As I walked away and grabbed the chart for my next case, I couldn’t shake my uneasiness. The instant that ultrasound was done, I wanted those guys the hell out of the ER. They seemed harmless enough themselves, but they were mixed up in something bad. Bad enough that I didn’t want them bringing it here.
4
Amy
THE HOSPITAL CAFETERIA is a lot like a high school cafeteria. Bartell and the other suits are the teachers and they stick strictly to their own table, if they deign to eat in the cafeteria at all. The ER staff are the jocks, loud and confident, fist-bumping and back-slapping. The medical students are the new kids, big-eyed and anxious. And surgeons sit at the geeks’ table in the corner. That’s where I was, on my own, American Journal of Surgery propped up between my coffee and my tray so I could hide behind it.
I was always going to be an introvert. From the time I was toddling around our apartment, my parents could tell I was taking after my dad, a biologist who studied insect anatomy. I preferred books to playing ball, went quiet and big-eyed around other kids and had my dad’s unnatural focus, happy to sit on his knee and peer through a microscope for hours.
But it was okay because my mom was this glittering, sparkly sunbeam of a woman who dragged me to other kids’ birthday parties and forced me out into the sunshine to hula-hoop with her. At first, I couldn’t understand how she and my dad could be in love when they were so very different. As I got older, I realized she was the puzzle piece that fit with him exactly, balancing him out. With both of them together, I had a hope of turning out something like normal.
And then, when I was six, she started to get this pain in her side. A pain that made our doctor look worried and send her for tests. And then she went to hospital... and didn’t come home.
For two months, my dad and I visited her every day as the cancer destroyed her one organ at a time. The doctors fighting to save her were heroes, in my eyes. When she kept getting worse, I wasn’t angry at them. I just wanted to help.
At her funeral, squeezing my dad’s hand as they lowered the casket, I said, I want to be a doctor.
And, tears running down his face, he said okay.
He probably forgot about it within a few days, but I didn’t. Studying was a way to cope with the pain and without my mom to coax me away from the books, I became a recluse, spending every break and lunch hour in the school library memorizing anatomy. My dad reacted the same way: devastated at losing her, he buried himself in his work. When I ran out of textbooks, I’d help him. While other girls were braiding each other’s hair and talking about boys, I was preparing microscope slides. It turned out I’d inherited my dad’s steady hands. We loved each other, supported each other, but we were two introverts holed up in a house with no one to drag us outside. Each day, I became a little more isolated, a little more shy.
The other kids bullied me mercilessly: I was so awkward, so weird, it was easy for the girls to make fun of me and for the boys to make me blush. So I learned not to draw attention. I got smaller and smaller until I could walk into a room and no one would even notice I was there.
When it came time for college and I told my dad I wanted to go to med school, he tried to talk me out of it. People like us do better in a lab, he said. But I was stubbornly determined and, eventually, he nodded. The day I went off to med school was the happiest day of my life.
But medicine was nothing like I expected. I soaked up the science like a sponge, but when we started to do rounds and had to take histories and present cases, I mumbled and flushed. When a question was asked, I didn’t have the confidence to speak up. Worse, school had taught me to be invisible, so no one noticed me or realized I needed help. The residents teaching us just plain forgot about me.
It turned out, medicine was all about people and I couldn’t do people. My ER rotation was the worst. Drunk people, violent people, relatives who needed comforting, husbands and wives and kids who I had to deliver bad news to. I had to figure out which patients were drug-seeking liars and which women were silent abuse victims. I needed to be assertive and intuitive and I was neither. And when traumas came in, making frantic, split-second decisions went completely against all my instincts. I went home every night and cried. My dad was right. People like us belonged in a lab. I was on the verge of quitting and going into research.
And then I started my final rotation: surgery.
