Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
ELENA
The trauma pager buzzed against my hip, jolting me out of charting.
MVA inbound. Two patients. ETA five minutes.
I was already on my feet grabbing fresh gloves from the wall. The charge nurse—Toby—met me halfway down the hall, rattling off details.
“Motorcycle crash. Witness says he swerved to avoid a deer or a dog—something small. Lost control, no helmet. Two riders. One unconscious. One responsive but in rough shape. GCS is seven on arrival. BP’s dropping.”
“No helmets?” I asked, already tugging a gown over my scrubs.
“None.”
I tried not to let that stick. Tried not to hear the way his voice dipped when she said it.
“Names?”
He hesitated—just a breath—but I felt it. Felt it like a punch to the ribs.
Toby didn’t look at me when he said, “Chase Everton and a Jane Doe. No ID on her.”
The hallway tilted.
My fingers froze on the Velcro strap of my face shield. For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
No. No, no, no—
Not the man whose hands I still felt on my skin when I closed my eyes. Not the man I loved and pushed away because I thought I had time. Time for him to get clean. Time for me to get brave.
Now all I had was seconds.
I couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not now.
Not when the sirens were screaming outside.
Not when the man I loved was bleeding in the back of an ambulance.
Not when I had no idea if he was still breathing.
I swallowed it down. Stuffed the panic into a box and slammed the lid shut.
This was my job. My patient.
I followed the team toward the ambulance bay, heart pounding in my throat. The double doors slid open just as red lights flooded the entrance, sirens warbling into silence.
A stretcher flew through the doors.
Blood.
Leather.
Chase.
I didn’t let myself blink. Didn’t let myself break.
But as the second stretcher rolled in, smaller, motionless, with a familiar curtain of dark hair matted with blood, my knees almost gave out.
Charlie.
Her face was barely recognizable under the blood, the swelling. Her body looked broken, limp beneath the straps. Her pupils were blown. She wasn’t moving. Not even a twitch.
Machines hissed. The bag valve mask pumped air into her lungs. The medic’s voice came sharp and fast.
“Female, early twenties. Found unconscious. No helmet. BP dropping, GCS three, pupils sluggish and unequal. Suspected TBI. Prepped for intubation in transit. Bagging en route. We’ve got a pressure spike—possible herniation.”
My heart stopped.
I stepped forward, nodding at the lead medic. “Take her to Trauma 1. I’ve got her.”
Chase’s gurney rolled by, and he caught sight of me, his head lolling to the side. “Elena?” he slurred, trying to lift his arm. “Is she—?”
I couldn’t answer.
Couldn’t look.
Because Charlie’s life was hanging by a thread.
“Let’s move,” I snapped, following her stretcher through the double doors.
Whatever I felt for Chase—love, grief, fury—it would have to wait.
Right now, Charlie needed me more.
The trauma bay was already prepped. Monitors flicked to life, a vent waited, the crash cart loomed in the corner like a priest at a deathbed. We transferred Charlie from the gurney to the bed, and I moved on autopilot, barking orders as the team closed around her.
“Get neuro on the line. Page Dr. Bhandari. Let’s get a stat head CT as soon as she’s stable. Let’s go, people!”
She looked so small. So young. Her arms were scraped raw. One of her shoes had fallen off, the other still dangling from her foot like a sad afterthought.
The nurse read off vitals, and they weren’t good.
“Push fluids. Start dopamine. Let’s get her pressure up now.”
Someone handed me scissors. I didn’t hesitate. I sliced the shoulder of her shredded shirt and exposed her chest, heart racing as I placed leads for the monitor. Her skin was cold. Too cold.
She wasn’t just critical.
She was crashing.
I glanced at her face—swollen, bloodied, barely recognizable—and something inside me cracked.
A nurse leaned over. “She’s posturing.”
My stomach lurched.
“Prep for intubation,” I said, voice like stone. “Now.”
There wasn’t time to panic. There wasn’t time to grieve or rage or scream at the man in the next room who’d put her here. Right now, I was the only thing standing between Charlie and brain death.
And I would not lose her.
The chaos had quieted, but nothing felt still.
Chase was in Observation. Alone. Shirtless. A bloodstained bandage wrapped around his shoulder, a line of butterfly strips marking the gash over his eyebrow. His face was pale, splotched with dried blood and bruises.
I paused in the doorway, forcing one last deep breath before stepping inside.
His eyes fluttered open at the sound of my footsteps. “Elena,” he rasped, like the word hurt coming out.
I stopped beside his bed, trying to steady my voice. “Charlie’s stable.”
His body tensed.
“She’s in an induced coma,” I continued. “She has a traumatic brain injury. We’re monitoring the pressure, keeping her sedated to give her a chance to heal.”
His jaw clenched. Hard. “Is she gonna be okay?”
“I don’t know.” The truth tasted bitter. “She’s alive. That’s all I can promise right now.”
He closed his eyes, just for a second, and let out a breath that sounded like it scraped his lungs raw.
“You shouldn’t have let her on that bike,” I added quietly.
His voice was low and raw. “I didn’t plan to crash.”
“No one ever does.”
The silence dragged, taut and brittle.
Then he shifted, eyes narrowing. “That cowboy still around?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Guy with the hat. The one at your house.”
Seriously?
“Does that really matter right now?”
He didn’t answer. Just looked at me like he was bracing for something worse than brain injuries and IV drips.
So I gave him the truth. Not the full truth, but enough.
“It’s not important,” I said. “What matters is that you’re here. And you need help.”
He scoffed, soft and broken. “Yeah. I fucking know.”
I stepped closer. “Can you tell me what hurts?”
“Everything hurts,” he murmured, reaching for my hand. He placed it on his chest, over the bruises and the heartbeat struggling beneath. “But mostly this.”
“Chase…” My throat clenched. I hadn’t let myself cry through Charlie’s intake, through the crash, through hours of adrenaline.
But now I was coming undone.
“I love you, Elena,” he said, voice rough and wrecked.
I closed my eyes then opened them slowly, pressing my palm harder against his chest.
“Then get some help,” I said. “If you won’t do it for you…”
I dropped my gaze, one hand slipping instinctively to rest over my lower belly. Not thinking. Just feeling.
“…do it for us.”
He didn’t notice.
Just nodded.
And that was enough to make me hope he might still be the man I fell in love with—if he chose to be.