Trauma Plan (5 page)

Even a second time around, neither had Jack.

4

Riley approached the desk, determined to feel far more in control than she had during the conference room skirmish with Jack Travis. It wasn’t going to be easy. He was as imposing in faded scrubs as he’d been in Army camouflage: muscled shoulders, strong jaw, wide-bridged nose, dark brows. There was a surprising hint of olive in his complexion, at odds with his sandy hair. And those eyes . . .

He stood as Kate began the introduction. “Dr. Jack Travis . . . Riley Hale, our trauma chaplain.”

A corner of Jack’s mouth tugged upward. “And you’re also the safety officer, I understand.” He offered his hand.

Riley extended hers, grateful that it was a handshake she couldn’t feel. His gaze already held her in an inescapable grip. Jack Travis’s wide-set eyes were an unusual color—almost amber-brown, like burnt toffee—and framed by inky lashes. A small scar slashed one dark brow as if boasting rugged conflict. Completely fitting; she hadn’t missed the fact that he was still wearing his military boots.

Riley cleared her throat. “Assistant safety officer,” she clarified, suspecting Jack wasn’t going to reveal that they’d met earlier. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved by that. Sharing a secret with this man felt too personal and anything but safe. Riley slid her hand from his and turned to Kate. “You needed some help here?”

“Yes. A diabetic patient who wants to leave against medical advice. Jack’s tried to convince her, but that just seemed to make her more anxious. Her name’s Vesta Calder. She’s in room 7. I thought that you might be able to—” She turned at a keening howl coming from the hallway.

A man staggered from an exam room. “Ahhhh . . . my skin’s crawling! Make it stop . . . make it quit! I’m gonna do something bad if it doesn’t stop. I’m warning you, I’ll tear this place up!”

Jack bolted from the desk.

The young man was naked except for orange boxers and clawed at his skin, raising angry red scratches on his chest. In an instant, he lunged toward the opposite wall, ripped equipment off. He hurled a plastic suction canister, oxygen masks, then grabbed at—

“He’s got an oxygen tank!” Riley shouted to the clerk. “Page Mr. Strong. Get security here!”

Two techs whipped past as Kate and the other nurses closed exam doors and cautioned patients to stay back.

Riley’s heart hammered, her mouth going dry as Jack approached the screaming and incoherent patient. He spoke calmly, keeping his hands quiet and visible. “Easy, easy . . . I’m here to help, buddy.”

“I don’t trust you!” the man shrieked, clutching the heavy tank. His bleeding chest heaved. “You’re all trying to kill me. You’re—”

“I’m a doctor.” Jack widened his stance and hunched slightly as the wild-eyed patient hefted the oxygen cylinder shoulder-high, quite obviously threatening him. Jack waved a tech back, then took a step forward. “Mr. Farrell, put that down. Now.”

The PA system squawked with static and the patient startled. He jerked the green tank overhead, muscles straining and anxious eyes riveted on the ceiling tiles.

“Mr. Strong, ER. Mr. Strong to the emergency department.”

Jack saw the opportunity and lunged forward. The patient howled as he heaved the metal tank, missing Jack’s head by inches. The cylinder hit the floor with a thunderous metallic thud and skidded, letting out an explosive hiss as the flow meter struck the wall. Screams echoed from the exam rooms.

Jack tackled the patient, pulled him down. He dodged a flying fist and flipped the man onto his stomach, one big hand holding his face to the floor. In seconds, the techs and two security officers were on the floor beside him.

Jack raised his head, called toward the nurses’ station, “Grab the Haldol!”

A surge of adrenaline carried Riley halfway to the medicine cupboard before she realized that, of course, she had no keys. Kate was beside her in an instant, grabbed the vial and syringes, and jogged toward the huddle of staff on the floor.

