38. Critical Condition
Chapter thirty-eight
Critical Condition
Griffin
The problem with bad calls is that they don't end when the patient leaves your stretcher.
Your body doesn't know the difference between we're done and we survived it.
Mine definitely doesn't.
An hour ago, I was half inside a crushed SUV with one knee braced against twisted metal and both hands trying to keep a man from bleeding to death while fire worked around us to cut the driver's side apart.
There was a point where I stopped hearing anything except instructions—theirs and mine.
Saw here.
Move that.
Hold.
More gauze.
Don’t move for a minute.
Now he's inside the trauma bay with a dozen people around him, and I'm standing off to one side giving report while somebody else's blood dries in stiff patches across the front of my uniform.
“Tourniquet at nineteen-oh-six. Second one three minutes later when we couldn't control the proximal bleed. Two large-bore IVs, TXA started en route. Pressure dropped into the seventies twice but came back into the nineties after blood.”
The trauma team orders twenty other things before I'm finished talking.
That's how it works.
Our patient becomes their patient in pieces.
Mechanism.
Vitals.
Interventions.
Response.
What changed on the way in.
What almost killed him before we got there.
I answer questions until there aren't any more.
Then I step back.
The room keeps moving without me.
For the first time in more than an hour, I realize how hard I'm breathing.
Adrenaline can be a bitch.
My shoulders ache from holding pressure at an angle the human body wasn't designed to maintain. There's blood dried into the creases around my fingernails despite gloves and wipes because apparently if the blood reaches your wrist, well, bodily fluids are committed to finding a way.
One of my partners catches my eye from across the hall. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
Automatic answer.
He looks like I feel.
Sweat at his temples. A red smear along one forearm that isn't his.
The other guy who jumped the call with us is already dealing with the stretcher and trying to make our equipment look less like we dumped the contents of the ambulance onto the interstate.
I look down at my hands. “I need five minutes.”
“Take ten.”
I don't argue.
The bathroom is empty.
I lock the door, wash my hands once, then again when I notice dried blood at the edge of my watchband.
I've seen enough of it that the sight doesn't bother me in any meaningful way, but my nervous system hasn't gotten the memo that we're safe now. My hands shake once when I reach for a paper towel.
I flex them.
Breathe.
Look at myself in the mirror.
There is a dark streak across the thigh of my pants and another along the lower edge of my shirt where I must have leaned against him during the extrication.
Fantastic.
I look like the opening scene of a crime show.
The snack room is down the hall from the ambulance entrance, and the refrigerator is fully stocked with bottled water—which isn’t always the case, so I’m grateful.
I take one.
Drink half of it standing there.
Then I finally sit down.
The plastic chair feels strange under me after an hour of moving.
My personal phone has been in my pocket for almost two hours.
There are calls where I can glance at it between tasks. Calls where I'll see a notification while we're transporting and check it when things settle.
This wasn't one of those calls.
I pull it out.
The screen wakes.
Notifications cover it.
Three missed Dexcom alerts.
A missed group-chat notification.
Another Dexcom alert.
My brain catches on the word before I really process anything else.
HIGH
Every piece of post-call noise in my head vanishes so completely that for one second the room feels silent.
I open the app.
Cami's graph fills the screen.
The last several hours are there in a line I understand too fucking well.
High.
Down some.
Back up.
Then up harder.
And harder.
The last reading doesn't have a number.
Just HIGH.
I look at the timestamp.
Three minutes ago.
Part of me is relieved it hasn’t been that way for very long.
I swallow hard and hit call.
Her phone rings.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Nothing.
“Come on, baby.”
Voicemail.
I end it and call again.
Same thing.
I stand so fast the chair legs scrape hard across the floor.
One of my partners—who I hadn’t even realized had joined me—steps in front of me. “Griff?”
I don't answer him, because I'm already calling Ronan.
He picks up on the second ring. “Griffin?”
“Go upstairs and check on Cami.” My own voice doesn't sound like mine.
There is a beat of silence.
Then movement. “What happened?”
“Cami's Dexcom says HIGH, which means it’s probably above 400. She's not answering me. Go upstairs now.”
Footsteps.
Fast.
A door.
Ronan doesn't ask another question.
I hear him taking the stairs quickly, and that scares me almost as much as the graph. Ronan doesn’t run for anything.
“Cami?” His voice gets farther from the phone for a second.
Then louder again. “Cameron.”
Nothing.
My heart slams against my ribs. “Ronan?”
“I'm here.”
“Wake her up.”
“I’m trying.” His voice changes. “Cami.”
I hear something shuffling. Blankets, maybe.
Then her name again, louder. “Cami, open your eyes.”
A sound comes through the phone.
Not words.
A low, confused noise.
Fuck.
“Is she breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Is it normal?”
