Solemn Oath

by Hannah Alexander

  “What’s the hospital census?” he asked Lauren.

  “I think about thirty patients upstairs, two in ICU.”

  “Park the crash cart here.” Lukas stopped at the helicopter landing site and turned back to his patient. “Lauren, we have to intubate.”

  She pushed the cart up beside the bed in the bright sunlight and nodded. She pulled a syringe and two medicine vials out of her pocket. “I already prepared.”

  As the screams of sirens converged on them from three different directions, Lukas thanked God silently for a good nurse.

  Mercy raced through her waiting room and offices, pushing open exam room doors, warning patients to reschedule. Tedi followed close behind. A disaster had been called over the hospital intercom, and the clinic was closest. They were bringing the patients here, where the doctors and staff would do their triage. Carol, as well as every other able-bodied adult, was helping to transport patients.

  Josie and Loretta worked well in tandem as they led the patient influx. Mercy turned to direct Claudia and Carol to wheel their patients toward the exam room at the far end of the clinic.

  Claudia pushed through with a woman in her seventies who looked pale and frightened. “It’ll be okay, Mrs. Davis. We’ll get that stomachache taken care of over here.” She stopped in front of Mercy. “We were just getting ready to give her a GI cocktail. If you want to tell me where your stash is, I’ll see if I can’t take over with the patients they bring over here.”

  “Thank you, Claudia.” Mercy wanted to hug her. After giving the seasoned nurse the keys to the drug supply, Mercy gave the E.R. secretary instructions to get on the telephone in her office and call for backup physicians.

  “Mom,” Tedi yelled from her place at the front desk, “what about Abby? She’s still in surgery! I’ve got to go find her.”

  “Oh, no you don’t! You sit right there and help out where Claudia needs you. They’ll be bringing a lot more patients in here, and I want you here, out of the way of danger. I’ll make sure Abby’s okay, but knowing Dr. Wong, you’ll see Abby any time.”

  The front door opened again, and respiratory and lab technicians came rushing in with more patients. “Dr. Mercy, where do you want these?” Carol asked from the hallway.

  “Take them to Claudia. Is the outpatient area being evacuated?”

  “Yes, just look at that mess out there.” Carol gestured toward the large front windows, where the blinds had been pulled back to reveal the scene in vivid detail down the street. The patient and employee parking lot, which formed an L around two sides of the hospital structure, was rapidly filling with emergency vehicles, lights flashing, rescue workers running to their designated stations. In the center of the milieu, Mercy caught sight of Lukas and Lauren working over Mr. Weston. Lukas, at least, was safe.

  Smoke that billowed from a collapsed section of outside wall between the respiratory department and E.R. was confined to that part of the hospital wing. Mercy felt the real problem would lie in getting all those sick patients down from the second floor. Rescue workers would have to carry the disabled ones down the stairs with stretchers, since they couldn’t use the elevators.

  “Look, Mom, there she is,” Tedi said, pointing toward the side door closest to the O.R. Dr. Wong stepped out, accompanied by Abby’s mother and father, and a nurse and a tech behind them, who pushed a gurney with Abby’s skinny little body lying on top, draped in a sheet and still hooked to an IV.

  Other staff members scurried out of the hospital helping patients, pushing some in wheelchairs and on beds, heading toward Mercy’s office. She’d better prepare for a deluge.

  And then she saw a car pull up alongside the curb in front. A redheaded man climbed from the driver’s side and ran around to the trunk to pull out a folded wheelchair. Arthur and Alma Collins.

  “Thank You, God,” Mercy whispered as they hurried up the walk to join the throng headed to her door. “I owe You one.”

  Lukas barely heard the thunder of the chopper overhead before it landed, the noise and confusion were so thick on the ground. The fire chief had taken position in the center of the crowd of rescuers and was giving orders over a bullhorn to all of the firefighters and anyone else who would listen. The landing pad had been left clear, and several cries and shouts accompanied the whoosh of air from the rotating blades as the huge flyer landed. Lukas and Lauren bent over to shield their patient, waited for the blades to slow and stop and turned to help the flight team transfer Mr. Weston.

