Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
Grace
It was seven p.m., and I decided that instead of ordering takeout, I’d run down to the family-owned market a couple of blocks away and pick up something to make for dinner. As I was walking down the aisle looking for a can of diced tomatoes, I ran into Billy, one of the police officers I knew.
“Hey, Grace. How are you?”
“I’m good, Billy. How are you?”
“No complaints. I haven’t seen you at the hospital in a while.”
“I took a personal leave of absence for a bit.”
“Oh. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Everything is okay. How’s Holly?”
“She’s great. We just celebrated our five-year anniversary last night. Five blissful years.” He grinned.
Suddenly, we heard one of the cashiers up front in a panic. She was yelling, “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Stay here, Grace, and get down,” Billy spoke as he reached for his gun. “All of you get down.”
The only other people in the store besides Billy and me were two cashiers and three other customers in the same aisle as us.
I didn’t know what was happening, so I crouched down and slowly made my way to the end of the aisle.
There were two guys in ski masks holding up the cashiers.
Billy slowly made his way to them, and when one of them turned around and saw him in uniform, he fired his gun, and Billy went down.
I gasped as I covered my mouth with my hand.
My body began to shake, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I reached into my purse, took out my phone, and dialed 911, then placed it in my pocket.
I looked over at the other customers, who were down on the floor, scared to death.
Another gunshot went off, and I noticed Billy shot one of the men.
The other guy in the green ski mask yelled and began firing his gun at Billy, shooting him several times in the chest. I was paralyzed with fear, but my doctor instincts kicked in.
“Noah, come on, man.” The guy in the green ski mask ran over to him in a panic.
I needed to think of something fast. I slowly stood up with my hands in the air and approached the man as he held his gun to me.
“I’m a doctor,” I nervously spoke. “I can help your friend.”
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a trauma surgeon.”
“Then get over here and help him. He’s my brother, and he can’t die. Do you understand me?!” he shouted.
“Yes. I understand.”
“Don’t try nothing funny, lady, or I’ll put you down.”
I went to Noah, checked for a pulse, and lifted his shirt.
“His pulse is weak, and he’s losing a lot of blood. We need to get him to the hospital.”
“No! No hospital. You said you’re a doctor, and you’ll fix him up right here!” he shouted as he waved his gun at me.
“Okay.” I put my hands up. “But I’m going to need supplies. I need gauze, plastic tubing, a large water jug, and a knife.”
“A knife. What the fuck do you need a knife for?”
“I need to make a chest tube and insert it to drain the blood and fluid from his chest. If I don’t do this quickly, he will die! I need you to place your hand on his wound and apply pressure to try and control the bleeding.”
“No way. I’m not taking my gun off you. You two, go get her what she needs and make it quick! You, in the purple shirt. Get over here and apply pressure to my brother’s wound!”
With the supplies they brought me, I made a temporary chest tube and an incision, and inserted it, letting the fluid drain into the empty water jug.
“Noah, stay with me,” I spoke as I checked his pulse again.
“Hurry up, lady!” the other gunmen spoke. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Your brother cannot be moved. He’s not stable!” I yelled.
“Then stabilize him!”
Suddenly, flashing lights and sirens pulled into the parking lot and blocked the entrance to the market. The gunman looked at me with wide eyes as I quickly stood up and my phone fell out of my pocket. He looked down at it and saw that 911 was on the line.
“You bitch!” he yelled as he fired his gun at me, which sent me flying into a metal end cap of canned goods.”
I lay there as I heard more gunshots being fired in the distance. Pain coursed through my body as I trembled. I was in shock, and I could feel myself slipping away. Before I knew it, two paramedics were kneeling next to me.
“Oh my God. It’s Dr. Harper,” I faintly heard one of them say. “Don’t go getting any ideas, Dr. Harper. You stay with us.”
I was put on oxygen as one of the paramedics applied pressure to my wound. They stabilized my neck, but it didn’t stop the pain from radiating through my head.
“My head,” I tried to mumble.
“We’re taking you to the hospital now. You’re going to be okay.”
My life flashed before my eyes like a movie reel, and I grew weaker with every second that passed. Everything went black.
Jamieson
I was checking on a patient when my pager went off. I looked at it, and it was from Renata.
“ER. 911 911 911. GRACE.”
A sickness fell upon me as I ran out of my patient’s room and down four flights of stairs to the ER.
