Taryn rounded the corner and at the beginning of the long straight, accelerated to forty-five before she hopped up, rested her head on the tank, and raised her legs so she was completely vertical. She was back in her seat before the stadium curved again, and the applause increased a gazillion decibels. The audience stamped their feet in time with the music, though that was barely audible over the noise they were creating.
She saw the globes were in position, and she went in first, getting up to the correct speed, and winding around the reinforced glass spheres in a perfect figure eight. As she crossed the point where the two globes joined, she yelled into her mic to confirm she was ready for the next rider to enter. Dee was the next one in, and so it went until all twelve of them were inside the globes. The ramp closed and sealed them inside, and the hydraulics kicked in, beginning to raise them from the ground.
Even though the spheres were totally transparent, it made little difference to the view inside. Taryn had to keep her gaze fixed on the bike in front of her and those all around her. The riders separated into three groups: one set of four in the top halves of each sphere traveling in a circular motion, while the remaining seven riders stayed with Taryn in the bottom half, still going around in a figure of eight.
The two tops of the globes split slowly and rose toward the roof. The temperature changed slightly as the air rushed in to fill the space and cleared it of the exhaust fumes not removed by the custom-built venting system. Visibility improved slightly, and Taryn pinned her eyes wide open. Everyone was in perfect harmony, their speeds matching at the exact same points in their trajectories, and Taryn would’ve grinned if it hadn’t been for the five-plus G-force pressing against her flesh. This life wasn’t so bad.
A bike in the above half-globe Taryn was about to enter came into Taryn’s vision, and immediately she knew something was about to go fantastically wrong. In a microsecond, the tires came too far over the edge of the higher globe, upsetting the delicate balance of velocity and centripetal force. The rider careened out of their path, heading through the gap between the globe halves, and for a nanosecond, Taryn thought disaster might be averted if centripetal force carried the bike and its rider out of the globes entirely.
The last thing Taryn saw was the rider jerking their handlebars at the last moment. The last thing she felt was the rider’s helmet smashing into her chest…
Chapter Twenty-One
Icy cold numbness started at her heart and spread outward, traveling along her veins and arteries, threatening to bring her whole system to a standstill. Cassie prayed her ears hadn’t processed the information correctly, that she’d heard the paramedic wrong, that their ambulance wasn’t the first of three bringing in casualties from a stunt gone wrong at the Cosmos.
Because if she’d heard right, her worst and most frequently recurring nightmare was coming true. Her history was repeating itself in mutated form. Someone she cared deeply about had been harmed…and just like last time, she was powerless to save them. Her training kicked in, and she pushed away from the reception desk, taking long strides along the corridor. Maybe it wasn’t Taryn; she didn’t recognize the two riders the paramedics pushed into the ER. Cassie had met maybe twenty performers last week at their celebration party. Three ambulances meant six riders at most; what did that make the odds that Tarynwasn’tone of them? She’d said she wasn’t on stage for the full show. Perhaps she hadn’t been involved in this stunt at all.
She pushed through the double doors, knowing she was grasping at straws when she should simply be laser-focused on helping the two already in treatment bays. Rachel joined her and matched her stride as Cassie headed toward the first rider to assess the damage.
“The first ambulance that left the scene had engine trouble a few hundred yards from us. They’re pushing the riders in,” Rachel said. “Jonny said they’re the two riders who sustained the worst injuries.”
Cassie flashed a glance at Rachel as she gloved up to inspect her first patient. Her feeble optimism wavered in the light of this new information. Taryn was the star of the show. Whatever stunt had gone wrong with so many ridershadto include her, and she would’ve been at the heart of the danger. She let out a short breath. She didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about the show; every time Taryn had mentioned something about it, Cassie had asked her not to continue, and Taryn had understood, knowing the thought of the risky stunts was a source of major discomfort for Cassie. All this conjecture wasn’t helpful, and it was distracting her from the vital business of tending to the broken person on the bed in front of her right now.
“This is why I’ll never allow my children to ride motorbikes,” Dr. Fischer said as he strode past them to the second rider.
