Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
“Be sure to follow up with your primary care physician on Monday, Mrs. Banerjee,” Nik instructed the older woman as he led her from his exam room. “And no more shoveling icy sidewalks. From now on, call one of those teenage boys who live down the road.”
“Yes, young man,” Mrs. Banerjee said, holding her newly casted wrist to her chest as she shuffled down the hospital hallway next to him. “Thank you.”
Nik was just handing Mrs. Banerjee over to the woman at the front desk for discharge when the call came in.
“ This is Ambulance 81 en route. Forty-three-year-old male experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. VF, no pulse. CPR in progress, six shocks, two adrenalines. ETA four minutes. ”
Three years in, Nik was so used to the drill that his pulse barely even picked up speed when an emergency call came in. But as the ambulance driver called out the patient’s age, his hand clutched the phone just a little bit tighter. Forty-three. Not much older than his dad had been. That thought galvanized him into action. Nik washed his hands, grabbed a pair of gloves, and headed toward the ambulance bay just as the paramedics were wheeling the patient in, pumping a manual ventilator and performing CPR. The paramedics repeated the patient’s stats and treatment, and then handed him off to Nik and the rest of the ER team.
Nik took over chest compressions—up, down, up, down, like a kickdrum—as the nurses wheeled the patient into a treatment room. Once inside, Nik rested just long enough to press the button on the defibrillator to take a rhythm analysis.
“Charging.”
The machine let out a long, high-pitched beep.
“Clear.”
Nik and the other medical staff stepped back, and the machine delivered a charge. The man’s arms and bare chest lifted off the stretcher and then dropped back down again. When the patient’s heart didn’t respond, Nik ordered a cocktail of medications for the nurse to administer in the IV the paramedics had started.
“Come on, man,” Nik muttered, returning to the patient to continue chest compressions. Up, down, up, down. He used all the strength of his shoulders and back as his attention narrowly focused on the man’s muscular abs and chest see-sawing with each shove of his body into the stretcher. “You can do it.”
The nurse stepped back from inserting another IV, and with a deep breath of air, Nik paused for another rhythm analysis. “Charging… clear.”
This continued for several more rounds— up, down, up, down, then, “Charging… clear!”—when suddenly the ECG machine let out a high-pitched beep and the line indicating the patient’s erratic heartbeat had gone flat.
“Administer one milligram epinephrine,” Nik barked, steeling his muscles to resume chest compressions. “Come on,” he murmured to the patient… up, down, up down … This guy was young. Did he have a family? Kids? Nik usually didn’t think about anything beyond the body parts in front of him, the ou tcome he was trying to achieve. Pulse… heart… charging… clear … But sometimes the thoughts slipped through.
Nik continued chest compressions through another round of epinephrine, and then another, but the ECG continued to show that the patient was flatlining and not responding to treatment. With a deep, sorrowful breath, Nik knew it was time to call it. He dropped his hands from the patient’s chest and checked the clock for the time of death.
Damn it. He always hated losing a patient, but knowing this guy was so young was an extra kick in the gut. The next part would be the worst… letting the family know. Would they be anxiously pacing the waiting room right now? Nik lifted his gaze from the patient’s lifeless body to his face. The man’s nose and mouth had been obscured by the ventilator, but now the nurse slowly detached the plastic parts and dropped them by his side on the bed.
Nik blinked. In a small town, there was always a chance he’d know his patients personally. This man, he looked familiar. Handsome face, dark hair, slightly crooked nose…
Nik’s own heart almost stopped beating.
Matteo.
Nik reared back, crashing into a hospital cart. The high-pitched clang of metal hitting the tile floor ricocheted in his head, bouncing around like a pinball. Matteo. The smiling man in the photo. The man brimming with violence and hatred in Mrs. McCaffrey’s hallway yesterday. This was Jane’s Matteo.
And he was dead.
Nik scanned the room, searching for a patient file, for some evidence of what had happened for the man to end up here. Like this . But of course Matteo didn’t have a file. He’d been brought in on a stretcher.
And with that realization came the most terrifying moment of his life.
Jane .
What if Matteo had attacked her, and she’d fought back?