  “Looks like you’ve got a bad situation here, Doc,” the flight nurse shouted over the din. “You going to need us to call you any more help?”

  “Yes. We have thirty patients from the floor and more from E.R. who’ll need medical attention.”

  The nurse nodded and turned to load Mr. Weston into the chopper.

  As they lifted with a rush of wind and a roar, Lukas heard a shout. He turned to see two more firemen come running from the building. One of them was Buck, his scrubs torn and covered with soot.

  “Dr. Bower, we need your help.” Blood dripped from a cut in his arm, and he wiped it on his side. “We’ve found Mrs. Pinkley and Bailey Little trapped in her office. They’re hurt.”

  “How badly?”

  “Rescue workers are getting Mrs. Pinkley out. She was knocked out, but she’s conscious now and in pain. It looks like she might have cracked some ribs, maybe a broken leg and arm.” He barely paused to catch his breath. “Bailey Little is trapped between the wall and the blown floor. He’s unconscious and looks like he needs a needle decompression. I don’t think we can free him soon enough to do it out here.”

  Lukas turned to grab the supplies he needed from the crash cart they had been using for Mr. Weston. “I’ll come with you.”

  Buck laid a hand on his shoulder. “Dr. Bower, we’re afraid the respiratory department is compromised. We’ve already had two explosions. If there’s another one, the oxygen reservoirs could blow. This is dangerous.”

  “Then let’s hurry.”

  Frightened patients and frantic nurses and techs scrambled for room in Mercy’s clinic. The count had gone up to twenty-five patients, and more made their way down the street. All the beds and cots and chairs were full, and several people lay on the floor. Some moaned, some were silent with fear as the workers rushed to give aid and reassurance, their own voices frightened.

  “Most of the hospital still has electricity, and the sprinklers are working in the patient rooms,” someone informed Mercy as they walked by. “The firefighters are worried about that whole wing, though. That’s where the explosions hit. They think they came from down in maintenance.”

  Arthur Collins knelt on the floor, helping calm a woman having a panic attack, and his prayers were proving fruitful as the woman’s breathing slowed. Alma sat in her wheelchair holding Lindy Cuendet’s hand beside the cot where Abby lay, still pale but awake and mumbling incoherent words. Dr. Wong had gone back to help with the rescue effort in the main part of the hospital, which was undamaged. Ninety-year-old Mrs. Robinson from down the street had brought some cookies she had baked yesterday and was passing them around to the children.

  Lauren McCaffrey came bursting into the office, her face flushed, eyes wide with fear. “Mrs. Pinkley and Bailey Little are hurt. Dr. Mercy, Dr. Bower’s gone back inside, and they’re afraid there will be another explosion.”

  Mercy gasped and ran to the window as the door opened again and more people stumbled into the clinic. Past the crowds of firefighters and exiled patients, she saw the flash of royal blue—Lukas in his scrubs. He spoke for a moment with Buck, then nodded and went back through the opening of the shattered E.R. doors.

  “No!” She watched in horror. “Lukas, no!”

  Lukas followed Buck’s broad shoulders through the gloom and destruction of the room he had left moments earlier. He was astonished to find large chunks of ceiling tile and plaster littering the floor and furniture. Tables, chairs and cots lay overturned beneath the wreckage.

&nb
sp; “Watch your step, Doc,” Buck called over his shoulder. “The guys tried to clear a path, but we can’t take for granted that anything’s stable.”

  Breathing shallowly through the thick pall of smoke and ash, Lukas stepped over a fallen cot. “Where’s the smoke coming from? Is there still a fire in the building?”

  “I think it’s all contained except for the hallway outside respiratory therapy.” Buck led the way to the stairwell and opened the fire door, then looked back at Lukas. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t reach those oxygen tanks, or we’ll go up with the rest of this wing.”

  “Thanks, Buck, you’re a natural encourager,” Lukas muttered. For a moment—just one stress-filled moment—Lukas found himself remembering Kyle’s words about Buck less than an hour ago. Was he hoping to be a hero again? What measures was he willing to take to get there? And if these explosions were arson…No, he couldn’t think like that.