Riley watched from the desk as the drama subsided. She was trembling; the last time she’d witnessed an attack on hospital staff, two men had died. She’d been a chaplain then, too, her arm still in a sling from her own assault six months prior. She rubbed her left hand over her right, telling herself that she was much better now. Stronger. No sling, and not nearly as clumsy with her fingers. If she’d had access to those keys, she’d have retrieved the Haldol and the syringes. She’d have been a member of the team kneeling on the floor beside Jack Travis. But she was here as a chaplain, not a staff nurse. She sighed and then squared her shoulders.

Riley caught the attention of the clerk. “Excuse me; I’m supposed to look in on a patient named Calder.”

“Room 7.”

“Thank you.”

Riley glanced toward Mr. Farrell’s room, saw Jack standing watch as a tech secured temporary soft limb restraints for the safety of both patient and staff. Then she walked toward Mrs. Calder’s room, pausing outside briefly as she’d been taught to do in chaplain’s training.
Be present, Lord. Let me listen with compassion, not try to fix or judge. Just . . . listen.
It would be especially important now. If this woman had been agitated and frightened to begin with, hearing the violent scuffle in the hallway would only make it worse. Riley took a soft breath, opened the door.

The room was empty.

She scanned it, her stomach sinking. The side rails of the gurney were locked upright, the bedside table and tray of cafeteria food shoved aside. An IV hung overhead, its tubing dangling uselessly into the rumpled bedsheets. A trail of red droplets led from the sheets to the vinyl floor to the doorway where Riley stood. Blood. Like a telltale scene from a
CSI
episode.

Vesta Calder was a runaway.

* * *

Jack dragged his stethoscope back and forth across the nape of his neck, watching as the chaplain continued with her call to hospital security. She held the desk phone receiver in her left hand.

Jack studied the long curve of Riley’s neck, visible now that she’d tilted her head to one side. A cervical spine injury . . . and surgery maybe? Likely, if there had been bone fragments that impinged on the fragile spinal cord, and . . . Jack stilled the seesaw of his stethoscope. Kate had said that it was a work-related injury. What had happened? Statistics would point to a serious fall if Riley were a much older woman. But young people tended to break their necks in motor vehicle accidents or as a result of sports mishaps. He frowned, thinking of a young soldier who’d survived two tours in Afghanistan only to become a paraplegic after rolling his ATV into a ditch on his grandparents’ ranch.

The chaplain looked athletic. Jack’s gaze swept from the shoulders of Riley’s tailored suit jacket past her shapely hips to toned calves, and—

“Nothing,” she said, turning toward him and effectively halting his clinical assessment. “They’ve found no trace of Mrs. Calder. No response to the overhead pages, not a sign of her in the cafeteria. And no taxis have arrived front or back.” The chaplain gave a quick nod. “I checked all the first-floor lavatories and left a message on her home phone.”

Jack felt an irrational urge to salute. Injured or not, Chaplain Hale was impressively on task. He glanced at the nurses’ station clock. “It’s been at least thirty minutes. She could have called for a ride.” To his annoyance, an image of the white Lexus intruded. Jack scraped his fingers through his hair. “At least she ate some food. But I still can’t figure out why she left.”

Riley cleared her throat. “Did she seem to have any issues with the staff?”

He raised his brows. “You mean with
me
?”

Her blue eyes met his, unblinking. “It happens.”

He started to smile, but it gave way to irritation. “No. She didn’t have issues with me or any of the staff as far as I know. She was relatively cooperative, intelligent, and as lucid as a person can be after bouncing back from a serum glucose of 39. And a seizure.”

Riley’s eyes widened.

“That’s right. Which is why it’s important that she gets follow-up.”

“Of course.”

Jack glanced around the ER, doing a quick assessment of patient status, and then turned back to Riley. “Look, I don’t know why Mrs. Calder hightailed it out of here without letting us know. And, frankly, I don’t know why Kate involved you. I needed a dietician, a callback from her internist. In hindsight, maybe a security guard watching that exam room door.”

“But not a chaplain.”

“Not a chaplain.” Jack sighed. “She wasn’t dead or dying. She just needed her insulin adjusted.”

