“It’s what I pay her for.” Noah gave them a thumbs up, suppressing his emotions, and went to find Carver. He passed several curtains in the pod that was near overflowing with elderly. Rodriguez was dozing in Curtain 17 under a pile of heated blankets.
Carver had good news to report. “She has a simple forearm fracture and mild hypothermia. They’ll keep her overnight for observation, possibly even down here.”
“What are you doing here?” The charge nurse ran toward them. She was a lovely Filipino woman with tied back dark hair and a no-nonsense attitude, typical for charge nurses who ran the ER.
“Checking on my people,” Noah said.
“I don’t mean you,” the charge nurse, whose nametag read ‘Marianna,’ said. She pointed at Carver. “Him. Plastics is checking burns. We’re understaffed here, and I don’t want to clean more blood off the floor if he stabs you.”
Before either of them could protest, she hustled them into the ER equipment hallway. She shoved them into the nutrition room. “Hide here. Wait until the coast is clear.”
With that, she shut them in the room, which was covered floor to ceiling with single serving graham crackers, peanut butter tubs, pudding cups, formula, and saltines.
Noah took out his cellphone and noticed it didn’t have any bars.
“Don’t bother,” Carver said. “We’re in the belly of the ER now. You’ll never get a signal in this hallway. The patients hate it. We could leave, but then Steadman might see me. Marianna wasn’t joking.”
“Murdering you would be in violation of the deal,” Noah said. It had taken a lot of maneuvering to get the ER and the surgery department behind Rescue Alpha. Part of the compromises included Carver’s future and MetroGen eventually controlling Battalion 10.
Carver tossed Noah some crackers and peanut butter. “You should eat something, sir. It’s not stealing. Your taxes paid for it. Besides, the medical students and residents will eat their weight and more in these this calendar year. This is nothing.”
Noah started eating. It was mid-afternoon and he hadn’t had anything other than what Erin… Hudgens had served him once she’d put her clothes back on.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“For what?”
“For being a screw-up. I saw Clarke every day, and it never occurred to me he was in bad shape. Kyra Yates wasn’t happy to see me today either. We’re stuck in the closet because of Steadman. Hell, I can’t get my wife pregnant even with IVF.”
“Did you do anything well today?” Noah asked, deciding if he was stuck in here, he should assess Carver’s progress.
“I thought I was doing fine at Briar Hill. I was contributing until Yates sidelined me.”
Noah chewed on his cracker for a couple seconds. “Why do you think she did that?”
“Because she hates me? Because I killed Steadman’s kid? Because I’m the dumbass who quit being a doctor to be a firefighter?”
“Do you think you killed that baby?” Noah asked. His decision to hire Carver into an extra spot had been questioned many times—usually by people who couldn’t see the big picture.
“It’s been almost three years,” Carver said. “Jessica Steadman was dying. I had to save her and the twins. I made the best decision I could at the time. Otherwise, we’d have lost all three. But look where it got us. Steadman’s marriage ended, and he’s a completely different person now.”
“You made the best decision you could in the situation you faced. The deck was stacked against your plan succeeding, and you had no one to guide you.”
The incident with the Steadman twins and Carver had been the final piece of leverage required to create Rescue Alpha. Noah needed a way to get MetroGen on board with his plan to keep his female paramedics and fix the EMS system. Jacob Carver was the key factor, and Noah had bided his time for the perfect moment to recruit him.
Once he had Jacob, he had the wife, Dr. Manika Gupta-Carver. Once he promised Jacob would never work in the ER again, he had board member Dr. Daniel Steadman.
“It’s two steps forward and one step back. I thought Yates was going to kill me today. I shouldn’t have been shocked since she was here when I quit.”
“Stop dwelling on the past. Analyze the incident today and understand her command decisions, Noah coached him.
“We didn’t have a consolidated incident command. I didn’t know what resources I was going to get or how to ask for them,” Carver said after some thought.
“In an appropriately managed scene, the incident commander makes those calls, not you.”
“Yates saw me, a rookie and an unknown unstable element, in charge. No wonder she took over.”
“Big picture thinking. Yates will come around in time. Next year, you can prove yourself to her on Rescue Alpha. This year, focus on proving yourself as a firefighter.”
