I turned back to Rebecca. It must have looked like I was staring blankly at her abdomen. But in my mind, I was seeing arteries as they crisscrossed and arced, following the one that fed the spleen back along its length to—“Scalpel,” I said and bent low over Rebecca’s bed.
Corrigan didn’t argue, just laid the scalpel in my hand. I made an incision in Rebecca’s groin. Corrigan handed me the catheter and I started to ease the tube into her artery, threading it up into her. It suddenly jammed and I froze, my heart in my mouth. God, she was so small! The only other time I’d done this, it had been on an adult. If I went too fast, I could tear her—
Corrigan’s hand landed on my shoulder, huge and warm. I didn’t look round but I could feel my heart slowing down, my body relaxing just a bit. I didn’t know him but, for some reason, his touch calmed me. I took a deep breath and kept going, easing the catheter a little deeper. “Inflate the balloon,” I told Corrigan. “Slowly.”
Corrigan depressed the syringe’s plunger, his thumb moving just a fraction of an inch at a time. I pictured the balloon inflating, deep inside Rebecca’s body, sealing the artery and stopping the bleeding. I stared at the blood pressure monitor and prayed. Everyone else around the gurney did the same.
The numbers fell... and then slowly stabilized and started to reverse course. The nurse watching the monitor sucked in a huge, relieved breath. “Pressure’s coming back up!”
I straightened up, my legs shaky from how close we’d come. That’s when I felt Corrigan’s eyes on me. “Good job,” he said, and there was genuine admiration in his voice.
I flushed and looked away, pretending to focus on stripping off my gloves. But I could still feel his gaze on me and it felt really, really good.
Krista gently touched my shoulder. “OR’s prepped,” she whispered.
I hadn’t even realized she was down here. She’d figured out the kid would need surgery and got stuff ready, all without being asked. I squeezed her hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I told her.
“She’s waking up,” called a nurse.
Corrigan and I looked down as Rebecca’s eyes opened. “It hurts!” she whimpered. Corrigan nodded to a nurse and she pushed some pain meds into the IV.
“Rebecca, this is Doctor Beckett,” Corrigan told her, grabbing me by the upper arms and pulling me forward. “She’s going to put you to sleep so she can fix what’s wrong with you, okay?”
Rebecca looked up at me. “What is wrong with me?”
I opened my mouth... and closed it again. I’m bad with people, but I’m even worse with kids. My dad always talked to me like an adult, distant and scientific. I had no clue how to be comforting to an eight year-old. I stared down into her scared little face. “Well your leg was fractured, and your spleen and other organs have been—”
Rebecca’s face crumpled. “Am I gonna die?!”
I froze, horrified. This is why they keep me in the OR, I thought helplessly.
Corrigan stepped forward. “No.” He perched on the edge of her bed and took her tiny hand in his big one. “See, it’s like you have a baby elephant.” He put his hand waist-high. “About so big. And this elephant, he thinks he’s a puppy. So he tears around the house, trunk in the air, chasing after you, knocking stuff over…”
The Irish in his voice made the story magical. Despite her fear, Rebecca gave a little giggle.
“And one day, he jumps into your arms. And you go down on your butt and he knocks all the air out of you: oof!”
“Because he’s so heavy,” said Rebecca.
“Because he’s so heavy. And all that stuff inside your tummy, it gets bruised, just like when you fall over and get a big black bruise on your leg. So we need to go inside you and patch everything up so it doesn’t hurt.” He pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead. “But you won’t feel a thing because you’re going to be asleep the whole time.”
I gazed in wonder at him. He looked utterly different. He looked like a father.
“So she can fix me?” asked Rebecca, looking doubtfully up at me.
“Yes,” Corrigan told her firmly. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Because she’s a fantastic surgeon.” And what made my heart melt was, his eyes matched his voice. He believed it.
I gave Rebecca what I hoped was a reassuring nod. And then I nodded thanks to him for stepping in. “Rebecca, where are your parents? Do they live in Denver?”