  The inside of Lukas’s nose felt as if it was coated with smoke and plaster dust by the time they reached the second floor. Then Buck opened the second fire door, and they stepped into a different world. Here they found little damage as they made their way down the hall. The carpet had been tracked with black soot from the feet of firefighters and other rescue workers, but the lights still burned from auxiliary power, computers still blinked, telephones still rang—there was just no one there to answer them.

  Two soot-smeared uniformed rescuers wearing heavy fire-resistant jackets rushed out of the administration suite into the hallway with a stretcher carrying Estelle Pinkley. They had encapsulated her in full c-spine immobilization, and she could not move her head, but her eyes were alert. Blood and soot streaked the side of her face. She caught sight of Lukas and groaned, closing her eyes momentarily against the pain.

  Lukas rushed to her side. “Estelle, can you talk? Where do you hurt?”

  She tried to reach toward him, but her bleeding hand fell back to her side. “Get everybody out of here, Lukas. Take care of the hospital…and take care of Bailey. He’s hurt.”

  She was talking, so her airway was probably out of danger. Lukas leaned forward to check for breath sounds and reached for a radial pulse, but the men moved on past.

  “Sorry, we can’t stay for a check,” the front carrier told him as they took Estelle out of reach. “We’ve got to get her out.”

  “And get yourself out, Lukas!” she called back to him. “It’s dangerous here!”

  “Come on, Doc, we’ve got to hurry.” Buck led the way into Mrs. Pinkley’s private office. “The floor partially collapsed here, because it’s situated directly above RT and E.R., which are above maintenance, where we believe the blasts took place. Watch it here, Dr. Bower. As I said, nothing’s stable. We think the first blast took out the main power, and then the second blast apparently took out the auxiliary power for the E.R. The rest of the hospital retained power even when you lost yours because the backup generators for them are in separate areas.”

  Lukas paused at the entrance and stared around the administration suite. The floor slanted crazily toward the inside wall, and shards of glass riddled the carpet and furniture from the shattered plate-glass window. Two rescue workers huddled beside Bailey Little in the corner, attempting to free his legs from a prison of steel and mortar.

  “He’s barely responsive,” one of the men called from the floor. “We’re trying to get him out, but he’s not going to last much longer at this rate.”

  More of the ceiling crumbled onto them as they worked, scattering powdered plaster over their heads and shoulders.

  Lukas stepped forward, but when he reached the end of the upturned desk, the floor buckled further. He froze in position.

  “Careful!” Buck called. “I told you that floor’s not solid.”

  “Then somebody trade places with me for a moment so I can do a decompression,” Lukas said. “Or you won’t have a patient to rescue.”

  One of the men stood and took slow, careful steps toward Lukas. “Okay, Doc, switch places with me and make it quick. I don’t know how much time we’ve got.”

  Lukas followed his orders. His feet slid on the crazily angled carpet, but he reached out and took another fireman’s outstretched hand for support. He knelt beside Bailey’s silent white form. At least the body wasn’t blue yet.

  Lukas pulled off Bailey’s tie and popped the buttons to loosen the shirt and expose the chest. He pulled his stethoscope from his pocket and bent to listen to the side of Bailey’s neck. He heard slight air exchange. There was no tracheal deviation. Good, that meant no tension pneumothorax. Next he felt for a pulse at the neck. It was there, but weak. Breath sounds were fast and a little shallow from shock. No telling how much blood the patient had lost.

  “Doc, hurry!” Buck shouted. “That wall could give at any time.”

  The heart sounds were muffled. Reflexively, Lukas double-checked the right side of the neck. It was not distended as he would expect, but Bailey had two out of three clinical signs: there was probably a collection of blood in the sac that surrounded the heart, secondary to trauma, which kept the heart from pumping. Cardiac tamponade. Lukas had to drain it.