Cassie had no words to respond. Instead, she went into autopilot and almost removed her conscious soul from her body as she checked over the rider, talked to her, and assessed her injuries. Rachel operated in perfect unison beside her, administering the painkillers Cassie instructed her to and taking on the more human part of putting the rider at ease, the bedside manner Cassie had cultivated but which had currently deserted her as she struggled to maintain focus. As she and Rachel sliced through the protective leather clothing, much to the vocal chagrin of the rider, she concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. Long, deep, cleansing breaths to put her in touch with her body and mind, to center and ground her, and hopefully return her to the room.
Though perhaps it was best that she operated at a distance. Her heart pulsed strong against her ribs, each beat seeming to test the sturdiness of her bones to keep the organ in place. And her heart was the problem. Objectivity and emotional detachment had long been fine friends when it came to this part of her job—the real emergencies rather than the removal of vegetables from sexual misadventures or coins from the various orifices of curious children. Those things had become second nature in her personal life too…until Taryn came along. And now she was virtually paralyzed with fear that the next gurney wheeled into her emergency room would have Taryn lying on it.
Concentrate, damn it.She zeroed in on what she was doing and was relieved to find that everything was proceeding as it should. The compound fracture of the rider’s femur luckily hadn’t nicked or pierced her femoral artery. She’d need to have surgery within the next twenty-four hours, and she had a long recovery process ahead of her. But the rest of her was relatively intact thanks to her safety gear, most of which lay in a sad pile of giant leather strips on the floor.
“Two more riders just came in,” Dinah yelled from across the ER.
Cassie’s tongue felt enormous in her mouth and rendered her temporarily unable to talk, like she was having anaphylactic shock in response to the mere possibility of Taryn being one of those riders.
Rachel placed her hand on Cassie’s forearm. “Let me check,” she said.
Cassie was glad for Rachel’s instinctive protection and nodded. The rider they’d just treated was still muttering about how expensive her leather gear was even as the morphine kicked in and slurred her speech. She was soon talking nonsense about vampires living in Bluff County or some such place, and Cassie took that as her cue to leave.
She turned into Rachel, and her concerned expression confirmed Cassie’s initial dread. “Taryn?”
Rachel swallowed and nodded. “Yes.” She wrapped her arm around her forearm firmly. “Blunt force trauma to the chest at high speed—a flying motorbike smashed into her chest; everyone else who couldn’t get out of the way fell like dominoes.”
The information, while it was scary, was also hopeful. “She told you all that?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty lucid.” Rachel smiled and squeezed Cassie’s arm. “She’s obviously got a high tolerance for pain.”
Cassie grimaced; she didn’t need that final piece of information. As another paramedic wheeled Taryn past Cassie, she immediately noted the blueish color of Taryn’s skin and heard her raspy breathing.Cyanosis from lack of oxygen. Likely a pneumothorax from the blunt force trauma at high speed. Minimum three broken ribs, possibly more depending on the angle of the wheel when it hit.
She moved to follow but found Fischer in her path. He shook his head and extended his arm toward her. “No, Dr. Kennedy, I’m sorry. You know the patient, don’t you? It’s the woman you’ve been dating, am I correct?”
How did he know that? Clearly, the hospital grapevine had been effective with the little gossip her sex life provided. She glanced at Rachel, who looked away. She hadn’t pegged Rachel as a snitch. Cassie clenched her jaw and bit back the desire to spit something unnaturally venomous in Rachel’s direction. She was just protecting Cassie from a possible malpractice suit if anything went wrong. When had the practice of medicine boiled down to life-saving decisions made with ambulance-chasing lawyers in mind? That wasn’t what she’d gotten into this career for.
Her knees weakened, and she reached out for Rachel as the motivation for her job choice bounced into her consciousness. The same reason could end her career if there were complications, if Taryn… No, she wouldn’t even think the worst.
But she’d become an ER doctor precisely so she could save people. She couldn’t allow Fischer or Rachel to stop her from trying to save someone she cared deeply for. “I wouldn’t call it dating as such,” she said, mustering as much indignation as she could manage. “She’s just someone I’m having sex with,” she said, a little quieter. No one was listening, and over the shouted commands of nurses and the pained yells of a couple of patients, it was unlikely she would have been overheard anyway. But still, she didn’t like to be grist for the rumor mill.
Fischer tilted his head. His expression softened slightly, and there was a kindness in his eyes Cassie had never noticed before.