She shook her head. “Wichita.”
What?! “Your folks are in Kansas?!”
“We’re on a trip. Our Mathlete team is taking on a school in Denver tomorrow.”
Krista had already gotten Rebecca’s folks’ phone number from the paramedic and had the hospital phone to her ear. After a few seconds she shook her head. “Voice mail.”
“Rebecca,” I told her, “We’re going to reach them so they can fly in and be here when you wake up. But we’re going to have to put you to sleep now so I can fix you up.”
The poor kid’s eyes went huge and scared. “Can’t you wait?! I don’t want to—” She looked around desperately and I realized she was looking for something, anything familiar. But she was hundreds of miles from a friend, a parent, a teacher.
And something happened inside me. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d grabbed her hand. Through a sudden flood of emotion, I said, “You’re not on your own. Okay? Because until someone else gets here, I’m going to take care of you.”
Rebecca pressed her lips together tight... and squeezed my hand and nodded.
I squeezed back, shocked at myself. I was the most awkward, least motherly person in existence. But somehow it felt right.
Krista cleared a path and I wheeled the gurney to the elevator. Just as we got inside, a big, warm hand on my hip stopped me. A stubbled chin rasped against my ear and then there was a hot, Irish whisper. “Take care of her. Okay?”
I looked round... and saw that same vulnerability in his eyes again. In that second, Dominic Corrigan was the most torn-apart soul on earth. What the hell happened to this man?
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
The elevator doors closed and he was gone.
7
Amy
FOUR HOURS LATER, I closed the last stitch and staggered back from the table. “Done,” I managed.
Lina, on anesthesia, and Krista and Adele, my nurses, all gave me exhausted nods and we shared a sigh of relief. “Good job, everybody,” I said, leaning back against the wall. I couldn’t straighten up properly. My whole back had gone into spasm from hunching over the operating table and my fingers were cramped and numb. But we’d saved Rebecca.
I’d repaired the damage to her left lung and removed her ruptured spleen; luckily, spleens aren’t vital and she could live a normal life without it. She’d lost so much blood that it had been too dangerous to try to fix her leg. I’d have to do a second operation tomorrow and she’d be worryingly fragile until then. And I was worried about her kidney function: we’d have to keep an eye on that until she was stable enough to transport to a bigger facility with a specialist renal surgeon. But if all went well, she’d be fine.
I wanted to be there when she woke up, so I sat by her bedside in the intensive care unit while I called her parents in Kansas. They were terrified. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like, to know your kid is sick so far away. “What time does your flight get in?” I asked.
“We can’t fly in!” Rebecca’s mother sounded near-hysterical. “Denver airport’s closed by a blizzard. No flights are getting through. We’re going to try to make it by road, but the roads are bad too.”
I checked out of the window. Nothing but blue skies in Mount Mercy. But then Denver was two hours’ drive away. “Try not to worry, we’re taking good care of her. Just get here when you can.”
I hung up and looked at the slumbering Rebecca. “Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” I whispered. And I sat there as the daylight faded, watching her sleep.
The room was almost dark and I was ha
lf-dozing myself when she stirred. I quickly turned on a lamp so that she didn’t panic. “Hey!” I gave her a big smile. “Hey! It’s all over! You did great. You’re going to be fine.”
She gave me a tired smile, but then looked around. “Where’s my mom?”
A big, tight swell of worry filled my chest. “They’re coming, but there’s a lot of snow coming down between us and them. So it may take a little while.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. I grabbed her hand. What do I do? I knew I needed to distract her, but I had no idea what eight year-old girls liked. All I remembered about being eight was memorizing all the types of butterfly because reciting them was the only way to make my dad smile again. And I’d really wanted a cat—“Do you have any pets?” I blurted.
“J—Jupiter,” she croaked. “My hamster.”
“Why did you call him Jupiter?”
“‘Cos he’s big and round, like a planet.”
I grinned. “I always wanted a pet,” I told her. “Tell me about him.”