Nik charged out into the hallway and found Elise, the other doctor on duty.
“Sorry about your patient in there,” she said. “It’s rough. Are you okay?”
“Was anyone else brought in with him?” Nik demanded. “A—woman?” He could barely choke out the words. Had Jane picked up Scarlett from Hannah’s house yet? “Or a kid?”
Elise slowly shook her head. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
She gestured down the hallway, where a single nurse sat calmly typing into a computer. “We’ve got an older man with food poisoning in room four, but that’s it.”
What if they hadn’t been brought into the ER because they were already?—
Nik nearly bent over from the horror of it. Don’t think that way. You can’t think that way. “I need to go, I—” He yanked off his white coat and crumpled it into a ball. “It’s an emergency.”
“Okay.” Elise blinked at him. “Of course. I’ve got this.”
Nik ran for his car in the parking lot and broke just about every traffic law on his way to the McCaffreys’ house.
He pulled up just in time to see Ed climbing into his police car. At the sight of the red lights flashing on the roof, Nik almost stopped breathing. He yanked the steering wheel to the right and jumped out of the car without even bothering to turn off the engine.
“Hey,” Nik called, running across the street to intercept the police officer. “What happened? Jane… Scarlett… are they…?” His lungs deflated before he could get the words out.
Ed climbed back out onto the sidewalk. “Jane and Mrs. McCaffrey are both fine, and Scarlett is still at my house playing with Amelia.”
Relief flooded through his limbs, and Nik closed his eyes, leaning against the police car. “Thank God.” But he quickly blinked them back open again. “What happened here?”
Ed shook his head. “911 got a call about a man collapsing. It sounded like cardiac arrest. Turns out it’s a friend of Jane’s from California. I guess he flew in yesterday.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I hope he’s okay. I was on my way over to the hospital now to check in.”
Nik swallowed hard. “I just came from there. He didn’t make it.”
“Damn. Did you know the guy?”
“No.” Nik pressed a palm to his forehead with the sudden memory of Matteo standing in the McCaffreys’ hallway, fists clenched, voice low and threatening. The bruise on Jane’s cheek. Matteo’s limp form on the stretcher. Nik could still feel his own body rocking from the hundreds—maybe thousands—of chest compressions he’d administered, trying to save the man’s life. He’d done everything he could.
But would he have if he’d known who he was trying to save?
Nik’s blood pounded in his ears. Thank God he hadn’t known. Thank God he’d never have to find out.
“What do you think happened?” Ed’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Did you see any signs of drug use when he came into the ER?”
That explanation would make sense. These rural areas saw their share of heroin, fentanyl, pain pills. Clubs in LA probably did, too. But then, Matteo had been the same age as Nik’s dad when he’d died, and maybe their causes of death were similar. An undiagnosed coronary artery abnormality and a whole bunch of really shitty luck.
“Nothing immediate, but…” Nik trailed off.
“Mrs. McCaffrey said he was staying in the motel on Route 8. I’ll send a deputy over there to gather up his belongings. See if that will tell us anything.” Ed looked Nik over, his face creasing with concern. “You look pretty shaken up. Are you okay to deliver the news to Jane and her mom, or do you want me to?”
Nik stared at Ed, trying to wrap his mind around those words.
How do you tell the woman you love that her abuser is dead? That you tried to save him but couldn’t. Nik didn’t want anyone to die—ever—on his watch. Hell, he’d gone into this profession for the exact purpose of saving lives. But right now, part of him wanted to throw a fucking party. Jane’s nightmare was over. Every time he thought about what she’d endured for the past ten years, he wanted to punch a wall. Or Matteo’s face.
But though one nightmare might be over, a new one could be starting. She’d spent a decade with the guy, had raised Scarlett with him. A part of Jane must have cared about him. Loved him, even. Nik’s stomach clenched at the thought, but he couldn’t just shove it aside. How was she going to take this news that Matteo was dead?
And how was she going to tell Scarlett?
“Nik?” Ed’s voice came from somewhere far away. “Maybe I should be the one to tell them?”
Nik shook his head. “I’ll do it.”