It was a revelation. Suddenly, everything just felt right. My knack for anatomy made me the perfect fit: I knew every branch of every artery, could feel a patient and visualize what was happening beneath the skin. The steady hands and intense focus I’d inherited from my dad finally came to the fore. The surgeons teaching me said I was a natural and I loved the quiet calm of the OR. I can do this! I specialized in surgery, graduated with honors and came to Mount Mercy. I’d found my place.
I’d been here two years, safe and warm in my little burrow.
Safe and warm. And quietly, stoically, unimaginably lonely.
The cafeteria doors banged open and Corrigan strolled in. Spaces suddenly appeared at three different tables as women scooched aside to make room.
I tried not to stare at those thick forearms as he filled his tray. I started thinking about how mad Bartell had looked that morning. Krista was running a book on how many days it would be before Corrigan got fired and it didn’t seem fair. However cocky and arrogant he was, he’d been right about the knife.
Corrigan turned and swaggered towards—
Where is he...wait—
By the time I realized, the blue of his scrubs filled my vision. “This seat taken?” he asked.
His voice was different, now. Away from the breathless urgency of the ER, it was slower, almost lazy. And that Irish accent... a low rumble that spilled silver dust down the length of my spine and ended in a hot throb between my thighs.
I shook my head.
Climbing into the cafeteria’s bench seats never looks cool but he somehow pulled it off, casually hooking one leg over and then swinging himself in. For a second, his crotch was right at my eye level and wherever I looked, my eyes kept winding up there.
He dropped into the seat and gave me a cocky, knowing grin. I could feel the confidence rolling off him and slapping up against me in big, intimidating waves.
Say something cool and funny. “People are betting on when you’re going to get fired,” I blurted. Yeah. Not that.
But he just laughed. “They always do.”
I shook my head at him. “How can that be a joke? Don’t you care?”
He glanced across the cafeteria at Bartell. “About getting fired by that prick? Not particularly.”
Anyone sensible would have just nodded and smiled. But this is me. I just sort of say things, especially when I’m nervous. “Isn’t this your last chance? What if nowhere will take you? What if you can’t practice?”
For a second, his grin fractured. I’d hit a nerve. So he felt the same way I did: he couldn’t imagine doing anything other than medicine. So why was he so relaxed about it?
He shrugged. “There’s always somewhere that needs doctors. Britain. France. Back to the Congo, if I have to.”
I stared at him, trying to imagine being rootless like that. I’m a nester.
He stretched his shoulders, spreading his arms out wide like he owned the whole table, the whole room. His scrub sleeves rose up his arms, revealing more tanned bicep, more dark ink. Then he laid those sculpted forearms on the table and leaned in to me. I started to lean in to meet him... then caught myself. He couldn’t be interested in me so he must just be teasing me. I wasn’t going to fall for it. I sat bolt upright.
He smirked.
Dammit! Why was he doing this? Why flirt with me? I glanced to the side and saw four different women glaring at me. I didn’t ask him to come over here!
“Why do you wear that all the time?” he asked, nodding upwards.
“What?” And then, before I could stop him, he’d plucked the surgical cap from my head. “Oh! I ju
st kind of... forget I have it on.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I bet you do. You never stop being a surgeon, do you?”
What? What did that mean? I was flustered and blushing and every time I looked in his eyes, I got lost again.
He spun my cap around his finger. “You need to get out of the OR and have some fun, Amy. Can I call you Amy?”
I blinked at him. How did he know—
“I asked around,” he said.
I tried to imagine someone asking people about me, pursuing me like that, and couldn’t. This must be a trick. Some way to tease the shy girl, like the jocks had in high school. And even if he was serious, no way was I going to become one of his one-night stands and have the whole hospital talking about me. I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Fine.” He slapped the table hard enough to make the whole room jump. “Beckett it is.”
Beckett. The way he formed the B, like his lips were blowing a kiss, the way that hard k sounded in his accent, like fuck... it sounded way more intimate than Amy.
