One, two, three, four. "Please, come back!" Nat bore down, pressing hard. The scarf fell off him. Blood bubbled gruesomely from the other wound. She kept pressing and counting. The C.O.'s eyes didn't move. He didn't react to her shouts. She finished the count of chest palpitations and bent over again, trying to breathe life into him.

She kept pressing. She heard a sickening gurgling from his throat, and in the background, faraway shouts. Suddenly, an explosion resonated in her chest. What the hell was going on? Where had that come from? The RHU? What had blown up?

Nat struggled not to panic. She kept pressing, but the CO. didn't move. She bent over and huffed a short, powerful breath into his mouth, then stopped. The poor man was dead. She had to let him go. She had tried her best. She had to get to Angus. The explosion.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She wiped her eyes, streaking warmth across her face. Blood. She scrambled to her feet and ran from the room and into the hallway. A siren blared a continuous state of emergency. The lockdown announcement blasted over and over. Smoke wafted down the corridor, layering the air with gray streaks.

She ran down the hall, veered around the corner, and sprinted for the classroom. Thick smoke billowed down the hall, singeing her eyes and filling her nostrils. She took a breath and felt herself gag. There was a fire in the prison, and she was locked inside. So was Angus. They would all burn to death.

Suddenly there came the deafening blast of a percussive explosion. Nat was thrown to the floor. The side of her face hit the concrete. Her knees slammed down hard. She rolled in shock and pain into the cinderblock wall.

"NATALIE!"

Nat opened her eyes to see Angus running through the smoke to her. He reached her, knelt down, and scooped her up in his arms.

"Your Grace." He grinned, his forehead bleeding, and Nat felt a rush of relief that approached delirium. Behind him was the CO. she'd sent to him.

"This way!" the CO. shouted. "Move!" He hustled them to the barred door at the entrance, where another CO. in black SWAT gear met them, unlocked the door, and hurried them all out of the prison and into the cold.

Wrapped in a thin blue blanket, Nat sat on a gurney in the back of an idling ambulance, while an EMT dressed the gash on her cheek. He was thirtyish, with prematurely salt-and-pepper hair and earnest brown eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. He wore a bunchy nylon jacket over his blue uniform, which bore a bright patch Nat didn't bother to read. She had forgotten the EMT's name. She had been here an hour, and her thoughts were still scrambled. She felt shaken, sad, and so exhausted she was almost sleepy.

"One more minute." The paramedic dabbed goopy Neosporin onto her cheek, his hands encased in latex gloves of pale purple.

Ouch. "Thanks."

"How's your head? Better?"

"Yes, thanks," Nat answered. The throbbing had almost stopped. Her knees and butt felt tender. She pulled the blanket closer, covering her torn shirt; the ambulance was drafty. The parking lot outside the prison was serving as a makeshift infirmary and staging area for the cops and press who swarmed the compound.

"Okay, let's cover this baby up." The paramedic unlatched a stainless steel drawer, retrieved a box of butterfly bandages, and opened it. While he worked, Nat spotted Angus through the ambulance's back window. A gauze bandage covered part of his forehead, and he still had on his bloody workshirt. He was talking with two tall state troopers in stiff, wide-brimmed hats set at a slightly forward angle. They wore gray uniforms with black insulated jackets and heavy gun belts. Angus gestured to the troopers, who squared off, arms folded identically, at a distance from him. He was clearly pissing them off, so he must have been feeling better.

This is my lucky sweater.

Nat sipped water from a Poland Spring bottle. Was it even the same day that Angus had said that? She tried to block out the image of the CO. bleeding to death on the rug, blood hiccupping from his mouth. She hadn't even known that was possible. She had never seen anybody die before. She couldn't shake the memory.

"Okay, you're all done." The paramedic pressed the butterfly bandage gingerly into place. "You'll be sore for a while, but I don't think anything's broken. Like I said, just to be on the safe side, I'd get to the hospital and talk to a doc. Any concussion can be serious. You're a little lady to be in such a big fight."

"Thanks." Nat was only half listening as she watched Angus. He was gesturing more emphatically, and one of the troopers was gesturing back. It looked like a sixties rewind, the longhair vs. the cops.

"Last point I should mention." The paramedic closed the bandage box, slid it back into the drawer, and latched the drawer. "You should get yourself an AIDS test. The blood on your hands can't all be yours."

Nat looked down at her hands, clutching the blanket. Dried blood stained the wells between her fingers, had found its way into her cuticles, and delineated the lines on the back of her hand, like a macabre ink drawing. Now she knew what fresh blood smelled and even tasted like, and she wished she didn't. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe you don't need to know everything.

“You have any questions, about the dressing or anything?"

“Yes.”

"Okay, shoot."

"There was a C.O., a guard, inside." Nat swallowed hard. "He had a knife in his chest… and another wound. I found him. There was blood… everywhere. I know CPR. I did CPR on him."

"Oh, it was a guard's blood? Well, officially I'm telling you to get the test, but between us, you don't have to worry. The guards are tested for AIDS in their annual, so you should be fine."

"No, it's not that. I tried to help him, but I couldn't." Nat didn't know why she was even telling him this. "I wonder if I could have tried something else, or done something better than I did-"

"I see," the paramedic said softly. "I know what you're worried about, and you shouldn't be. I saw him when they carried him out. He didn't have a chance. That shiv in his chest, there was nothing you could have done." He placed a hand on Nat's arm to comfort her, but it reminded her of the C.O.'s death grip.

"What could I have done better, or different? You're an expert. What could you have done?"

"There was nothing I could have done."

Tell my wife. Nat tried to block out the words. The whisper.

"Don't blame yourself." The paramedic eased back onto the black-padded bench seat across from the gurney, and he gazed at her in a steady, centering way. "Believe me, I've had to let a lot of really nice people go. Old people. Someone's mom. Or kids, really little ones. You'll never get used to it. Natural deaths I can deal with. But violent death, it's the worst. Car accidents are the worst. Pool drownings, the worst." He shook his head. "It's all the worst."

Nat knew what he meant, now. It was the carnage. Human beings, butchered like so much meat. The CO. and the inmate, lying dead.

"We don't get a lot of this out here, not as much as Philly. But we get some business from Chester, that's for sure. Considering the knife wounds that man had, it was a miracle he was alive when you found him."

Tell my wife. "He… talked to me."

"You heard his last words?"

Nat nodded. She couldn't speak. Maybe the CO. was waiting to tell somebody. Maybe that was why he hadn't yet died when she got to him.

"Now I understand. Now I get it. Okay." The paramedic sighed, leaning over on his haunches in his bunchy jacket. "That's happened to me more than a few times, and it's tough."

Nat struggled to remain in control. For a minute she felt as if she were talking to a priest. Or Dr. Phil.