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His lips twitched. “That mean you want to hang with me tonight?”
“Yes.” Relief shone in her big
brown eyes. “Would that be okay?”
He grinned. “I’d say it’d be pretty amazing.”
Her eyes brightened, and she smiled at him as if he’d just told her she’d won the lottery.
Refocusing his mind on the fact he still had a whole lot of hours to get through on today’s shift, he glanced over again at the clipboard she’d handed him. Looked pretty run of the mill.
“Anything I need to know about our latest?”
Taylor shook her head. “She’ll likely be fine in a few hours. Duffy is talking with her now to see if she knows what she took. During triage, she told me she didn’t take anything, but he has a way of getting the truth.”
Jack nodded. He’d seen Duffy work his magic first-hand. Unfortunately, there were times when a person didn’t know they’d been slipped something, or they simply didn’t know what they’d taken and no amount of talking could reveal it.
A long black-haired beauty flashed into his mind.
Sometimes the poison took hold and never let go.
He’d escaped.
Courtney hadn’t...
Just as his eyes were about to close to the wave of pain her memory triggered, a young man to Jack’s left began violently trembling on his cot. An emergency medical technician had been doing the heavily intoxicated patient’s intake, along with another who’d brought him into the medical tent.
Jack and Taylor were immediately at his side.
“Has he been given Narcan?” Jack asked, noting the man’s blue lips as he lifted the man’s eyelids to check his pupils. Pinpoint and no tracking.
“I injected him within two minutes of his arrival. He seemed to be stabilizing, his respirations picking up a little, heart rate, too. Then this shaking started and he looks awful.”
“Give him another dose,” Jack ordered, wondering if his thoughts of Courtney had somehow conjured the young man’s turn for the worse.
“Pulse is thready—about fifty,” Taylor told him, propping the guy’s legs up. “Respirations ten.”
Hell.
Glancing toward Taylor, he motioned to their crash cart. “I may need to vent him. Have everything here, just in case. This kid isn’t going to die on our watch.”
But it seemed he was going to give it a try.
The EMT called for an ambulance while they worked. Jeff would be shipped to the local hospital for care.
Just as Taylor got back with the crash cart, the kid’s respiration rate dropped further.
If they could just keep him alive...
When Jack turned to Taylor, he didn’t have to say a thing. Like the great nurse he’d already discovered she was, she was ready, gloved him up, then gave him the intubation tube.
Intubating patients wasn’t something he did a lot of at the events he worked, but he’d gotten a plethora of practice at the emergency room these past few months. The tube slid into place. Jack slid his stethoscope on, listened to make sure placement was correct as the man’s chest rose and fell.
Glancing up at Taylor, he gave a thumbs-up.
* * *
“I feel as if I’m wearing half the farm.”
