Third Degree (36 page)

Two paramedics wheel a gurney into the unusually quiet ER, and after getting a glimpse of the patient, I jump up from my seat on the counter of the nurses’ station, tossing my half-eaten sandwich into the garbage.

“Let’s go.” I nod in the direction of the rolling gurney, indicating to my interns that they should follow me. “You guys wanted something interesting, right?”

“I knew it!” the guy says. “Nine at night on New Year’s Eve, and the drunks are out crashing into things.”

All of us reach for gloves and pull them over our hands. My dad must have been paged in advance, because he appears behind me. “What have we got?” he asks the paramedics.

“Forty-year-old male, crashed into a median near Lakeshore Drive, multiple chest wounds …”

I press my stethoscope to his chest and listen. “Decreased breath sounds on the left side.”

The middle-aged man stirs awake, twisting his head back and forth.

“Sir?” I lean in close “What’s his name?” I ask the paramedic.

“Larry Waltrip.”

“Mr. Waltrip?” Dad says. “Have you been drinking?”

He continues to shake his head. “I have … I have … reservations.”

“You were in a car accident,” I say. “Is there anyone we should call to let them know you’re here?”

Every muscle in his face is squeezed tight in pain, but he manages to say, “No. There’s no one to call.”

“We’ve got another victim on the way,” one of the paramedics says to me. “A woman with abdominal injuries.”

Dad looks at me. “Go—I got this one. Give me two of your interns. And page Dr. Rinehart for the new victim.”

I point to two of the interns and then grab the sleeve of the third, Dave, tugging him toward the ER doors, where our next patient will be entering at any moment. We stand outside, hopping up and down to keep warm, while we wait for the ambulance.

“God, that would suck,” my intern says. “Being forty years old, crashing your car, probably needing surgery, and having no one to call.”

“He was pretty out of it. Maybe he didn’t understand the question.” But I
do
understand the question. A chill that has nothing to do with the cold outside runs through me. And I don’t want to crash my car in twenty years and have no one to call.

Damn Dr. Winifred James, Ph.D., and her fucking assignments
.

I hear the sirens from the approaching ambulance grow louder. I reach into my pocket, remove my phone, and bring up Marshall’s number. The ambulance backs up toward us, and
before I can chicken out, I take a deep breath and type a three-word text:
Can we talk?

Chapter 28

Literally sixty seconds later, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Dr. Rinehart meets us in the trauma room, sees me, and says, “Dr. Jenkins, weren’t you off two hours ago?”

I shrug. “It’s fine. I can stay.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got this. You’ve been on sixteen hours. Leave your fledgling and go home. Or go out and do something fun.”

Right. That’s exactly what I plan to do.
Not
. I walk away, tossing my gloves into a hazardous waste bin and removing my phone to check the message I’ve just gotten.

R u working tonight?

My heart pounds, and beads of sweat pop up across my forehead. Marshall replied in, like, one minute. Is this a good sign? Does he still miss me? Or is he pissed off and wants to swear at me a lot in my place of employment? Whatever, I’ll take it.

Yes, in the ER. But leaving soon
.

Stay there. We’ll see you in 10
.

I stop after practically ramming into an old woman being wheeled in a wheelchair.

We?

I wait for another reply, but there’s nothing. Did he mean ten minutes or at ten o’clock? It’s nine-thirty, so I guess there’s not that much difference. I sniff under my armpits and then hurry off to my locker to put on deodorant and quickly brush my teeth. Not that I’m planning on making out with him after weeks of abrupt silence. I just need to feel confident in my appearance or I’ll be distracted by the conversation.

As I’m heading back to the ER, my hands shaking from both nerves and anticipation, it occurs to me how much I’m aching to hear his voice again. To brush my thumbs across his cheek and feel the sexy stubble that always seems to be there. I’m dying to tell him about the man with no one to call and make sure he knows that no matter what, when he’s forty and injured in the ER, he can call me. He can always call me.

Is this what love is?

“Hey, honey, what happened to your patient?” Dad is standing near the ER doors, wearing his street clothes.

