That was Macklin. He hadn't sent an ambulance. He had dumped Jesse like an uninventoried scrap part to keep county dispatch from logging an industrial injury on his clock.
"Where is he?" I asked, my voice dropping hard.
She buzzed the security lock on the inner door. "Exam Room 3. But Mr. Grier, he isn't in good shape. Dr. Mercer is trying to stabilize his chest wall before the county transport van arrives."
I pushed through the heavy door into Exam Room 3.
Jesse lay on the narrow examination table under the hum of a flickering fluorescent tube. His work shirt had been cut away down the center, exposing his left shoulder and chest. A deep, jagged purple hematoma stretched across his rib cage in the exact shape and width of a low-boy trailer frame rail. His right forearm was strapped into a rigid fiberglass splint, two of his fingers taped together where the knuckle joints had dislocated.
"Jesse," I whispered, stepping to the side of the table.
His eyelids fluttered open, heavy and glassy from whatever sedative the clinic had pushed into his IV line. When his eyes focused on my face, his breath caught with a ragged, wheezing whistle that made his whole body tremble.
"Cole," he croaked, his lips cracked and stained with dried blood. "The brake line... I wouldn't clear it."
"I know," I said, resting my hand gently against his uninjured shoulder. "I found Card 4108. I found your red tag."
"Macklin told Billy... to drop the landing gear," Jesse gasped, each word costing him a shuddering breath. "I was underneath... hooking the air brake safety clevis. Billy pulled the tractor pin before I could slide my creeper out. The chassis dropped twelve inches straight onto the deck. It pinned my chest against the axle."
"Macklin knew you were under there?"
"He was standing right by the dolly handle," Jesse whispered, tears cutting pale tracks through the grease on his cheeks. "He heard the steel buckle. When they jacked the frame off me, he told Billy... if OSHA sees this, the yard loses the bridge contract and everyone gets laid off. He took my wallet and my phone... threw me in the back of the utility van... said he was taking me to the ER in Alabaster."
"He didn't take you to Alabaster," I said, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw ached. "He dumped you here under a vagrant intake so the state transport board wouldn't get a report."
The exam room door swung open. A gray-haired physician in a white lab coat stepped in, holding a digital tablet and a paper clipboard.
"You Cole?" the doctor asked, his voice clipped and serious. "I'm Dr. Mercer. Your brother has three fractured ribs, a punctured left pleural cavity, and a severe crush injury to his right wrist. He needs a surgical chest tube and a trauma unit at UAB in Birmingham."
"Then call the Birmingham medevac," I said.
Mercer shook his head, turning his tablet toward me. "I can't dispatch an interstate air transport. Ten minutes ago, Chilton County Sheriff’s dispatch flagged your brother's file. Deputy Vance filed a fugitive detainer. The county is claiming your brother wrecked a road hauler, fled the scene of a felony, and is currently in county custody."
Mercer pointed through the small glass window of the exam room toward the front parking lot.