He gazed at me and, however much I looked away and looked back, he was still looking at me. Watching me as if I was the only one in the room who mattered. A twisting, crackling energy began, arcing down inside me. It lashed at my groin until I wanted to circle my ass against the bench. I could actually feel myself heating and moistening. But it didn’t stop there, low down and base and sexual. It changed. It rose up, filling me, making my heart race. “Stop that,” I told him.
“Stop what?”
My heart was thumping in my chest, now. Something was happening. Heady and scary, like standing with your toes over the edge of a cliff. Looking into those Irish eyes was like drinking from a firehose. But every time I looked away, I immediately looked right back. “That. This.”
“I’m not doing anything, Beckett.”
And underneath the heat, underneath that diamond hard, cocky exterior, I glimpsed something. He was telling the truth. This wasn’t just him.
This was us.
But then I flushed and dropped my eyes. I could suddenly feel everyone looking at us, laughing at how ridiculous the idea was. The quarterback and the geek girl. “You’re not really interested in me,” I mumbled.
His brow crinkled in a frown. He leaned in towards me. “Don’t tell me who I’m interested in, Beckett.”
The doors at the back of the cafeteria slammed open. “Corrigan!”
We both looked round. An ER nurse stood in the doorway.
“Paramedics are bringing in an eight year-old girl,” she said. “Bus crash. It’s bad.”
Corrigan’s face changed in a heartbeat. He was up out of his seat and running before the nurse had finished speaking. The doors banged closed behind them.
I hesitated. I hate the ER. And I’m not even meant to be down there unless I’m called. But there’d been something in the nurse’s voice. If the kid was really that bad….
I jumped up and sprinted after them.
5
Dominic
WE REACHED THE ER just as the paramedics crashed through the door. “What have we got?” I yelled.
“Eight year-old girl, crush injuries. Open tib/fib reduced at scene. No sign of bleeding, but blood pressure’s dropping. She’s been in and out of consciousness.” The paramedic started reeling off her vitals. All of them were lousy and getting worse.
“Let’s move her!” Everyone grabbed hold of the backboard she was lying on. I counted three, we heaved her onto a gurney and I got my first proper look at her.
Tousled blonde curls. A button nose. Big, blue, terrified eyes. She could have been Rachel, grown up. She’d be exactly the right age. Fuck. I drew in a shuddering breath to help hold it together and listened to her chest, looking off to the side to help me focus—
And saw Beckett. She was standing back from the huddle, eyes wide at the noise and the chaos. She really isn’t used to this, is she? But weirdly, I was glad she was there.
“Decreased breath sounds bilaterally,” I said, my voice tight. “Can you tell me your name, sweetheart?”
“Rebecca.” She sobbed it out and the pain in her voice nearly broke my heart.
“Rebecca, I’m Doctor Corrigan, we’re going to make you all better, okay?”
“Pressure’s falling, 95 over 40,” a nurse said. She kept her voice carefully level, but I could see the fear in her eyes. This kid was heading south, fast.
“Two units O neg on the rapid infuser, stat! IV wide open,” I snapped. “She’s bleeding from somewhere: let’s roll her.” We carefully rolled her, but there was no blood anywhere. “Fuck. The bleeding must be internal.”
“Pressure 88 over 38,” said the nurse. This time, she couldn’t keep her voice level.
I cut open Rebecca’s clothes and started checking her abdomen. She was a mess of bruises. And all the time, her blood pressure was dropping, dropping…. We had to figure out where she was bleeding from, fast. “What happened?” I yelled over my shoulder as I worked.
“Truck plowed into a school bus,” said the paramedic.
I glanced towards the door, but there were no other gurneys being wheeled in, no sirens outside. “Where are the rest of the kids? The teachers?”
“Crash was between here and Denver. The other kids weren’t badly hurt so the Denver paramedics got them out first and took them back with them. But she was trapped in the wreckage, it took an hour to get her out.”
“And you brought her here?” I snapped, exasperated. The fact she looked like Rachel was getting to me. “She’s here by herself?” No one to ask about her medical history, no one to get consent from.
