“His blood pressure is dropping again,” a paramedic said.
“Squeeze the bag,” Quinn told him. To the other, she said, “Go ahead and tell them we’re going to need a fast cross match on blood when we get inside.”
The transfer to from the gurney to the padded table in Trauma B had taken the effort of five people. Brandon, who was at least three-hundred pounds and built like a linebacker, was unconscious and limp, making it three-hundred times harder to move him without making his injuries worse.
The monitors they hooked him up to fluctuated erratically. He was a bear shifter. His body should be healing itself, and while the chest wound had already started to close over, something was preventing him moving from critical to intermediate.
The room was set up with an x-ray and an ultrasound. Adam cut Brandon’s shirt off and had already cleaned around the gunshot, which had penetrated Brandon’s left chest. The bullet had to be lodged in a heart valve, or worse, it had traveled into his aorta. It was the only thing that made sense.
With a human, she would have kept the bullet in and tried to repair the damage around it until it was safe to remove, but Brandon’s natural healing was taking care of the soft tissue and bone damage. Unfortunately, the bullet seemed to be interfering with his heart, and Quinn had to get it out. Her hands shook, and she took a deep calming breath. Brandon wasn’t Dad. Her father had died because the humans trying to save his life didn’t know he was a bear shifter. His chest had been pierced, and protocol meant leaving the metal inside. His heart couldn’t heal. And it stopped beating.
Get your shit together,she told herself.Or you’ll lose Brandon, too.“Let’s get the ultrasound—”
The alarm on the heart monitor blared. Shit. His heartbeat was too erratic. If she didn’t act now, Brandon would code.
Quinn’s bear roared to the surface with its need to protect what was hers, and Brandon, though not a mate, was part or her clan, and in her bear’s eyes, that’s made him hers to protect. Female or not, a bear chief’s blood ran through her veins. If Brandon had a bullet preventing his heart from healing, she had to remove it now.
She looked at Adam and the resident who’d come in to the room to help. “Go get the ones who brought him in.” When Adam questioned her with the raise of a brow, Quinn added, “Now!’ with a bit more growl than she’d intended.
Adam took off immediately. She scented the stench of nervous anxiety even over Brandon’s blood and turned her glare on the first year resident. “Get out,” Quinn said.
If Brandon woke up while she was digging in his chest, he would most likely shift, and any non-shifter in the room was in grave danger. She didn’t watch as the young doctor scurried from the room. Instead, she grabbed a scalpel from a nearby tray, tore into the package with expert speed and popped the plastic safety top off the blade. She cut into his chest, spreading his ribs with her fingers, just enough to feel around.
“Damn it,” she cursed. “Where is it?”
“What do you need me to do?” The deep, raspy voice startled Quinn.
She turned to see who it was but didn’t stop digging for the projectile. It was the blond guy, the one with the beard. The one who’d been holding Marigold. How had he gotten into the room without her hearing him? With Brandon’s blood everywhere, it was hard to detect other scents, but still, she should have noticed.
“I can’t get my hand past his ribs.” She needed the damned rib spreader.
The man came over as Marigold, and the two other guys who’d been with her, came into the room. Adam rushed in behind them. She almost ordered him out, but she needed his expertise.
“Intubate and bag him,” she ordered.
Adam, who’d been an ER nurse for over a decade and before college he’d been an army field medic in the first gulf war went straight to work on getting Brandon’s airway open and tubed.
“Luke,” Marigold said, as the blond bearded man, Luke apparently, grabbed Quinn’s scalpel from a metal tray and sliced along the rib line.
“What are you doing?’ Quinn asked.
Luke, without answering, used his fingers to pull Brandon’s ribs apart wide enough for Quinn to not only feel the heart but to see it as well.
“You need to hurry,” Luke said.
“No shit,” Quinn replied through gritted teeth as she slid a finger inside the hole the bullet had torn into Brandon’s heart muscle. “This isn’t right. There shouldn’t be this much damage.” She felt a sliver of something she hoped was bullet and not splintered bone. “I’ve got something.” She used the point of her claws to grab the object. When she held it up, she saw that it was copper colored and shaped almost like an arrow. “What is this?”
“There’s more in there, Doc. You gotta get the rest out.”
And Quinn did. Within a minute, she’d pulled out one circular piece of copper and four more spear-like pieces.
“Epinephrine, Doctor Orson?” asked Adam.
“A shifter’s system won’t process human medications. It’s the downside of being fast healers.”
The heart monitor emitted a long, low tone.
“I can’t feel him,” Marigold cried. Their twin-bond had always been empathic along with telepathic. She tried to rush the body, but the two men who flanked her on either side wrapped her up between them.
