Even being in active labor, the woman lay completely still. If it wasn’t for the blood pumping from around her wound Mazey would think she was—
“I’m losing her,” Levi yelled.
“Shit. My hands are full.” Could she free up one to help him? “What do you need?”
“A miracle.”
“Two,” she muttered as a perfectly formed baby boy slid into her hands. “We need two.”
It had been a while since she’d done obstetrics, and the labor she’d been involved with on her last shift at Anaheim Memorial hadn’t gone well. They’d lost that baby, but the knowledge was there. She checked the cord wasn’t wrapped around the little guy’s neck then checked his airways when Rylan’s words broke her concentration.
“Arriving in, three, two, one, down!”
She felt the jolt of a rough landing and knew Rylan had brought them in hard out of necessity. Both side doors flung open, and a guy with a determined look in his eyes leaned in on her side.
“Status?” he barked as he surveyed the scene.
“Airway clear, that’s as far as I got before we landed. He’s been out less than a minute.”
“Clamp the umbilical.” He held out two clamps.
Mazey did as asked and realized there was a second team of medical staff waiting on the other side of the chopper to take the baby’s mother as soon as they separated the two.
No sooner did she have the clamps in place than the masked, scrub wearer snipped through the only thing keeping the baby alive right now and whisked him away to place him in a transport incubator. The team around him converged, quickly getting to work on the newborn.
Arms gripped her waist and lifted. The second her weight lifted from the gurney, it and their other patient were yanked from the chopper. She heard Levi giving a report as he followed the team frantically working on the woman, heard someone yell for a particular doctor, saw the trail of blood dripping from beneath the woman’s lifeless body as they whisked her toward the building entrance.
Her knees buckled.
“Easy,” Rylan murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you.”
“I need—”
“Take a second to catch your breath.”
She nodded. Her mind racing with what she’d done, what she could have done differently.
“Don’t think about it. You did what you could.”
How did he know what she was thinking?
“We need to get back to base, but we’ve got time to clean up. Check—”
“No. As soon as Levi gets back, we can head out.” She didn’t need to follow either patient. She’d relayed what she could, and this wasn’t her hospital, she’d only get in the way if she went inside.
“Are you sure?”
Mazey needed to be. She wasn’t. But she needed to be. With a sharp jerk of her head, she stepped from Rylan’s grasp. “Let’s get ready to take off.”
They didn’t talk anymore, and when Levi came back, they loaded in, and Rylan and Devon lifted the chopper in their usual smooth fashion.
Mazey knew she was shutting everything out—shutting down—when Rylan stood beside her in the open chopper door, the base buildings behind him, Devon and Levi nowhere in sight.
She didn’t remember any of the flight back. Couldn’t say how long it had taken them.
“Levi said bye,” Rylan said, his gaze searching hers.
Glancing around, she couldn’t see either man anywhere. “I should...”