We wound up talking for over an hour and the longer I stayed, the less awkward I became. She was a really sweet little thing, smart as hell and really into science and math but confident, too. She was a glimpse at what I could have maybe turned out like, if I’d had my mom’s influence to balance me out.
When the anesthesia had faded and she’d slipped into healthy, normal sleep, I stumbled downstairs, blinking in the bright hallway lights, to find Corrigan. He’d want to know she was okay.
Thankfully, the ER had quietened down. I figured all the doctors must be with patients because the hallways were empty. I started making my way past the exam areas, shivering: why did the ER have to be so drafty? I was hoping I’d hear Corrigan’s Irish accent. Instead, I heard cursing and then a hard, heavy thump, as if someone had been slammed up against the wall. I stopped, right outside the curtained entrance to Exam One.
“Did I tell you you could leave, Seth?” I’d never heard a voice like it: a low rasp, like a cold wind blowing through jagged, rusty metal. It was the opposite of Corrigan’s accent: it set every one of my nerves on edge. I froze, staring at the curtain, afraid to move.
“No Sir.” A younger voice. Was the Sir military? Or was it a kid speaking to his dad? It sounded like a little of both. “I just—”
“So you disobeyed me.” It was a Colorado accent but stripped bare and hardened by hate. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I’d never heard such raw, poisonous anger.
“He was just trying to look after me, Colt.” A third voice, older but more gentle. “You know I got a problem with my heart.”
“IF my men need medical attention, I will decide when and where.” For all its fury, the voice hadn’t risen above that low rasp, which made it all the more chilling. “Do you understand me, boy?”
The younger guy wheezed, as if he was being choked. “Yes, sir.”
But that wasn’t enough. “Do you understand me?”
I had to get help. But as I took a step, my sneaker squeaked on the linoleum.
The curtain was whipped aside and I froze, staring right at the man they called Colt.
He wasn’t a big man. He wasn’t much taller than me and he didn’t have Corrigan’s wide shoulders or strong chest. But he was the most frightening man I’d ever seen.
It was as if he used to be a normal, average guy and then something had happened to him, over many years. Something that had boiled away every gram of fat, leaving only sinew and gristly muscle. Something that had dug the trust and kindness and humanity from him, leaving only rage and iron-hard resolve. Beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his plaid shirt, his skin was stretched drumskin-tight over veins and muscles, every inch covered in faded tattoos. His eyes, above his long, salt-and-pepper beard, were like two points of cold light at the bottom of a mineshaft.
He’d had the younger guy pinned up against the wall by his throat, but now he released him and turned to face me. Both the younger guy and older guy backed away, terrified.
His eyes never leaving me, Colt pushed back his shirt and drew a wicked-looking knife from his belt. “You hear something, doc?” he rasped.
And he stepped towards me.
8
Dominic
I’D JUST FINISHED examining an old lady with a sprained wrist when I heard the voice. I pushed back the curtain of our exam room and looked across the hallway, straight into Exam One.
I recognized Seth and the old guy I’d examined that morning. As soon as I saw the guy with the knife, I had no doubt he was Seth’s father. The family resemblance was unmistakable, but it was the fear in Seth’s eyes that sealed the deal. This is what he’d been scared of, that morning. And I could see why. His father looked as if all he’d done for twenty years was work out and drink whiskey. He was stripped-down and wiry, like a dog that’s gone feral.
And then I saw who he was walking towards: Beckett. Ice rose up inside me and grabbed hold of my heart. I was between them before I was even aware I was moving, blocking the man’s path, shielding Beckett’s body with mine. The fear turned to protective rage as it reached my lips. “Back the fuck off!” I roared. “Right now!”
His face was two feet from mine but he didn’t so much as blink. He either had the self control of a saint or he was full on batshit crazy. His arm tensed, ready to stab with the knife. It was one of those big hunting knives and it wasn’t just for show: the thing was worn and scarred with use. Shit. I’ve been around and I know how to fight, but I’ve also seen up-close what a blade can do to people. And once he stabbed me, Beckett might be next.