“Her pressure was dropping,” the paramedic said defensively. “Mount Mercy was closer!”
I fumed and brooded on it for a few seconds, but he was right. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Yeah, okay. You probably saved her life.” I just wished there was someone else we could ask about what happened. “Rebecca?” Fuck. Her eyes were going glassy. “Rebecca? Honey?”
“I feel funny,” she said groggily.
“I know, honey.” I was fighting to stay calm, now. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead despite the cold of the room and there was a sick churning in my stomach. The nurses around the table were glancing at each other, the fear spreading between them. We’re going to lose this one. I caught Beckett’s eye again across the room. She had a hand over her mouth, her eyes huge. “Can you tell me how you were hurt, when the truck hit?” I asked Rebecca. “Was something pressing on you?”
She nodded. “The bus all folded up. My leg got trapped.. And my tummy got squashed.” She pointed weakly from chest to groin.
“Something must be damaged inside.” I said. “Ultrasound, now!”
“80 over 30,” said the nurse, her voice quavering. She put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, willing her to hold on. Everyone around the table knew how she felt.
A nurse ran over with the ultrasound trolley and I held my hand out for the probe, my other hand crushing the gurney’s rail, knuckles white. Five seconds went by. Ten, but the nurse was still flipping switches. “What’s the problem?” I snapped. I knew I was losing my cool, but I couldn’t help it, not with a kid on the table.
“I don’t know! It won’t switch on!” She kept working at it. “It was fine this morning!”
Rebecca tensed in pain and then her eyes closed. Her vitals suddenly fell off a cliff. “No palpable pulse.” called a nurse. Then, in a quieter voice, “We’re losing her.”
“No we’re not,” I spat, pointing an accusing finger at her. “No, we’re fucking not! Get me the spare ultrasound!”
Everyone looked blank.
I lost it. “Get me the spare!” I roared. “The spare fucking ultrasound! Get me the spare!”
Three different nurses ran in three different directions, clucking about whether it would be in Pediatrics or OB/GYN. The kid’s pulse missed a beat. Slowed. Missed another one. I felt my chest close up.
; She was going to die because we couldn’t find out what was wrong with her.
6
Amy
I WASN’T CONSCIOUS of moving. One moment, I was pressed up against the wall, watching and cursing and praying.
The next, I was sliding under Corrigan’s arm and stepping in front of him, right next to the little girl. Oh Jesus, she looked so small.
“What—” started Corrigan but I ignored him. I ignored the voice in my head that asked what the hell I was doing, that told me I couldn’t do this. I shut out the noise and the people jostling me and I pretended I was upstairs, where it’s calm.
I put my hands on Rebecca’s chest and started gently pressing. My eyes defocused.
The skin was just a distraction. After years of surgery, I know internal anatomy like you know the layout of your house. I could see it in my head, a multi-colored textbook diagram overlaid on her body, how she should be. And I could feel where it was different, where her ribs had cracked and bent, where organs had been squeezed and damaged.
“Something’s ruptured.” The poor kid was a wreck. All I wanted to do was to rush her upstairs to surgery so I could start fixing her. But I couldn’t do that until we’d stabilized her. I closed my eyes completely and used just the very tips of my fingers, where they’re most sensitive. “Feels like the blood’s concentrated... here.” I pressed on her left abdomen. “I can feel a broken rib. It must have sliced into her spleen.”
For the first time, I turned around... and looked straight into Corrigan’s eyes. There was none of that cocky hardness, now. He was desperate. In pain. “We can’t get to it,” he said. “If we open her here, with all that damage, she’ll bleed out in a couple of seconds.”
He was right. I thought fast. “Maybe we can stop it somewhere else. Have you ever done a Reboa?”
“I’ve seen one, I’ve never done one. You?”
“Only once.” My chest contracted. But if I let the panic win, this kid was going to die.
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