Critical Condition (10 page)

Guess his plan backfired this time. “Moses can go stag,” Gina told LaRose as she secured her to the makeshift backboard with gauze. “We need to take care of you first.”

“Hello, Mrs. Freeman,” Ken called to LaRose. He’d spread a sheet over the car’s hood and climbed on top of it. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get you out of there.”

“Does anything hurt?” Gina asked her.

“My head.”

“Can you squeeze my hands?” Gina grabbed both of LaRose’s. Her right hand lay limply in Gina’s while the left was able to squeeze tight. “No pain here?” She quickly palpated LaRose’s belly.

“No.”

“Okay, let’s get you out. I’m going to slide you sideways onto this sheet.” She reached for the end of the sheet Ken handed her. It was an old nursing trick to move patients by sliding them along a sheet tucked beneath their body. Gina gently rotated LaRose, taking care to keep her spine as straight as possible, and slid her head and torso onto the passenger seat, over the top of the sheet. Her legs came free, the right one dragging behind the left.

“Gina.” Ken reached in to help LaRose’s right leg up onto the sheet.

“I know. Right-side weakness, facial muscles and speech involved as well.” She was avoiding using the word
stroke
out loud in her mother’s presence. LaRose wouldn’t panic overtly—panic was not in the Freeman family vocabulary—but with her high blood pressure Gina wanted to avoid any further anxiety. “Once we clear her for injuries, we need to rule out a CVA.”

Ken awkwardly folded his body over the steering wheel and gathered the sheet around LaRose’s legs. “Okay, on three. One, two, three.”

Together they lifted LaRose over the dash and through the windshield’s opening onto the hood of the car.

“Thank God she never lets her weight get over one-ten,” Gina joked. She hauled herself through the window she came in by and joined LaRose again, holding her hand as Ken ran for a stretcher.

“Moses—won’t—appreci—like it.” LaRose said with an effort at a smile that made her face appear ancient as her facial muscles drooped.

“Moses can learn to do his own dirty work instead of sending you.” Gina shocked herself with the words, but one look at her mother reinforced her anger.

“Regina!” No surprise that even a stroke couldn’t stop her mother from defending her father.

“Don’t ‘Regina’ me, LaRose. Moses can go to hell.”

 

 

AFTER NORA REASSURED MARK THAT THEY WERE going to get him out, she retraced her steps past the triage desk to the ER. It would normally have been faster to go the other way, through the door leading to the security office, but it was blocked by debris.

The nurses’ station—the communication heart of the ER—was in shambles. Smoke stank up the air, the patient tracking board had been impaled by a fallen light fixture, ceiling tiles and debris covered the counters, and the computer monitors were black. Jason’s desk had collapsed under the debris, leaving the area looking like a boat with a gaping hole below the waterline, sinking fast.

Cold air and snow gusted through the hole in the wall around the car. She made a note to call maintenance, get some plywood up ASAP. Ken Rosen was working with Gina inside the wrecked car.

“Do you need help?” she called.

“I think we’re good. Anyone else hurt?”

“Mark Cohen hurt his leg. I’m going to go for more help.”

Ken nodded and turned back to his work extricating the driver. The path in front of the nurses’ station was unnavigable, so Nora jogged around the back of the station and crossed the hall to the trauma rooms. There she grabbed some blankets from the warmer.

As she was leaving, Jim Lazarov came through the doors on the opposite side of the nurses’ station, the ones leading from the main hospital.

“Jason is with Nicky and his mom and the guys from the zoo,” he reported in a rush. He definitely wasn’t bored anymore; his expression was that of a little boy who’d just been told there was a snow day at school and it was time to play. “The nurses are stocking carts with supplies in case we need to move operations.”

Nora shivered and draped one of the warm blankets around her own shoulders. “Good. I need help getting Mark out.”

They headed to the security office. Only one guard was there, talking on the phone. Nora didn’t recognize him; he was one of the new hires, and he seemed both young and enthusiastic, excited about being in on the action. She thought about the shootings that had happened before Christmas and hoped this was the most action they would see tonight.