There was a patter of feet at the far end of the hallway. Seth’s dad and I both looked up to see a pair of cops racing toward us. I’d seen them a few times around the hospital: Earl, old and overweight, and his protégé Lloyd, dark-haired and gangly and barely old enough to wear the uniform. They must have heard my yell. I had no idea why they hung around the hospital so much, but right now, I was very glad they did.
Seth’s dad looked back to me and hesitated... then put the knife away just before the cops got close enough to see it. My eyes caught on a weird tattoo on his forearm: two crossed rifles beneath a clenched fist. Seth had the same one.
Earl came to a stop beside us, panting. “What’s going on?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. I could tell Earl what had happened and try to get the guy arrested but…. I glanced at Seth and he was shaking his head. He’d had the same thought I had: his dad wouldn’t go quietly. And I wasn’t sure our local cops could handle him. Earl was out-of-shape and old while Lloyd was too young and twitchy. If it turned into a fight, Beckett would be right in the middle of it and could wind up as a hostage... or dead.
And then Taylor came around the corner. Shit! She and Seth had a real thing for each other: they’d been flirting with each other all morning, every time she passed Exam One. And I’d let them because... well, I can be a soppy fucker, when I see two people so obviously smitten. But now it was coming back to bite me. When Taylor saw Seth facing off against the cops, she ran right into the middle of everything and put a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him for answers. Seth’s dad scowled and I saw the hand closest to his knife twitch.
“Everything’s fine,” I told Earl tightly. “These guys were just leaving.” I glared at Seth’s dad and prayed he’d take the easy way out.
For a long second, he just glared at me. I saw Earl finger his gun and wondered how many years it was since he’d had to shoot it. And Lloyd...had he ever fired his?
“Don’t interfere in my shit again,” muttered Seth’s dad. And he turned and stalked away, the old guy falling in behind him.
Seth turned to me. “Thank you,” he said in a low voice.
“Seth!” barked his dad.
Seth winced. He looked at Taylor and I saw his shoulders slump with guilt and humiliation. The poor kid really liked her and now she’d seen a part of his life he’d never wanted her to see. “Sorry,” he told her. And he hurried after his dad.
<
br /> I frowned. Why had Seth and the old guy still been here? They should have left hours ago. Then I winced. The broken ultrasound! With only one working unit, the whole hospital was backed up.
I spun around to check Beckett. She was standing there white-faced, her arms clasping herself as if she was cold. I felt that chill inside me again, imagining the blade shoved between her ribs. She could have died! And suddenly, I had my hands on her shoulders. “You okay?”
She nodded as if she didn’t trust her voice.
“You’re not okay,” I snapped. “You’re shaking.” I pushed her into the nearest exam room, put my hands on her waist, and lifted her onto the edge of the bed. And then... I just stared at her. And she stared back at me.
She was panting with fear, but I was panting just as hard, overwhelmed by a sudden protective fury. Someone tried to hurt her. “They’re gone,” I told her. “No reason we’ve ever got to see them again.” Without thinking, I brushed a lock of copper hair back from her cheek. I hadn’t felt this way about anyone since Chrissy and Rachel.
I blinked, trying to clear my head, but I couldn’t. I knew that my defenses were down, that she was looking right inside me. But she was open, too: I stared into those shining blue eyes, beyond all the awkwardness and shyness, and I saw someone who was alone. Just like me.
I swallowed and looked down at my feet. I had no idea how to deal with this.
She broke the silence first. “Thank you.”
I nodded, still unable to speak.
“Rebecca’s going to be okay,” she told me.
Relief washed over me, so much that I had to fight the urge to hug her. I let out a long breath. “Thank you.” But with the relief came thoughts of Rachel, her grin like sunshine, the brightness of her lighting up the dark space inside me for an instant, showing me its vastness. Fuck. It was all too much, at once: I was going to lose it and fucking cry or something.
Earl came to my rescue, poking his head around the corner to check we were okay. “You get a name on that guy?” he asked.
Mount Mercy Page 4
