Marie’sgloved hers were covered in blood as she tried to staunch the stab wound on the unconscious man’s leg. She wasn’t the lead doctor on this case, she’d just finished with a patient when the door slammed open and this man was wheeled in. A paramedic was on his chest, doing compressions. Marie and another colleague leaped into action, but considering the placement of his wound, she knew there wasn’t anything they could do. He was going to bleed out.
“Time of death, fifteen thirty.” Dr. Jones, her colleague, called out. Marie knew she should remove her hands. She’d known that the case was hopeless, but she still kept applying pressure even as the blood flow appeared to slow.
“Dr. Hughes, you can let go now.” The nurse beside her said quietly, as if she wasn’t sure she shouldsay something or not. It was enough for Marie to become aware that everyone was looking at her. Dr. Jones had left the cubicle, no doubt dealing with the paperwork that a death of a patient required. Or perhaps he’d gone and told the relatives of the man that they’d done all that they could but were unable to save him.
Hollow words. Words she’d spoken many times, in different variations, as if that would make it any better.
In a flash she wasn’t in the ER, she was back in a makeshift hospital, with a man glaring at her. A different situation entirely, but the outcome the same.
Your son was shot in the chest. Even if you’d brought him to the hospital as soon as it happened and we were able to operate on him, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The injury was too severe for him to have survived.
The memory threatened to suck her in down into the abyss, but she grasped at the tenuous threads of the present and hauled herself up. Her breaths came out in short, sharp gasps.
“Dr. Hughes, are you okay?” The nurse asked. “Do you need me to get someone for you?”
Marie mentally shoved the specter of Alfredo Vargas out of her mind and straightened her spine, aware her hands were dripping the patient’s blood on the floor. “I’m fine. Thankyou.”
The last thing she needed was for the staff to think she was a basket case on her first day. She wanted to show them that she was the competent doctor she was. Crumbling at the first death in her new job wasn’t the way to achieve that.
Nodding at the nurse, she peeled her gloves off and tossed them in the hazardous waste container by the cubicle’s screen. Marie headed toward the staff locker room, needing to change out of her bloody scrubs into a clean set. These ones could be salvaged, but she didn’t want the reminder of her sudden onset PTSD attack, because that was what it was. There was no denying it.
In the quiet of the room, she leaned against her locker and blew out a breath, before sucking in another one, and another until she felt more in control. Once she was sure that she wasn’t about to freak out again, she pulled open her locker and extracted another pair of scrubs. She always came on shift with extras, because there was every chance that what just occurred could happen on more than one occasion and the need to change clothes became paramount.
Why was something that happened months ago affecting her now when it hadn’t before?
Over the years of her career she’d seen many gruesome injuries. Car accident victims that wereunrecognizable because of the trauma they’d gone through. People who’d lost limbs. The hollow stare of someone who didn’t get help until it was too late.
Marie cradled her face in her hands as she attempted to push what she'd seen over the years down so deep that it would need an excavator to dig it out.
After a few more minutes she felt more in control of herself and ready to face the rest of the shift. She couldn’t be seen to be weak, not on her first day in her new job. Granted, working in the ER wasn’t easy, and many doctors burned out quickly, needing to move to another department, or for some, another career for their mental health. That had never been a problem for her in the past, and she wasn’t going to make it one in the future.
Most likely her reaction to what happened was because of all the other stuff going on in her life. The possible threat. That’s why her emotions were running close to the surface and she reacted the way she had. Nothing more than that.
Pleased that she’d rationalized her minor panic attack to make sense, she stood and headed back to the ER, hoping that her absence wasn’t noticed, and if it was, when they saw her in fresh, clean scrubs it would all make sense to everyone.
With confidence that she was partly feeling and partly faking, she strode up to the triage desk. “Whatdo you have for me?” she asked the harried looking nurse.
The noise level was the same as when she’d left, voices yelling out what they needed. The moans of people hurting. The beeps of heart monitors. Familiar sounds that surprisingly soothed her frayed emotions, giving her hope that what she experienced was a minor blip and everything would be fine from now on.
Chapter Thirteen
The parking lot was full,not surprising considering LA County was one of the busiest hospitals in the metropolitan area plus it was late on a Thursday night, and that was when most emergency rooms became super busy. The last thing Isaac wanted to do was text Marie and tell her he would pick her up at the ER entrance. He wanted to be at the door waiting for her. Watching the area to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows.
After returning home to change and then dropping Marie’s phone back to her, he’d spent the day going through camera footage in an attempt to see if he could locate the vehicles that had hemmed Marie’s driverless car in. It had been a fruitless exercise, and it seemed as though they’d disappeared off the face of theearth.
Marie’s phone had been a dead end too. Cass hadn’t been able to find anything to suggest that someone was tracking it. Everything was pointing toward it being a case of opportunists wanting to rob someone and knowing that once trapped, the driverless cars couldn’t move.
Finally, he spied someone walking to their car and he slowly crawled behind them. Fortunately, they didn’t take their time and pulled out quickly, allowing him to get parked and to the front entrance five minutes before her shift was due to end.
I’m waiting at the ER entrance. Let me know when you’re leaving and I’ll come inside.
Isaac fired the text off and pocketed his phone, taking in the surrounding area. It was well lit, making it difficult for someone to hide. Even with the bright lights shining down, there was always the possibility that a perp could stand out in the open and then make a move when someone least expected it. There weren’t too many people milling about, and the ones that were, were sucking on a cigarette or studying their phones.
The sound of a siren approaching had Isaac moving back to allow for the arriving ambulance to be able to do what they needed to do without him disrupting them.
In seconds, the back door was open, and a patientwas wheeled out at the same time the main doors opened, and Marie walked out, bag on her shoulder, but she paused when she saw the patient.
Isaac stayed where he was, watching as she and the paramedics spoke, with a quick nod, she stepped to the side allowing them to go in. He fully expected her to follow them, and was surprised when she didn’t but instead, began looking around. He moved so that he wasn’t behind the column, and her face brightened with a smile when she saw him.