“Rinehart cut me. She caught me past fourteen hours,” I explain. “What happened to your patient? He needs surgery, right?”

“Same as you. O’Reilly cut me off. I’ve been here nineteen hours.”

We both stand there in an awkward silence, and then Dad finally says, “You want to go get dinner or something? It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

“I can’t.” My eyes stay focused on the doors. It’s been eleven minutes. “I’m meeting someone.”

“Oh.” Surprise fills his voice. “Anyone I know?”

I bite my lower lip. “Marshall. I told him I wanted to talk, and he said he’d be here in ten minutes.”

“Okay, well … that’s good, I guess,” he says tentatively. He’s probably being careful not to cause another emotional breakdown. “But how is he getting here in ten minutes?” I shrug. “Maybe he’s in the neighborhood.”

The doors finally slide open, and the first person I spot is Marshall’s brother, Jesse, who appears to be supporting Marshall’s weight. Or at least half of it. On his other side is Shirtless Carson. Kelsey runs in front of them, her phone pressed to her ear. “Izzy! Thank God!”

I’m frozen for what feels like an hour, but it’s probably one or two seconds, as I process what’s going on: (1) the fact that “we” meant Jesse, Kelsey, and Carson, and (2) the fact that something is very wrong with Marshall.

“Need help here?” one of my interns asks … Bridget. I need to call her by her name. “Dr. Jenkins?” she asks again.

Of course both Dad and I reply, but it pulls me out of my haze and I rush forward in time to see Marshall try to shake off Jesse and Carson.

“What happened?” I ask them.

“He was fine,” Jesse says. “Not perfect, but good enough to go out tonight.”

“And then he started puking and couldn’t stop for like an hour,” Kelsey breaks in, her face flushed, her eyes wide with fear.

Dad snaps his magic attending-physician fingers and gets a gurney wheeled up almost instantly.

“This isn’t a military hospital,” Carson says. “Is he allowed to be here?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Kelsey snaps at him. “We keep telling you it’s a fucking hour away. What if he’s fucking dying?”

We’ve just wheeled him into an available trauma room and Marshall is on his side, clutching his stomach, his eyes squeezed shut. I take a deep breath and tune out the panicked escorts, then rest a shaking hand on Marsh’s back. “Was there blood when you vomited?”

He shakes his head, and then I notice his teeth chattering. I gently guide him onto his back, moving my fingers over his stomach. “Abdomen is swollen.”

“Bridget,” I say to my intern. “Go schedule a CT—”

“Wait.” A nurse shuffles up with her clipboard. “You need a blood panel and history
before you do a CT. And before that, I need some information to admit him.”

I blow out a frustrated breath, remove Marshall’s wallet from the pocket of his jeans, and slap it into the nurse’s hand. “Information.” I point to Jesse. “Brother.”

Dad gives her a nod, and she walks away scowling and dragging Jesse with her. I try not to think about the fact that it’s really not a good idea to get on the nurses’ bad side. They’re basically the spokes on this hospital’s wheel. But this is Marshall …

“So, yes to the CT … or should I do the IV and blood work?” Bridget asks.

“Yes to the CT,” I practically growl at her. “Damn, I should not have to repeat myself.”

Dad is now pressing on Marshall’s stomach while Marshall covers his face, probably not wanting any grown men to see him hurting. I push the sweaty hair off Marshall’s forehead, lean over, and say in a whisper, “I’m going to get an IV started, okay?”

He drops his hands and looks at me, holding my gaze for a long moment. “I missed you.”

I sigh and nod at the same time, quickly swiping away a loose tear before anyone sees. “Me too.”

It takes me only a minute to get his IV started. Dad’s listening to his chest and abdomen with a stethoscope. Marshall rolls his face toward me. “I can’t drink the contrast. Last time they made me—”

I attach a bag of fluids to the IV line and then squeeze his hand. “I know. It’s okay. We’ll inject you.”

He closes his eyes and nods. “Thank you.”

