Chapter 28 Piper
PIPER
My heart slid to my toes as my entire world came to a grinding halt.
When I’d woken up to the sound of my alarm going off upstairs, I scrambled to get ready for work.
And I still hadn’t heard back from Rock.
I double-checked with the babysitter to make sure she could pick Gavin up from the hospital daycare at four thirty, then I slid into my clothes and rode on into work.
And the second I walked through the doors at two in the afternoon, the nurse had rushed me with this piece of information.
I ripped my phone out of my pocket, begging for a message from Rock. A missed call. A voicemail. Something to indicate to me that he was all right.
But again, there was nothing.
I stood anxiously at the automatic front doors, ready to receive the trauma patient.
And the entire time, I tried to hold back tears.
I knew it was Rock. Somewhere in the pit of my gut, I was convinced his body was about to come rolling into the hospital.
I wrung my hands in front of me and shuffled on my feet while my mind reminded my lungs to breathe.
My heart raced. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck.
The tears I kept at bay leaked from the pores of my skin, drenching random parts of my body as I stood there in my white coat.
“Please don’t be Rock. Please don’t be Rock. Please don’t be Rock.”
“You okay, Dr. Jackson?”
I looked over at the nurse as she gazed up at me with an odd expression.
“I’m fine. Still acclimating to the small town,” I said.
“We don’t have the loud noises a city does. Get yourself a white noise machine. I know they’re made for kids and stuff, but I use one all the time.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yep. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. Can’t go to sleep without a little bit of noise filling my room at night.”
“Well, I was actually born and raised here. But I’ve been in New York City for the past decade or so,” I said.
“That’s more than long enough to get--”
The automatic doors rushed open and paramedics came screaming to a halt in front of me. I reached for the rolling gurney as a hospital bed rolled up beside me, ready for the patient’s body. Blood was everywhere, and two gunshot wounds pierced the man’s chest.
But when I looked into his eyes, relief rushed through my veins.
It wasn’t Rock.
I didn’t know who the fuck it was, but it wasn’t him.
Oh, thank fucking God.
“I’ve got two gunshot wounds to the chest, one through and through,” the paramedic said. “Had to revive him twice in the ambulance. We can’t get him stable.”
“He’s crashing!” I exclaimed as I ripped the man’s shirt open. “I need a cart.”
But I knew it was already too late for the man on the hospital bed.
We tried to revive him right there in front of the doors, and I thanked my stars the waiting room was empty.
Blood seeped onto the white sheets, dying it a glaring color that almost encompassed all of the white in sight.
I pressed the paddles to his chest while nurses set I.V.
’s and tried to gather blood, but we had no idea who the man was. He had no I.D. in his wallet.
“Clear!” I called out.
The nurses backed away and I zapped his chest. His body jumped, held still, then collapsed. The nurse walked back up and started compressions while the paddles charged, then I hovered them over the man’s chest.
“Clear!” I called out.
And still, nothing.
We zapped him three more times before we called his time of death. Two thirty-three on a fucking Tuesday afternoon. I set the paddles down and sighed, my eyes raking up and down the man’s body. No bruises. No scratches. No nothing. Just two bullet holes, a lot of lost blood, and no identification.
“Do any of you recognize this man?” I asked.
Everyone around me shook their heads as the paramedics bowed their heads.
We all gave a moment of silence for the man as the nurse pulled a sheet over him, then I wheeled the gurney down towards the elevator.
If there was some reason this body was requested into my presence, it meant there was a connection to Rock somehow.
But I didn’t want to let anyone on to that fact.
I told the nurses to get back to work and that I would see the body down to the morgue since it had been put into my care in the first place.
And the second the elevator doors closed, I used the time to dig through the man’s pockets with gloves on.
There wasn’t much. A crumpled up receipt. Some lint. A bit of pocket change. But once I held up his body and dug around in his back pocket, I felt it.
A folded sheet of paper.
I slid it out and unraveled it as the elevator made its way into the basement of the hospital. My hands trembled as the piece of paper unfolded, and I took in the familiar chicken scratch in front of me.
Rock had left me a note.
His name’s Michael ‘Mick’ Carpenter. He’s got a sister and a mother about an hour outside of town. Contact his family.
The second the elevator stopped I jammed the note into my pocket.
Then, I rolled the hospital bed all the way into the morgue.
The Medical Examiner that worked part-time at the hospital walked in through the side entrance just as I moved the bed into the middle of the room.
She gave me a weak smile before walking over to the body, then threw the sheet back and studied the man’s face.
“Any family?” the woman asked.
“His name’s Mick Carpenter. One of my friends knows him. He’s got a mother and a sister an hour outside of town,” I said.
“I’ll track them down. Thanks,” she said.
And then, I went back to my shift. The only thing I could do after the most insane first hour of work in my entire life.