A shiver shook her as she remembered the panicked feeling of finding Seth almost dead, facing death herself. She tried hard not to dwell on what had happened—everyone had gotten out alive, Seth was going to be okay, she was going to be okay. It was better to focus on work . . . and on building her new life with Seth.

She still had to call him, break the news that she wasn’t coming home anytime soon.

“The fire department says they can’t send a truck,” the guard said, covering the phone receiver with one hand. “They’re fighting two major fires, one on the Hill and one on the North Side. They asked if a rescue vehicle would be okay? They have one nearby, but with the roads, it will take them a while to get here.”

“I think we’re fine,” Nora said. “Tell them we’ll call them back if we need them. And let them know our ER is out of commission. They’ll have to divert any patient traffic and EMS to other hospitals.”

He relayed her message and hung up the phone. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Yeah, we could use another pair of hands. Come with me.”

They circled back past the wrecked car. Jim stopped and stared.

“Are you coming?” Nora asked.

Jim nodded, his gaze fixated on the activity around the car. Ken had just maneuvered the driver onto the hood of the car. “Is that Gina’s mother in there?”

Nora looked more closely. It was. Jeez, like Gina needed any more family drama in her life right now.

Ken Rosen crossed their path, pushing a stretcher. “Looks like she had a stroke,” he said, indicating LaRose. “Go take care of Mark; we’ve got this covered.”

Nora led her small band of rescuers back down the hall, stopping at the trauma bay to grab another stretcher, a backboard, a c-collar, and splinting supplies. By the time they arrived back in the waiting room, they found that Mark had managed to clear most of the smaller debris away from his head and torso, leaving just his leg pinned under the supporting wall of the activity station.

“Maybe it’s only my knee,” he said, teeth chattering. Nora draped a blanket around his head and shoulders. The wind had swept a lot of the paper debris out the gaping hole in the window, replacing it with several inches of snow, drifting around their feet.

“We’ll have you out in a second,” the guard said, squatting to lift the piece of metal and particle board while Jim and Nora slid Mark free.

Together they splinted his leg and got him on the backboard, then lifted him onto the stretcher. “Let’s get you someplace warm.”

As they pushed him out into the main ER, Mark gasped, pushing himself up on his elbows to get a good look at the debris. “What the hell happened to my ER?”

 

 

SHADOW-ETCHED SNOW FILLED LYDIA’S VISION IN every direction. She sure as hell had something to cry about now. Her seat belt dug into her shoulder, holding her into the seat as the Escape sat tilted to the right and rear. Like a kicking bronco frozen halfway through bucking its rider off.

She tried the ignition again. The battery still worked—the radio came on—but the engine wouldn’t catch. She turned off everything that might drain the battery and tried again. No joy.

Should she walk back to the training center? Shelter there until the storm passed? No, the door had locked behind her and she didn’t have a key. As much as she hated to do it, she had no choice but to call Trey and ask for help.

She flicked on the interior light and searched for her cell. She had to unstrap herself from her seat belt and crawl downhill to the passenger seat until she found it wedged in the space between the seat and the door. Tugging her glove off with her teeth, she hit the buttons.

“Trey Garrison.” His voice was distant and she knew he must be out in a vehicle, using the hands-free.

“It’s me. I need a favor.”

“Hang on a second.” She heard the grating sound of a truck pulling off the side of a road. “Sure, what do you need?”

“Do you have any trucks out near Lexington? Or even a snowplow I could hitch a ride with?”

“What happened?”

She quickly explained about her mishap with the snowbank. To her relief he didn’t laugh—at least not too loudly. “Surfer girl, aren’t you supposed to be home resting your broken arm? What are you doing out there anyway?”

Here came the bad part. “Sandy loaned me one of his guns and we met out here to practice, so I’d feel comfortable with it.”

There was silence for a long moment and she was afraid the connection had gone dead. “Trey?”

