Chapter Eleven
MEL BYRONlay flat on her stomach on the stretcher and wept. It hurt too much to cry, so she just dripped water between shallow, shocked breaths.
“What’s wrong with her?” her husband, Jeff, asked worriedly from the end of the bed. She’d banished him there after an ill-fated attempt to hold her hand to comfort her. He scratched his neck, which was sweaty under the gawdy polyester of his cheap Hawaiian shirt, and shifted his weight from one Birkenstock to the other. “She just slipped.”
The woman hissed air out from between her teeth, pale lips pulled back in a grimace. She dug her fingers into the thin pillow, her knuckles white and bony under holiday-tanned skin. “He pulled. The fucking chair. From under me.”
“I…. It was a joke,” the man objected weakly. He looked nearly as gray as his wife. “We filmed it. For YouTube. It was just a prank. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
Tag knew he’d made a face, but hopefully the man hadn’t noticed. He took his hands off the woman’s shoulders and moved down to her hips. When the ambulance brought her in, she described the pain as universal, a sheet of it from her shoulders to midthighs. From the way she’d fallen, though, Tag thought he could narrow down the point of injury.
“Maybe you should wait outside,” Tag suggested to Jeff as he slid gloved fingers carefully under the waistband of Mel’s jeans. Her skin felt hot, and she made a high, pinched whine through her nose as he touched her. “Just until I’ve finished my examination.”
Jeff rubbed his hand through his bleached-blond hair and gaped at Tag.
“I don’t know,” he hedged. “Maybe I should stay with Mel in case she needs me.”
The nurse on the other side of the bed snorted quietly. Unlike Tag, she wasn’t lucky enough to have it go unnoticed.
“It was ajoke,” Jeff snapped at her. “She’s my wife. I didn’t mean to hurt her. It was just a laugh.”
The nurse tucked her chin in and pursed her lips. “She’s not laughing now.”
Jeff glared at her and then swung his attention back to Tag in search for sympathy. “We do stuff like thisall the time,” he said. “She’s never gotten hurt before. I wouldn’t do that. I love her. She was just supposed to look like an idiot, not this.”
“I’m sure,” Tag said smoothly. “But right now I need to focus on—”
“I’m gonna divorce,” Mel said in a breathy staccato that moved her body as little as possible. “You bastard. Get my lawyer… to show everyone that fucking channel. Get away from me.”
Jeff grabbed her ankle. “You don’t mean that, Mel,” he said. “Come on. You think my jokes are funny too, after.”
She tried to kick him and then made a strangled sound in her throat. He jumped backward, hands up in the air as Tag and the nurse pinned down his wife.
“I didn’t touch her,” he said. “I just want to help. She justsat downhard, how could that do this?”
Tag jabbed a finger at him. “Out. We’ll tell you once we’ve finished our exam. Right now she’s not in the mood to talk.”
Jeff looked genuinely heartbroken as he gave up and retreated. As the hideous shirt left the room, Tag turned back to his patient. He repositioned his hands.
“Okay, Mel,” he said. “Just bear with me, okay? Can you tell me when it hurts?”
“Now,” she sobbed out into the pillow. Then Tag pressed down gently, and she sucked in her breath in a shocked, reverse scream that got stuck in her throat. Tag grimaced.
“We need to get her to X-ray,” he said as he pulled his hands free and snapped the gloves off. He’d forgotten his antihistamines that morning again, and he gave the itchy spot on the web of his thumb a quick scratch as he stepped back. “Pain meds too. Morphine sulfate in a line.”
Tag crouched next to the bed so he could see Mel’s face. “We’ll have to confirm with an X-ray, but I think you’ve broken your sacrum.”
She looked almost relieved that at least it was something she could pin down. “Is that, like, my tailbone?”
“Same area,” Tag said. “Slightly more serious, but manageable. Let’s get you to X-ray and make sure first, okay?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
Tag rocked back on his heels and stood up. With any luck she wouldn’t need surgery, but he would need to examine her again once the pain was under control to assess if there was any nerve damage that would need to be repaired.
“Get the line in before you take her to X-ray,” he told the nurse as he stepped back from the bed. “It will make the transfer more bearable.”
He left her to it as he stepped away from the bed and headed out into the waiting room to update her husband. The guy was already on his phone before Tag had walked away, a goofy expression on his face as he mugged for the camera.