  The floor shook, and Buck shouted. Lukas caught his breath and braced himself against the wall. God, let me be right. Help! I could kill this man with one stick of the needle! And if I don’t hurry, we could all be killed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Three more physicians had come to the clinic in response to the calls, and the patients were being treated, transferred, and some of them released. Loretta had come in moments ago to take over coordination detail at the front desk. Tedi sat beside her friend, Abby, and held Lindy Cuendet’s hand while Jason Cuendet paced and asked everyone who came in what was going on outside. Jason and Lindy were not speaking to each other.

  Mercy knelt beside Alma Collins’s wheelchair, fingers linked together so tightly they turned white, tears of frantic petition streaking her face. Her own internal dialogue of “Please, God, please, God, please” mingled with Alma’s calm words and rich accent.

  “And, Lord, we know You have all power, and that You care for Your children in every way, and so we ask You to please take care of Dr. Lukas right now and see him safely out of the danger. Guide his steps and give him Your healin’ touch. Please help us care for these hurtin’ people in this place and show us the best way to comfort them.” There was a pause, a slight hesitation as the raucous noise of the cries and sirens and shouts threatened to invade the curious peace of Alma’s words. But then she spoke again as her arm came around Mercy’s shoulders. “And, Lord, touch this child here with Your healin’ love, too. Touch her spirit and her heart and shower her with Your peace.” The arm squeezed firmly. “Amen.”

  Then, as the tumult once more invaded, somehow Mercy felt anchored, at least for a moment, carried away by something more powerful than her fear. God’s healing love…that was it. The sudden knowledge of it touched her with wonder. She’d never considered it before, but as a doctor it should have been obvious. Why hadn’t she seen it? Many times she had to cause pain to her patients during treatment. A shot of antibiotics could burn like fire, but the long-term healing gave long-lasting relief. Was that what God had been doing with her?

  But as she considered the possibilities, the sounds of the sirens outside and the noisy, frightened chatter inside came crashing through that temporary oasis once more. As it did so, she found herself wishing for a more permanent peace.

  “Mom!” Tedi shouted, pointing out the window. “There’s Dad.”

  Mercy pushed herself up from her knees as Theo shoved open the door and raced inside, eyes wide with fear, face dripping with perspiration, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

  He caught sight of Tedi and stopped. “Thank God,” he breathed, rushing forward. Tedi stood to meet him, and he grabbed her in his arms and swung her off her feet. “Thank God!” He held her for a long moment, chin resting on the top of her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, then he set her down gen
tly. “Your mother? Where is she? Is she okay?”

  “Sure, Dad, she’s right over there.” Tedi pointed.

  Theo swung around and caught sight of Mercy and dropped his arms to his sides, still breathing heavily. “Mercy, thank you for calling me about Tedi.” He paused for breath. “I know you said she’d be okay, but then a customer came into the shop and told us about the explosion. You wouldn’t believe what was going through my mind. I just started running.” He glanced out the window and across the street. “Are there more people in there? Do they need help?”

  “There are more. They haven’t completed the evacuation,” Mercy said, trying to keep the quiver from her voice.

  “Lukas is in there, Dad,” Tedi said softly.

  At those words, Mercy felt the panic rising within her again. Fear for Lukas held her captive, and she was no good to anyone like this. Her daughter needed her. Her patients needed her.

  Theo stepped over and placed a hand on her arm. “I’ll go check on him, Mercy.” He turned and rushed back out the door.

  Mercy felt the tears in her eyes once again.

  Lukas pulled the syringe from his pocket and one of the two needles he had brought with him. He attached the six-inch needle to the closed syringe and leaned over Bailey’s chest. Pressing the needle against the left side just under the breastbone, he pointed the tip toward the heart and slowly advanced the needle as he pulled back the plunger on the syringe. The needle was about four inches in when blood spurted into the tube.

  A voice shouted from out in the hallway. “Buck! Get everybody out of there. The oxygen is going to go!”

  The floor shifted again, and the desk lurched toward them. The firemen braced against the wall, and Lukas scrambled to hold the needle in place. He pulled back on the syringe until it stopped flowing easily. Bailey moaned.