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monitor out of his hands. “I’ve got this kid, go ahead and start the line?”
    Justin looked at him perplexed. “Line?”
    Drifts rolled his eyes in exasperation. “The IV, kid.  Start the IV.”
    “Oh!  Okay.” He placed a tourniquet on the girl’s limp arm and looked for a vein.
    Ramirez focused on the girl. “Maybelline!  Can you hear me?”  She didn’t answer.
    He placed his knuckle on her chest grinded down on her sternum.  The girl groaned, and her hand came up limply before it flopped back down.
    “What are you doing?” demanded the older woman.
    Ramirez answered her flatly, “I’m trying to see just how sick she is, ma’am.  She’s unconscious and only responding to pain.
    “Oh.”
    Drifts looked up from his stethoscope. “Blood pressure is 78/32, heat rate 152, respers are 38.  I can’t get a reading on the pulse oximetry.”
    Ramirez nodded.
    “I got the IV!” Justin exclaimed. “Oops.” 
    Blood began to seep out of the open catheter.  Drifts moved to help the student grumbling not quite inaudibly under his breath, “. . . ing baby sitting . . .” 
    The EMT popped off the tourniquet, clamped off the IV catheter and assisted him to clean and tape up the line and attach it to the bag of saline.  Drifts unceremoniously took a small velvet picture frame off its spot on the wall and handed it to the man who guided them in. “Here take this.” He then hung the IV bag on the nail hook and opened up the bag of fluids.
    “Ma’am, does Maybelline have any medical problems that she is being treated for by a doctor?”
    “No.”
    “Is she allergic to anything?”
    “She’s powerful allergic to cats.”
    “I hear that.” Drifts chimed in.
    Ramirez continued. “What about medicines?”
    “Just Tylenol every once in a while.”
    “Does she take birth control pills?”
    The older woman looked scandalized. “Goodness no!  She is thirteen years old!”
    Ramirez sighed. “Ma’am, there isn’t any way to put this delicately, but I believe that Maybelline here is pregnant.”
    The grandmother gasped but Ramirez pushed through her reaction. “Moreover, I think that she is miscarrying.  That would be dangerous enough, but since the days of the outbreak, that can mean dangerous consequences especially for the mother.”
    “Mother?” the older woman breathed.
    “Yes ma’am, I’ve seen this before.  This is very dangerous for Maybelline.  We need to get her to the hospital immediately.”
    “But she’s a good Christian girl!  How could this have happened?” asked the grandmother.
    “My guess is that Maybelline had a less than pious moment six or seven months ago,” interjected Drifts.
    “Sam!” snapped Ramirez.  Justin stared at the EMT with a slack jaw.
    The grandmother’s fear multiplied. “What will happen to her if we don’t do anything?”
    “She will bleed out and grow septic from the infection.  Plus if the surgeons don’t remove the miscarried fetus from her soon, it will infect Maybelline, and she herself will turn.”
    “My sweet Maybelline has one of the soulless inside her now?”
    Ramirez nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
    The older woman digested this info for all of a second before she whirled on their skinny guide standing in the doorway. “You!”  She snarled. “This is all your fault, you son of a bitch!”
    She launched herself at him with a speed that belied her age.  She slammed him back into the hallway wall.  Pictures cracked and clattered to the floor and a few Precious Moments figurines plummeted and shattered upon impact.
    The skinny man screamed, “Wait, Grandmomma Edith!  Stop it!  Ow!”
    Ramirez and Drifts ran over and yanked the two of them apart as the she raked her grandson across the face with her yellow nails.
    “Enough!” shouted Ramirez. “We don’t have time for this!”
    “Get off of me!” the old woman screeched.
    Still holding fast, Ramirez snapped, “Ma’am, I’m trying to prevent a hot-drill from going