Bridget skids back into the trauma room. “CT says they need blood work first.”

“Tell them to go screw themselves.”

“Isabel,” Dad warns.

I bite back anger. “Fine. Tell them we’re coming anyway.” There’s a new nurse beside me now. I turn to her and say quietly, “Go ahead and book an OR.”

She looks at me like I’ve gone crazy, and I can tell she’s sifting through nurse protocol in her head, trying to decide how best to handle crazy residents. “Who exactly is performing this surgery?”

“I don’t know yet,” I snap. “But I can tell you we’re going to end up there, and we might as well get the room prepped.”

“You haven’t even taken the patient’s history—”

“I already know his history!”

“Isabel Jenkins, what the hell are you doing?” Dr. Rinehart has just walked up behind the nurse, still sporting blood from the last patient. The nurse turns around and begins the process of stripping Rinehart of her bloody covers and gloves and replacing them with new ones.

“Thank you!” I lift my hands up. “See? We have a surgeon.”

“Since when do you book CTs, let alone operating rooms, without admitting the patient and getting a history?” She snaps her fingers at Bridget. “List the possible causes of acute abdominal pain.”

“Appendicitis,” she says.

“It’s a small bowel obstruction,” I interrupt. We don’t have time and I don’t have the patience for a lesson. I grab the chart from the nurse and begin scribbling all the information I know about Marshall’s medical history, which is pretty much everything. This is normally a nurse’s job, but I’m faster than any of them would be.

Rinehart rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t ignore my claim, either, and I’m guessing that’s partially because Dad is here and hasn’t uttered a word of protest. “Marshall, what’s your pain level?”

She’s busy examining his stomach, so I lean in and touch my mouth to his ear. “Don’t be Superman, okay?”

“Nine,” he says with a groan. “No … ten.”

Rinehart takes the chart from my hands and reads it quickly. “Dr. Jenkins, how do you know this isn’t just pain from a flare-up?”

“I’ve seen him during a flare-up, and this is fifty times worse. Trust me, please,” I plead with her.

She exchanges looks with Dad as if they’ve discussed me when I wasn’t around. “The boyfriend?” she mouths with her back to Marshall. And Dad nods.

At least I didn’t have to say it out loud—or, worse, say that he’s my ex-boyfriend. Only he doesn’t feel like an ex-anything right now.

We all wait in anticipation until finally Rinehart turns to the nurse. “Draw blood.” Then she says to Bridget, “Tell CT to wake their asses up because we’re coming. And we’ll probably move quicker than the lab. And book an OR.”

Marshall hears all this, and his face goes even paler. But he says nothing. I squeeze his hand again. “Hey … I’m gonna have Kelsey call your parents, okay? Jesse’s going to be tied up answering a lot of questions, and he’s probably not had a chance.”

He blows air out of his cheeks. “Yeah, okay.”

Two transport staff show up right then and quickly wheel Marshall away to get his CT scan. I start to follow, but Dad grabs my shoulders and forces me to sit down in a chair. The second I do, the rush of adrenaline shifts and I’m seeing spots in front of my eyes.

“Take a second and catch your breath, okay?” he says. “In a little while you’ll be grateful you did.”

I rest my elbows on my knees and drop my head into my hands. I see Kelsey’s feet approach.

“So call his parents?” she asks. “He really didn’t want us to earlier, so Jesse held off. He thought maybe he’d get some pain meds and be fine.”

My body has already begun to stabilize, to adjust itself back to normal. I lift my head and try to keep the fear out of my face. “He’s not fine. I know he’ll need surgery. We’re just going through the motions now.”

Kelsey sits down beside me and rubs my back with one hand. “We were at a club downtown and he was miserable, but it was just like you said—he never wants to ruin anyone’s fun.”

I look at her and try to say I’m sorry for everything. I don’t even know if there’s anything to be sorry for except not telling her I was leaving school. But instead I say, “Thank you for bringing him here. If I had to drive all the way up to the military hospital and sit back and watch them take their sweet time figuring out what’s wrong with him, I would have gone nuts.”