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“I want the airway secured,” I said to the spiky-haired blonde nurse who’d followed me in. “Intubate, please.”
She paused, her expression uncertain. It was no more than the span of a breath, but it was one breath more than I could afford.
“You,” I said, nodding in her direction. “Out.”
Her expression fell and the whole room paused for a fraction of a second. I could hear the silent jeers. “Control-freak.” “Tyrant.”And of course, “Bitch.” Those weren’t the worst of the things they’d called me—they forgot sometimes that I could read lips.
But I didn’t have time to explain to them that nurses who buckled under pressure killed people. And it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. I was the ER bitch, and nothing was going to change that. And I was fine with that.
“I’ve got it,” Raven said, moving into position with a laryngoscope and endotracheal tube in hand.
I didn’t know many of the nurses by name, but this one was good under pressure. I liked that; I respected that.
“Thank you, Raven,” I said curtly as the blonde slunk out of the room, her shoulders slumped. There would be fresh pejorative terms for me circulating through the ward by morning, no doubt.
With expert hands, Raven inserted the endotracheal tube while another nurse—a tall, gangly man with a shockingly white-blond mop of hair named… Tom, maybe?—cut away the patient’s clothing, revealing a bleeding canvas of gunshot wounds.
This man hadn’t just been shot; someone had tried to turn him into a human sieve. Six bullet wounds. I envisioned their paths as best I could. Damage to the liver, the right kidney, duodenum, possibly the pancreas. But the bullet wound to the chest? I could see its path right through the thoracic aorta.
Damn.
Death was here, circling above me.
“Tube secured,” Raven announced within seconds, and the patient’s chest rose and fell in rhythm.
“Let’s get access,” I said, ignoring my racing heart and Death’s cold presence. “Large-bore IVs, blood products on standby.”
Raven and Tom scrambled to find veins amid the patient’s blood-soaked skin, skillfully threading catheters into place. Bags of fluid hung from IV poles.
“He’s tachycardic and his BP’s dropping,” Raven called out loud enough I could hear her.
He was on the verge of cardiac arrest. He needed an OR, but he’d never make it there.
The big man who’d brought him in surged across the room, still covered in blood. He stopped right next to me, puffing himself up, glaring down at me.
“What the hell,troia? Do something,” he seethed loud enough I could hear most of the words.
I fought the urge to slink back from him and stood up straighter. “I am doing something; I’m trying to save his life,” I said in a tone I’d practiced plenty, that blend of professional confidence and empathy that had made a good number of patients’ worried relatives and friends back down.
This man just stood up straighter, puffing himself up impossibly more. He was the breadth of two of me and stood at least six inches taller.
“You’re wasting time,” I said, refusing to be cowed even if my knees felt an overwhelming desire to turn to Jell-O. “Time he doesn’t—”
He pulled a gun from the waist of his trousers, so fast it was a blur until it was pointed right at me, so close, I could feel the icy chill of the barrel.
“Hey!” Raven snapped while Tom tried to disappear into the wall behind him. “Put that—”
“Save him,” he seethed at me while his eyes flashed with menace. “Save him, or I paint this room red withyourblood, Heidi.Capisce?”
My heart raced, but it didn’t show on my face. On the outside, I was the “Ice Queen”—I’d seen that name on more than one set of lips here.
He’d called me by name, though. He knew me, but how?
“Who are you?” I asked him, searching for anything familiar in his oblong, pockmarked face, looking for a way to connect with him, to defuse him.
Because, deep in my stomach, the cold weight was still there, and Death was circling ever closer.
“Never mind who I am,” he said, his finger hovering over the trigger. “Do your fucking—”
