Chapter 18 #2
My pager buzzed at my hip, causing both Violet and I to lean back at the same time to snag them off of our waistbands. Holding it up in the light, a code 99 flashed quickly across the screen before disappearing with the secondary alert reminder.
Incoming trauma. Non cardiac arrest.
“Damn it,” she mumbled. “I didn’t even get to finish my yogurt.”
I pushed up from the table, lifting my tray off of it after hooking my pager back to my scrubs. “Eat it on the way.”
She grunted at me but followed closely behind, taking two large mouthfuls of yogurt before tossing it into the last trashcan at the front entrance to the cafeteria.
Together, we jogged to the other side of the hospital, bypassing staff and other visitors meandering the hallways along the way. While it was quite the trek to get back for any other normal person, Violet and I were used to the long stretch, getting there in a little under two and a half minutes.
An ambulance was already pulled up to the automatic doors leading into the ER, their back half left open with no EMTs or stretcher inside of it.
Behind the vehicle was a police cruiser parked dangerously close, pulled up and abandoned with the lights still flashing on top of it. There were no other signs of anyone sitting on either side of the cab while it idled.
Strange for an ambulance to be personally escorted by officers and not have a code pink flashing across our pagers instead of a code 99. Usually, that was the only time for a police escort.
Violet kept close to me while we pushed past the main lobby and headed back through the double doors.
There wasn’t much chaos, aside from the usual hustling and coming and going of staff from beds behind pulled curtains. No yelling about a sudden code blue, no rushing to the nearest OR with bags of fluid draped over a patient’s body.
And no screaming baby having just been born in the backseat of a sedan on the way over here.
Where were the EMTs?
I glanced over at the nurses’ station. An officer stood in uniform while facing the desk, one hand gripping the utility belt latched around his waist and the other laid flat on the counter while he leaned over to talk to one of the nurses sitting behind one of the screens.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as he talked, the clacking of the keys loud despite the noise coming from the units and machines around the bay.
“Yeah, my partner,” he was saying. “Terran Bishop.”
I stopped short, cold fear sinking into my gut.
No.
Violet slammed into my back. “Ugh...”
The standard was eight weeks out following an injury on-duty—I’d looked it up the second his signed discharge papers came through the hospital’s portal system. He’d only been off for four and a half.
Why was he out in the field already?
Why was his partner not protecting him again?
Why the fuck was he in my ER when he should be at home resting?
Oh, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
“Uh, doctor,” Violet was beginning to say, none of which I was catching from how loud the sudden rush of blood in my ears was.
I caught sight of the two EMTs coming out from behind one of the back beds, curtain drawn hastily behind them as they made their way back through the bay with their stretcher in hand. One of them was the same one who’d had his hands packing Terran’s stab wounds that night.
What dramatic irony.
Leaving Violet behind, I blew past them, their radios crackling with another incoming call out in Edgewood that would no doubt be rerouted here within the hour.
I’d be elbow deep in another problem by then, trying to work through keeping myself together while having a familiar body splayed out on my OR table with whatever horrific injury I’d be tasked with fixing once more.
No blood coated the hard yellow surface when it caught in my peripheral. Not like the last time. Neither of their faces were pulled into taut frowns, filled with worry. This time, they were stone-faced and tunnel-visioned as they marched back to the ambulance bay.
A sliver of hope pierced through me. Broken bone, minor concussion from slipping on ice, a hard fall on the pavement after tripping down a large amount of stairs. All possibilities—
Wouldn’t constitute a code 99, a traitorous voice whispered.
Goddamn it.
Fuck.
My heart thudded hard in my chest, sharpening the way I was pulling air into my lungs. Fighting to keep the rising sting of panic at bay was making me lightheaded. The hospital lights overhead spun in a dizzying fashion.
I just saw him two and a half days ago. Fifty-seven hours, to be exact.
Alive and breathing and moaning my name while stretched out on my bed. His heart had been a steady beat under my palm; a strong and healthy pulse that indicated the life I’d worked tirelessly to preserve was still vibrant and thriving.
This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be.
Not again.
Not so soon after I’d gotten him patched up and out of my hospital to go on and live another sixty years.
