Blood spurts out from where his fist breaks the doctor’s nose, and still, he carries on like a bull with no direction.
June darts out of his path and hurries to the desk as I give chase.
The man, clearly disoriented, shoves trolleys and people out of his way as he heads toward the open double doors.
As he reaches them, I collide with him with just enough force to knock him off balance, but as he tips, he grabs for my coat.
His fist closes around my collar and he jerks me with him and his eyes lock onto mine. Fury floods them. “I told you t’leave me the fuck alone!”
His fist curls and I can’t get my arm up in time to block it.
As he punches me hard in the face, we stumble together and I hit the wall at an off angle.
Pain lances up my shoulder while I grab the patient to protect his head from bouncing off the wall with me, and we tumble to the floor.
“Hold him!” comes a voice. “I can help him!”
Keeping him down is a struggle.
The man wrestles and squirms back and forth underneath me like a snake, roaring out his anger. “Get off me! Get off me! I’ll kill ya, get off me!”
For an injured man with booze flooding his veins, he’s alarmingly strong.
A man from security joins me a second later and together, we hold onto his arms and pin him as firmly as we can without harming him further.
“I need his arm,” comes the other voice. “Snow, can you grab his arm?”
Snow is here?
“Sure,” comes her breathless voice. I glance up briefly and glimpse her with another nurse wrestling with needles and medication.
“Sedate him,” I gasp against his struggles. “It’s the only way to help him!”
“On it! Snow, can you get me that?”
“Nooo!” The patient surges again, but security and I do a good job of keeping him down as safely as we can.
Until he feels the prick of a needle in his arm.
It turns him into a slippery wildcat and within seconds, he's fighting and flailing with all his limbs and even throwing his head back and forth.
Instruments clatter, grips slip, and items scatter as he fights to get free.
Releasing his other arm to security, I catch and cradle his head the best I can to stop him from hurting himself further.
After an age, he gradually starts to slow his struggles and within thirty seconds, he slumps under me.
“Thank God,” breathes the nurse. “I thought he was going to hurt himself.”
“We’ve got him.” Panting, I climb to my feet and motion for security to help me.
Together, we scoop him up and carefully shuffle him back to his bed where he can best rest. “I want a head CT and I want someone to find his emergency contact. We need to find out if he’s on anything before we make this worse.”
“Okay, I’ll get—Snow!” The nurse cuts herself off with a yell and my heart leaps into my throat.
As soon as the patient is settled, I spin around to the source of the cry and my heart punches up into my throat.
Snow stands nearby with tears glistening in her eyes, the nurse and June at her side and a broken needle protruding from the back of her arm, caught in her shirt.
