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I shuddered. I bet my father just loved him.
I hated this.
I hated how out of control I felt, how helpless. I hadn’t even been able to reign in my temper when I confronted those two thugs in the waiting room. It had been enough to push me right over the edge, and for the first time in my career, my carefully cultivated professional demeanor slipped. Connor McTiernan, strutting around the waiting room like he owned the place, giving orders and barely concealed threats at anybody that dared to stand up to him. Although, in the end, it wasn’t necessary. It seemed like a surprising number of staff at Boston Medical Center was getting their pockets lined by the Irish mob.
Including, as it turned out, that little pencil-dicked admin, Winters. God, the smug look on his face when he’d dressed me down earlier was enough to make my blood boil. Apparently, he didn’t take too kindly to me taking control of Johnny’s case without consulting the intake doc, scrubbing in again after my shift was over,orberating “family members” in the waiting room.
So, it was three strikes, and I was out—on leave for the next week, without pay to“gain some perspective and return to work with a better understanding for the way things worked around here,”as he put it.
Well, Winters could fuck all the way off. There wasn’t anything he could threaten me with that would keep me from checking in on my patient—Jerome taught me better than that. While ED floor doctors managed patients with all the dedication of a revolving door, specialists like us oversaw every aspect of their care, from pre-op to discharge.
There was no way in hell I was giving up on Johnny, no matter who his friends were.
I toweled off my hair, pulled it back into a tidy bun, and donned a clean pair of scrubs. My lab coat was still soiled from that bloody mess of a Town Car, but I was on my way out, anyway. I just wanted to stop in to see how Johnny was doing, first.
The surgical intensive care unit was nearly deserted when I stepped off the elevator, but that wasn’t uncommon for this time of night. I stopped by the nurses’ station and poured myself a cup of coffee strong enough to stand a spoon up in it. “Hey, Maggie. Quiet night?”
Maggie looked up from the bank of monitors. “So far. There was a man posted up outside your patient’s room, but he’s gone, now.”
“Gone?”
“Got a phone call, I guess. Funny thing, too, with him being a VIP, I’m surprised they left, but…” she shook her head. “Whatever. Nobody tells me anything. He’s in number seven.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” Frowning, I looked down the corridor. Each unit was a semi-open plexiglass cubicle, but unit seven’s blinds had been lowered. Also not unusual, but the hair on the back of my neck prickled, anyway.
I started down the hallway, my tennis shoes barely making a sound over the beep and whoosh and hum of life-sustaining machinery. Sure enough, there was a vacant chair outside the door to unit seven. No sign of the Irish knuckle-draggers from downstairs.
Wow. They really didn’t care about their friend. Blowing out a steadying breath against the wave of resentment, I wondered what his story was. Was Johnny a member who already had blood on his hands, or was he just another innocent dragged beneath the wheels of the Irish mob? Had he been simply caught in the crossfire, or had someone wanted him dead?
I pushed open the door. No guard in here, either. The room was deserted except for the patient. I walked up to the hospital bed. Seeing him now, after the chaos and trauma were over, Johnny looked much younger than nineteen. I watched the mechanical rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator breathed for him, and the scars on my face and neck started to itch. In another time and another place, it had beenmelying there in the hospital bed,mefighting for my life after everything I’d ever known had been blown halfway to hell.
The bed rails creaked beneath my grip, and I let go. I didn’t even remember grabbing them. Dimly, I recognized I was starting to spiral, so I sat in the chair, breathing in slowly and pushing it out until the red haze retreated from my vision and my pulse wasn’t thundering in my ears anymore.
I needed to finish what I came to do and get the hell out of there. Go home to my cramped—no, cozy,it’s cozy—apartment, open a bottle of wine and search for free kittens on Craigslist, Jerome’s horror of cat ladies be damned.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I set my cup of coffee on the raised desk in the corner, and logged onto the kiosk, pulling up Johnny’s records. Excellent—his vitals looked great, his blood pressure holding steady, O2 levels a tad low but rising. The nurses had started him on a broad-spectrum prophylactic antibiotic as per my orders, and since I was in there, I double-checked the dosing on his meds just to be sure.
A noise over by the bed caught my attention. I abandoned the computer and pressed the nurse’s call button. Johnny’s eyes were moving rapidly behind closed lids, lashes fluttering. He was waking up.
I slipped my hand in his and squeezed gently. “Johnny, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
His eyelids briefly fluttered, and his eyes shot open, darting around the room before lighting on me. They were so full of fear and confusion, it broke my heart. “You’re okay, Johnny. You’re in the hospital. You were hurt, but you’re going to be okay.” I gripped his hand tighter. “Squeeze my hand if you understand me.”
He squeezed my hand back. Brown eyes opened and closed slowly, deliberately, still glazed with anesthesia and pain. Johnny’s fingers weakly crept up his chest, exploring the vent tube, and I took his other hand before he could try to tug on it.
“I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s helping you breathe right now.” His heart monitor started picking up its pace, and I reached over to press the button on the infusion pump to deliver more meds. “I know you’re scared, Johnny, but you need to rest—”
His hand grabbed my wrist before I could hit the button, surprisingly strong despite having just come out of emergency surgery. He could barely keep his eyes open, but I saw the desperation there. Johnny pulled his other hand onto his chest and made a writing motion.
“You want to write something down?”
A long blink.
I grabbed a pen and piece of paper from beneath the computer and angled it so he could reach it. Johnny could barely keep ahold of the pen. He was weakening fast, but I could still make out some of his scribble:
NEED CON
T BAD KILL ME