“Where is she? What happened?” I asked Renata in a panicked tone.
“The ambulance is five minutes out. Jamieson, I need you to take in a deep breath.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to take in a deep breath. Tell me what happened!” I shouted in anger.
“There was a shooting at a market and Grace was there. She’s been shot, Jamieson.”
I ran outside to wait for the ambulance along with the other doctors that were also waiting. One ambulance pulled up, and I ran and opened the door.
“Dr. Grace Harper, gunshot wound to the abdomen and suspected head injury. BP 90/60 and pulse in the 130s. She lost consciousness on the way here, and we had to intubate her in the field,” one of the paramedics spoke.
“Grace, can you hear me?” I asked as I leaned over her and rubbed her forehead with my thumb. “Get her into Trauma one!”
I examined her eyes with my light and let out a deep breath when I saw her pupils were reactive.
“Dr. Finn, you need to step away,” Renata spoke.
“How is the wound?” I asked Dr. Windemere, the attending on call.
“Her abdomen is distended. There’s blood in her belly. By the looks of this ultrasound, the bullet is right there in the upper right quadrant. We need to get her to the O.R. now.”
“She’s stable enough for a head CT,” I spoke. “Let’s get that first and then get her into the O.R.”
“Dr. Finn,” Renata spoke abruptly. “I said, step away from the patient.”
“The hell I will!” I spoke through gritted teeth.
“If she has a brain bleed, which everything is pointing to that so far, I’m operating.
I love this woman, Renata. She is my life, and I’m not going to stand by and watch.
If you have a problem with that, then you can fire me after the fact.
Let’s go!” I shouted to Dr. Windemere and the nurses in the room.
We raced her up to the CT room, and I impatiently waited for her scans to load.
“Let’s get her to the O.R. now!” I spoke as I saw the bleeding and pressure build up in her brain. After scrubbing in, I leaned over her while she lay on the table and kissed her forehead through my mask. “I love you, Grace. Don’t give up on me. Please. Fight with everything you have.”
The pressure buildup in her skull was bad, but I was able to relieve it and stop the bleeding in time before any additional damage could occur. Dr. Windemere stopped her internal bleeding, removed the bullet, and Grace was stabilized. We took her up to the CCU, where I wouldn’t leave her side.
“I called her Aunt Cora. She’s taking the next flight out,” Renata spoke. “How is she?” she asked as she walked into the room.
“She’s stable but critical for the next twenty-four hours. I want to speak to the paramedics that brought her in.”
“They’re downstairs,” Renata spoke.
“Then send them up. I’m not leaving her.”
“You wanted to see us, Dr. Finn?” one of the paramedics spoke. “How is Dr. Harper?”
“She’s critical, but I think she’ll be okay. Do you by any chance know what happened and how she hit her head?”
“The officers at the scene said that one gunman was shot by Billy, the officer that was in the store at the time of the robbery. I guess Billy fired his gun after he went down and shot one of the gunmen. It was the guy’s brother.
Grace tried to help him. She made a chest tube and inserted it.
She also dialed 911 and placed the phone in her pocket.
When the cops came, the other gunman shot her.
We found her lying against a metal shelf that had collapsed when she hit it. ”
“And the gunman who shot her?”
“He’s down in ER. One of the police officers shot him in the leg.”
“Thank you.”
Rage overtook me as I went down and found Jackie.
“Which one shot Grace?” I asked in anger.
“Dr. Finn, don’t.”
I went from room to room, looking for a gunshot victim. He wasn’t hard to find since the ER wasn’t busy, and John, the cop, whom Grace saved, was standing outside his room. I looked at him, and he nodded.
“You son of a bitch.” I walked over to the guy and grabbed him by his gown.
“What the hell, man! Ouch. My leg!”
“You shot the woman I love, and for what? A few hundred dollars.”
“She called the cops.”
“And she saved your brother,” I spoke angrily through gritted teeth.
“Whoa, Jamieson,” Logan spoke as he grabbed me and pulled me off the guy. “Stop.”
“Dude, you’re crazy. Get this asshole away from me!” the man spoke.
“I’m going to make sure you rot in prison.” I pointed at him.
“Jamieson, enough,” Logan spoke. “Grace wouldn’t want you to do this.”
I shook loose from his grip and walked out of the room.