Riley’s lips parted, then closed as if she’d changed her mind about something she was going to say. She held his gaze for a moment. “I understand what you’re saying.”

He seriously doubted that. “Well . . . thank you for leaving a message on her phone; that helps. I’ll handle the rest. I won’t keep you any longer.”

“Fine.”

The chaplain started to walk away but turned back instead. She strode up to him, close enough that Jack smelled the scent of peaches in her hair.

“Tell Kate I’ll be in my office for another half hour or so,” she said, her voice lowering to a throaty whisper. “In case anyone
dies
.”

* * *

Please don’t let me die. Not here. Please, God . . . let me get home.

Vesta Calder stumbled along the darkened wall, her damp palm sticking to its cool enamel surface as her vision blurred and the familiar wave of dizziness threatened to drown her. She sucked a ragged breath, gasped, and tried again, the suddenly too-humid air smothering her like a heavy, sodden towel. Her knees weakened and she leaned against the wall to keep from falling. If she rested a few minutes, caught her breath, she could make it to the hallway again, then across the lobby to the front door. And somehow . . . make it back home. When she got home, she’d be okay. Safe in familiar surroundings. She knew that was all she needed. Unless it was different this time . . .

Vesta squinted in the dim light, her vision still blurry and narrowed as if she were staring through the wrong end of her birding binoculars—and the lens was smeared with Vaseline. She had no idea where she was, only that it was so much better than the emergency department exam room with the bright lights, noise, shouts, and screaming. She’d navigated the hallways, ducked into the first quiet place she could find.

Where am I?

She drew in another breath, willed her heart to stop pummeling her ears, and forced herself to look around. She tried to focus on each detail as if she were identifying a wild bird by its markings: primary feathers, secondaries, ear patch, eye ring, crown, and flanks. She concentrated. Carpeted room, chairs, but no tables. No, there was one table at the end of the room, though it was more of a podium. And a tall vase of Texas bluebonnets. Sconce lighting, an arched window—with no light coming through. Was it a glass mosaic . . . with a white bird?

Concentrate. Yes, a dove.
Vesta tried to swallow, ran her tongue over her lips, and realized her legs were numb, toes already cramping viciously.
God, please . . . don’t let me die here. Let me go home.

She slid slowly down the wall to the carpet, felt her hands begin to tingle. One of them was sticky with dried blood. She groaned as her lungs fought, each breath coming like an old locomotive through a dark, airless tunnel. Faster, faster. Gasping, chugging—

“Vesta?”

A young woman, blonde, with beautiful blue eyes, knelt close, startling Vesta for an instant. Then she touched Vesta’s shoulder very gently. “Are you Mrs. Calder?”

“Yes,” Vesta whispered, lips numb, tears filling her eyes to brimming.
Thank you, God.

The woman’s smile was warm. “Vesta, my name is Riley. I’m a hospital chaplain.” She reached in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a cell phone. “I’m going to call for help, but I won’t leave you, even for a minute. I promise. I’ll make sure you’re safe. Okay?”

Vesta nodded, felt a tear slide down her cheek.

“It looks like you’re hyperventilating. That happens when you breathe too fast. It makes you feel anxious and tingly. Has that happened to you before?”

Vesta nodded again.

“Okay.” Riley lifted her phone. “I’m going to run some interference and see if I can have help come to you. Right here, in the chapel. I understand that it was hard for you to wait down there in the emergency department. It’s not an easy place to be.”

A first glimmer of hope eased Vesta’s anxiety. Her breathing relaxed.
She understands. This beautiful child knows how I feel.

“Here we go.” The chaplain punched in a number. “Take hold of my hand while we wait.”

“My . . .” Vesta’s voice emerged in a scratching croak. “Fingers . . . are numb.”

Riley’s hand, warm and reassuring, found hers. She smiled. “That’s all right. So are mine.”

The chaplain nestled the cell phone between her shoulder and cheek. Her expression was confident, determined, as she said, “Dr. Jack Travis, please.”