Page 3 of Tough Justice

“I don’t know.” His brows lowered as he watched her with something akin to suspicion.

What he had to be suspicious of her for, she didn’t know.

Suzie ran back in, holding a full box of vials. “Got it.”

“Push another point-five milligrams,” she ordered then watched Suzie inject it into the IV.

The man’s pulse grew stronger, as did his blood pressure. His chest began rising and falling on its own. “Spontaneous ventilation.”

Tori blew out a breath. Another overdose snatched from the clutches of the Grim Reaper himself.

She turned back to the agent. “He’s stable, but since we don’t know how long he wasn’t breathing, we won’t know for a while if there was any hypoxic brain damage. We’ll monitor him until he wakes up. For now, you can go to the waiting room with your colleagues, and I’ll be out later to give you an update.”

Decker’s glower darkened as he crossed powerfully muscled arms over his broad chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Tori clamped her jaw together. “I really don’t have time for this. What I need is for you to leave my ER.” She turned back to her patient, expecting to hear the agent’s size twelve shit-kicker boots clomping on the tile floor as he left the room. She didn’t. What she did hear was the man’s impatient exhale.

Slowly, she turned and parked her hands on her hips. “Agent Decker, I’m only going to say this one more time. Get. Out.”

This time, he clamped his jaw. “Forget it, doc. I’m not leaving.”

She eyed the man from head to toe. He was about six-two or more, seemingly made of solid muscle and probably weighed in at well over two hundred pounds. She, on the other hand, was five-four and around one hundred twenty-five pounds. Manhandling him out the door was a pipe dream. “Why the hell not?” she countered.

His nostrils flared as he crossed his arms. “It’s protocol. We don’t ever leave one of our own unconscious and unattended in a hospital.”

“He’s in the safest place he could possibly be. This is one of the best medical facilities in the state of Colorado. I assure you he’s safe here.”

His eyes narrowed. “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She fisted the hands already on her hips. For some reason, this guy didn’t trust her. Not that she cared one bit whether anyone in the heavy-handed DEA did. She didn’t trust him.

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” He spat out her profession as if it tasted badly rolling off his tongue. “Not all doctors know what they’re doing.”

“Newsflash, tough guy. I do. I took an oath to save people, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure your friend lives.” Regardless of the fact that he worked for the DEA—the agency responsible for making her family’s life a living hell. “Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re so concerned about.”

“I don’t trust doctors. I want to make sure you don’t give him something he doesn’t need.”

“Doesn’t need?” She shook her head in disbelief, still not understanding what this guy’s problem was. “If he needs something, I’ll give it to him. If he doesn’t, I won’t. Giving patients meds they don’t need isn’t something we do here.”

Dark eyes narrowed farther, as if he were contemplating her words and not sure whether to believe her. “Okay,” he said finally. “As long as you’re the only doctor making that decision for him. Promise me.”

Ah, the irony. If it weren’t for the DEA, her life could have been so different. Maybe her mother would still be alive today. “Fine, I promise,” she capitulated with a discerned edge to her voice that she couldn’t hold back.

Tori’s friend and fellow ER doctor, Wil Barnett, strode through the doors, followed by David, the orderly whose assistance she’d needed an hour ago on another case. David stood off to the side, averting his gaze as if he was afraid to look at her.

Wil eyed Agent Decker curiously. He often joked that guys in law enforcement were all macho men who needed big guns to make up for having small genitalia. “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“Standing guard,” the agent said. Backing up his words, Agent Decker stood his ground, holding Wil’s amused gaze without flinching. Not that she was surprised. In addition to the gun on the agent’s belt, he probably had at least sixty pounds on her friend.

“Against what?” Wil asked, brushing past him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Agent Decker said with a deadly glint in his eye as he followed Wil’s every move like a tiger ready to attack.

“Probably not,” Wil conceded with an arched brow.

Exhaustion settled over Tori like an angry storm cloud. She was mentally exhausted from treating overdose victims. The last few months had been like a revolving door in the ER, but this week was shaping up to be a whole new level of chaos.

The most recent victim, Tyler, was a seventeen-year-old boy on life support. That one had hit her the hardest. Unlike this DEA agent, Tyler’s parents didn’t find him until it was too late. He wasn’t breathing, and hypoxic brain injury had already set in. Medically speaking, the boy’s brain was dead. His parents were grappling with the traumatic decision to take their son off life support.