He didn’t need some other set of injuries to add to his collection of ones from the last time he’d been in my OR.
He was supposed to behave, steering clear of wandering the streets and getting himself into trouble again with whatever vagrant happened upon him.
Cops and their fucking savior complexes.
How the hell had he gone and out gotten himself involved in another knife-wielding brawl?
Or worse.
Ending up with a gun trained to his forehead and a trigger-happy psycho on the other end of it with nothing to lose but the next twenty-five years locked behind bars.
I could handle a few stab wounds. Digging pieces of metal out of a seizing body while trying to keep it from bleeding out was another story.
A violent clench gripped my gut tight the second I reached the curtain. Voices on the other side of it were low, direct. No panic among them, no hurried hushed whispers while trying to maintain some kind of composure in the face of a life slowly slipping through their fingers.
And no calls for an OR being prepped.
All good signs. Positive, one might argue.
Non-life threatening.
My hand shook as I grabbed onto the fabric of the curtain, holding it tight as I yanked it back hard enough to startle the two nurses on the other side of it.
One of them was holding onto a small tray of instruments for Dr. Jacee to pick through while the other had a bag of saline she was fiddling with, trying to hook it onto the IV stand next to the bed.
Jacee was bent over a man, his fingers poised over a cut that stretched from the left side sternum and ran up to the man’s neck—superficial with hardly any layers of skin showing through the top, an easy patch job, normally only requiring butterfly closures to keep together while the skin knitted itself back together.
But Jacee was always a perfectionist. Preferred going layer by layer and sewing things up to make the scar tissue look pretty with his plastic surgeon background.
When he slowly turned toward me, he had a brow raised, his head tilted slightly down to look at me over the rim of his wire-framed glasses. “Dr. Montgomery. Is there a problem?”
The man on the bed was still breathing but unconscious.
Older, white hair that was ashy looking.
Longer on top and shorter on the sides. Pieces of it grimy and stuck together with mud from being laid out on the wet ground outside.
Loose skin drooped around his mouth and cheekbones.
Telltale signs of it losing elasticity with old age.
Not Terran.
Not Terran.
My hand clenched around the curtain hard enough to hurt. “Where’s the cop?”
Dr. Jacee threw me a confused look. “Cop? What cop?”
Irrational amounts of anger hit me like a freight train. “The one that came in with the ambulance.”
Who the fuck else would I be talking about?
Three identical looks of confusion were exchanged amongst all of them. A solid four seconds of silence to follow with no answer.
None of which was helping me locate my damn cop.
“Hello?” A sharp clap from my hands had them all jumping again.
“L-Last I saw, they were over at the desk.” The one next to the IV pointed back behind me. “I’d check there first. Maybe Natasha saw where they headed to?”
They.
More than one.
I ripped the curtain back into place the second I moved away from the bed, spinning on my heel to head back toward the main part of the ER.
“What’s his problem?” one of the nurses muttered, the answer lost amongst the rest of the noise of the hospital as I stalked away from them.
They. That had to mean he was fine. He would’ve been put on a priority like last time. This town was attached to their law enforcement even at a medical level. Injuries from the field were taken as high priority unless a catastrophic event occurred.
Even then, we’d reconfigure. Strategize.
Just like we did the last time.
I came back to where I’d left Violet. She was still over by the nurses’ station, leaning against it with one arm resting on the counter while she talked.
She had her hair tied back up but in a ponytail this time.
A long strand of it wrapped around her finger while she twirled it, her eyes bright with laughter.
In front of her stood a familiar figure, his back to me.
His stance was wide, toes pointed directly toward Violet as he nodded along to whatever it was she was saying, a subtle rhythm that spoke of his undivided attention.
His shoulders, squared with confidence, seemed even broader beneath the rigid lines of his jacket, the fabric stretching tight over his frame.
He had both arms folded across his chest, the motion lending a quiet power to his posture. The way it straightened his spine and lifted his frame made him loom larger over her, an imposing figure I’d grown accustomed to treating as soft.
Funny how I considered myself the one with the power when he had readily available access to a gun and knew how to use it properly. Trained and skilled in many things I wasn’t.