lester and saying something, asking something, his name, what happened? He had his notepad and pen in hand, and his breath was bad, his voice tremulous, his fingers too. Lester looked down at him, the shooter, at the twitch in his lip as he waited, treating Lester like a civilian, a victim or perpetrator, the kid didn’t know which yet. And neither did Lester.