Ronan is silent for half a second. “No, it’s fast. Deep.”
Every bit of clinical training I have snaps into place so hard it almost hurts. “Call 911.”
“Do you want me to call you back?”
“Use her phone or get Micah.”
Ronan does.
“MICAH!” The shout is loud enough through the speaker that I pull my phone half an inch from my ear.
I hear a door slam.
Footsteps.
“What?”
“Call 911. Now.”
“What happened?”
“Get Dex too.”
Then Ronan is back with me. “Griffin.”
“Get her glucometer.”
“She has it on her nightstand.”
I’m sure she does—because she did everything right.
The thought nearly breaks something in my chest.
“Check her.”
I hear more rustling, and I’m grateful I taught Ronan and Micah how to do this—even if Cami thought I was overreacting.
Ronan is talking to her quietly while he does it. “Cami, I'm poking your finger now.”
Even now.
Even terrified.
He tells her first.
The meter beeps.
Silence.
“What does it say?”
Another beat.
“HI.”
I close my eyes.
Fuck.
My partner is watching me. I’ve said enough—he probably already knows what’s happening, but I tell him anyway.
“It's Cami.”
His entire posture changes with the confirmation.
“What do you need?”
“She's altered. Type One. Her meter that limits at 600 is reading HI. They're calling 911.”
“Go.”
“I need to call—”
“We have the unit.”
The other guy appears behind him. “We'll handle the restock and chart. Go.”
I nod once.
On the phone, I hear Micah speaking to dispatch in the background.
“Tell Micah to tell them Type One diabetic, altered mental status, meter reads HI, deep rapid respirations. She needs ALS.”
Ronan relays it.
The dispatcher is asking questions I can't quite make out.
Dex's voice appears somewhere behind them—high and panicked. “What the fuck is happening?”
“Dex—”
“Why isn't she waking up?”
Micah says something I can't hear.
I hear Cami make another sound.
Then a weak, slurred, “Water.”
My chest caves in.
Ronan repeats the request. “She wants water.”
“Don't give her much if she's that altered. Wet her mouth if you need to. Try to keep her on her side if she gets nauseated.”
“Okay.”
“Is she vomiting?”
“No.”
“Good.”
There are more questions I could ask.
Pulse.
Cap refill.
Exactly how fast she's breathing.
If she’s fully oriented.
None of them will change the next step.
Professionals are coming.
She needs fluids.
Labs.
Insulin.
Electrolytes.
A hospital.
Not me playing paramedic through a fucking phone.
“Griffin?” Ronan's voice pulls me back.
“I'm here.”
“I hear sirens.”
My knees nearly give out with relief. “Good.”
I hear footsteps.
A door opening.
Voices.
Then heavier footfalls.
I listen as a calm, male voice begins the questions I know too well.
“Hey, I'm with fire. What's her name?”
“Cameron. Cameron Wilde.”
“What happened?”
Ronan starts explaining—he says all the right things.
Diabetic, type one.
UTI on antibiotics.
Running high today.
She has been good with her corrections.
Ketones were low when she checked a few hours ago.
Hard to wake.
Meter reads HI.
Then another voice joins them.
Different cadence.
This is the paramedic—I can tell immediately. The other was an EMT.
He asks more precise questions about insulin, her pump, what her normal blood sugar range is, what medications she takes, any allergies she has.
The answers from Ronan and the follow-up questions from the medic come cleanly enough that my own breathing finally slows.
They know what they're doing.
I know what competent sounds like.
Ronan’s voice comes back. “Griffin?”
“Yeah.”
“They're putting an IV in.”
“Good.”
“They said they're going to start fluids.”
“Good.”
I hear the crew talking to Cami, explaining what they’re doing as they do it, but it’s all far away from the phone.
I hear Ronan answering questions again, then he comes back to me. “They want to take her now.”
“Okay, go with her.”
A pause. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
I can tell Dex is panicking. Micah can handle Dex.
“Cami needs somebody familiar in the back of that ambulance who isn't there to work. Ride with her.”
“I will.”
“And Ronan?”
“Yes?”
“Let them do their jobs.”
A quiet breath. “I know.”
Of course he does. “I know you know.”
More movement.
Then Ronan's voice drops. “They're taking her downstairs.”
“Okay.”
“They said they’re taking her to Summit Ridge.”
I huff out something close to a laugh. “I’m already there.”
Silence.
“You're already there?”
“We transported here.”
“Then we'll see you soon.”
My throat closes. “Yeah.”
A medic says something in the background about moving.
Ronan says, “I need to go.”
“Go.”
The call ends.
For a few seconds I stand in the middle of the snack room staring at my phone.
Then I remember Clay.
Fuck.
I call him, and it rings until his voicemail picks up.
The message I leave him is definitely EMS to EMS.