“I’m on my way.” He didn’t break the connection even though he usually never drove and talked on the phone at the same time—especially not if he was in one of the city vehicles. Trey always played it safe. “You know you’re not even supposed to be driving—I should have taken the car keys, should have known you’d—”

“I’d what? Make a decision to protect myself? Seems like a good idea, given that a hit man came looking for me and that there may be more on the way.” She didn’t understand Trey’s hatred of guns. After all, his father and brothers and a sister were all law enforcement officers; he’d grown up surrounded by guns. “I can’t sit around and do nothing.”

“No. You can’t. Instead you have to go blundering around in the middle of a blizzard with one arm out of commission.”

“The weather said—”

“The weather was wrong. And you don’t have any experience driving in snow—”

“This was when Sandy had the time—” Their words were overlapping so that anyone else would hear only gibberish, but they understood each other. As well as the anger that underlay their words.

“Why can’t you let the police do their jobs? We could get out of town for a few weeks—”

“Because I want it over! I can’t stand this. Waiting and worrying. Afraid every time you leave the house that I’ll never see you again. It’s killing me, Trey.”

Her words knifed through the silence in the SUV. Even the wind howling outside held its breath, waiting for Trey’s response.

The past few weeks, it felt like all they did was argue. He’d tried to coddle her, and she’d bitten his head off, protesting that she wasn’t an invalid. He’d tried to comfort her, invited her to join him and his family for Christmas Eve services, and she’d ranted on about the meaningless-ness of a holiday based on promises of peace and goodwill that would be broken and forgotten by the time the Mass let out.

He’d tried to make love to her, and all she’d felt was terror that she’d made a terrible, awful mistake staying, that because of her, he would get hurt.

“If you can’t talk to me about it, maybe you should talk to someone,” he finally replied, his words quiet, his tone carefully neutral. As if she were a strung-out meth-head or the like. “Someone professional. Like a counselor.”

Since he couldn’t see her, Lydia indulged herself and rolled her eyes. Why was it that Trey thought talking could solve everything? “I’m fine. I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

“No. You’re not fine. You’re angry all the time—angry at me, angry at my folks, angry at Gina and Nora when they call, even angry at God. It’s poisoning you, Lydia.”

“God? Maria died in a
church
, for chrissake! Of course I’m furious with God. Where was he when she needed him? Why wasn’t he around to answer her prayers that day?” Her voice was a thunderclap inside the SUV, shaking snow free from the windows, competing with the wind outside. Venting should have made her feel better, but instead it made her feel small and vulnerable. Alone.

If they’d been face-to-face, he’d be holding her hands in his, sharing his warmth. She’d also never be able to say half these things, show such vulnerability, not in person, not even to Trey. But now she was shivering and all alone. Just like she’d been eighteen years ago, hiding in a church confessional, watching her mother get beaten to death.

“God was there, Lydia. Don’t you see? He’s always been there. He was answering Maria’s prayers to keep you safe. It was a miracle you weren’t also killed.”

“Right.” She couldn’t erase the bitterness from her tone. “Just like it was a miracle that the hit man found Gina and shot Jerry when he was looking for me? I doubt either of them would see it that way.”

“I do. You could have been killed that night. I thank God every day that you weren’t.”

Trey talked as if he and God were on a first-name basis, could order for each other at Starbucks, carpooled together. Until Lydia had moved to Pittsburgh and met Trey, she’d given up on God, considering him just a wistful idea conjured by humans tired of feeling alone and powerless in the universe. Now Trey had her thinking there might be something—someone—out there.

The thought of a God gave Trey comfort, kept him calm when things got bad. Where was her comfort? Why was it that all she felt when she thought of God was anger? Anger and fear that if he was out there, then he might not keep the people she loved safe—just like he’d failed Maria.

A short burst from a siren jolted her from her thoughts.

“I’m here,” Trey said over the phone. “Just give me a minute to clear a path.”

She hung up and waited to be rescued—the first time she’d ever in her life let someone else save her.

Don’t count on it ever happening again,
she decided as she sat in the dark and the cold, her teeth c hattering and pain throbbing through her arm. Trey might trust in God, but Lydia trusted in herself.