Chapter 20
Liv
The door slam shut behind me, sealing off the noise of the street and cops. Meanwhile, everything in the rig sharpens in the silence. A moment later, the front door slams shut and the engine turns over. The ambulance lurches forward, lights flashing, siren cutting through the night.
And the woman in front of me is in crisis. I slide the pulse ox back onto her finger after it slipped off again and she flinches, jerking her hand back like I burned her. But she gives it back right away when she realizes what it is and I get the device onto her. The result pops up on the screen overhead. Shit. Her oxygen saturation is dropping fast, already in the low eighties. And her breathing is shallow and uneven, like her body can’t remember how to do it on its own. Classic signs of shock and trauma, and something else.
“Hey,” I say, dropping down beside her and forcing my voice into something steady. “Stay with me okay? Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine, wild and searching. Good, she’s still here.
“Please-” she gasps, her lightly blue tinged lips parting. “Don’t- don’t tie me-”
“I’m not,” I interject, easing my hands back to show her. “Nothing’s tying you down. I promise. This just reads your oxygen. That’s it.”
Her chest rises and falls too fast and too shallow. She nods, but it’s jerky and uncertain.
I make sure she can see my every movement as I grab the non-rebreather mask, bringing it toward her face.
She panics instantly. “No- no, I can’t-”
“It’s just oxygen,” I explain quickly. “Nothing else. You control it. You can take it off whenever you want, okay?” I suggest, even though I’m silently hoping that she won’t pull it away until her O2 level is higher.
But it works. The key is control. I don’t move until she nods. Then I place it gently over her mouth and nose, keeping my hands light, ready to pull back if she starts to spiral.
Her breathing stutters, then pulls deeper. Still uneven and wrong. I run through the rest of my assessment quickly, hands moving and mind cataloging in an effort to keep my focus off of the rising fear that the paralytic hasn’t worn off yet. The bruises on her wrists are rectangular, consistent around her wrists, and deepening. There are ligature marks, finger-shaped, around her neck in a clear choking pattern. The lacerations across her arms are of varying ages, her fingers also show signs of cyanosis with a blue tinge in her nail beds, and her feet-
God. They’re torn open from running barefoot.
Her abdomen tightens when I press close and her shoulders hitch when I reach near her neck.
She has triggers, specific ones.
I adjust automatically, changing angles and working around what I can instead of pushing through it.
“You’re doing really good,” I tell her because it’s true. She is. “Just keep breathing for me.”
Her eyes flick around the rig, like she’s looking for someone. Alex, smartly, is still sitting out of view behind her head.
“Hey,” I soften my voice, pulling her focus back to me. “Stay with me. Just me, okay?”
She barely nods. Her hand without the pulse ox on it reaches out to me, lightly circling my wrist. “They said I wouldn’t get hurt,” she whispers. The words land like they did outside, heavy and painful. “If I just did what I was told,” she adds, her voice breaking. Her hand slips from my skin.
My breath becomes shallow, but my hands move again. “You didn’t deserve any of that,” I say, firm but gentle. “None of it.”
Her head shakes weakly. “I tried,” she laments. “I did everything right.”
Her oxygen ticks up, eighty-six now, but her breathing is still off. It’s shallow and uneven like she doesn’t trust her own body. I’m sure it’s got to be the medication still working a little.
“What happened?” I ask carefully, keeping my tone neutral and open. “Can you tell me?” Maybe it’ll help me to help her physical state.
Her eyes unfocus for a second, like she’s slipping somewhere else. “They-” she swallows hard. “They stuck a needle in my leg.”
My stomach drops. “What kind of needle?” I ask, though I have a feeling that I already know the answer.
“I don’t know,” she says quickly, panic rising again. “I didn’t- I didn’t know-”
“That’s okay,” I soothe. “Just tell me what you felt.”
