From the Beginning (33 page)

She was up and running and hit the waiting room to find three young men, dressed in gang colors, bleeding out on the clinic floor. For one second, she felt a blinding sense of relief—it was a gang thing, not indiscriminate shooting. The babies, the children, were okay.

And then, as she whirled into action, yelling for help, she got her first look at the boys on the floor—no way had the oldest seen his eighteenth birthday yet. Lucas came running, still on the phone with the police. Some patients rushed out of the clinic, while others gathered around to watch as she and Lucas assessed the victims. Two were dead, shot through the head, but one was still alive. He’d been shot twice in the chest and stomach and once in the head, but the last bullet had only grazed his temple.

“He’s alive,” she told Lucas, dropping to her knees and trying to assess his wounds. The boy was a mess, the pool of blood growing beneath him.

“We’re going to lose him if we don’t move,” Lucas said grimly, then called for a triage kit.

Lisa, one of the nurses, came running with one.

“Set up an IV,” Amanda told her, yanking on gloves as fast as she could. “We need to find where he’s bleeding from.”

“Where isn’t he bleeding from?” Lucas asked, but she was already probing the boy’s chest, watching as he gasped and trembled. There was an odd hissing noise and she turned to Lucas. “We need to put in a chest tube—his lung’s been punctured.”

“How do you know?”

“Get your head down here and listen,” she told him, even as she unwrapped the necessary equipment.

“You’re going to be okay,” she told the boy, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. “I know it hurts, but hang in there. Let me do my thing. I’m going to take care of you.”

Even as she said the words, she prayed she wasn’t lying to him. Prayed that she would have the chance, the ability, to save him.

It had been a while since she’d had to insert a chest tube, but she managed to get it done pretty quickly. Within seconds, the boy was breathing easier, but it didn’t seem to matter. Judging by the damage, the bullets had ricocheted inside of him, bouncing off organs as if they were bowling pins, causing massive amounts of bleeding.

She and Lucas managed to get some of the bleeders, but by the time the paramedics arrived, the boy was in full-blown cardiac arrest. She started CPR, knowing as she did that it was too late. This boy, who hadn’t even started shaving yet if his smooth chin was anything to go by, had died on the clinic floor. He’d died because she hadn’t been strong enough, fast enough or good enough to save him.

She glanced at Lucas to be sure. He was already shaking his head. Taking off his gloves. She wasn’t surprised. Lucas’s practicality reminded her a lot of Jack, and she knew how willing Jack was to let a patient go when it was time. Just the idea of giving up hurt her, but the police were moving in, demanding to know if the boy was dead, grumbling about compromised evidence. Lucas helped her to her feet and she went, but she felt numb. Like Mabulu, this boy was one more child she hadn’t been able to save.

It didn’t seem fair. After eleven years as a doctor in out-of-the-way places, she had lost a lot of patients, sometimes as many as fifteen a day. But she’d never gotten used to it, had never been able to accept it the way other doctors could. She’d started practicing medicine in Atlanta because she’d wanted to work with people she could actually help.

Watching that boy die had brought her right back to where she’d been when she’d left Africa. Had brought home again just what a failure she really was. Right now, a policeman was probably telling his mother about his death.

She shuddered at the thought.

As Lucas led her away, she glanced down. Despite the gloves, that boy’s blood was on her hands. It took every ounce of self-control she had not to curl up and bawl like a baby.

SIMON WAITED IMPATIENTLY on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. He’d freaked out when it came over the wire that there had been a shooting in a low-income Atlanta clinic. When he’d found out that it was the one where Amanda worked, he’d jumped in his car and rushed over, calling her cell the whole way. She hadn’t answered, which made the rush-hour drive interminable.

The only thing that had kept him sane was the news that no medical personnel had been injured. But until he saw her with his own eyes, he wasn’t going to be satisfied. The cops weren’t letting anyone into the building right now—it was a crime scene—and he was about ten seconds from losing his mind.

Where was she? What was she doing? Why wasn’t she answering her phone? Desperate, he texted her again, and this time his phone buzzed within a few seconds.

I’m fine. Meet me around the back.

Relief flooded him. He sprinted around the corner and down the alleyway that ran behind the clinic. A cop was stationed outside, but before Simon could try to talk his way past him, Amanda opened the door.

His first sight of her nearly had his legs going out from under him. She was covered in blood—her shirt and pants soaked in some places and splattered in others. It looked as if she had been through a war.

“Simon?” She sounded uncertain, exhausted.

“I’m here, baby.” He opened his arms and she walked right into them, burying her face against his neck. “You’re not hurt?” He had to ask.

She mutely shook her head.

“Okay, then. Let’s get you home. Are you done here?”

“Yeah. I just finished giving my statement.”

“Good. I’m parked around the corner. Do you want to wait here while I get the car?”

“I can drive—”

“No, you can’t.” His tone brooked no argument. “I’m assuming the clinic will be closed for a few days?”

“I think so.” Her arms tightened around him, as if she was afraid to let him go.

“You can come with me,” he said. “The car’s out front.”

She glanced down at her clothes and moved away reluctantly. “No reason for me to cause a mass panic on the street when they see all this blood.”

“I’ll be right back,” he promised. “Stay here.”

She smiled wanly. “I’ll be fine.”

Despite her reassurances, Simon wasn’t so sure. Her eyes were blank, her skin pale, and he wondered if she was going into shock. It was perfectly understandable if she was. His own heart rate still hadn’t returned to normal after the horror of hearing she’d been involved in a shooting.

He sprinted all the way to the car, and was back in the alley no more than three minutes after he left her. Amanda was leaning heavily against the wall, as if it was the only thing holding her up.

She didn’t say much more than the bare minimum on the drive to her house. When he’d asked her what had happened, she’d shrugged, shaken her head. Then told him in very clinical terms everything that had happened. His heart had bled for her, even as he’d felt a sense of relief at finally knowing what had tripped Amanda out so bad.

She was mourning the boy she couldn’t save. When a patient died, it always hit her hard, but when she thought she’d had a chance of saving him and he died anyway…she’d never found a way to cope. Some doctors drank, some had indiscriminate sex, some played basketball. Amanda brooded, going over everything she’d done again and again and again, looking for the one thing that might have changed the outcome.

Once he got her upstairs, he sent her into the shower and then went back down to make her some soup and a pot of the herbal tea she liked. He was done before she was, so he put the food on a makeshift tray and carried it upstairs to her.

The shower was still running.

Concerned, he went into the bathroom and found her on the shower floor, knees drawn up to her chest as the water pounded over her.

“Amanda!” He ran to her, yanked the glass door open with one hand while he turned the ice-cold water off with the other. The house’s ancient water heater was obviously not up to marathon sessions.

“Come on, baby, let’s get you out of there.”

She didn’t answer, so he pulled her to her feet and briskly dried her off before guiding her into the bedroom and sliding the worn T-shirt she liked to sleep in over her head.

“He was so scared when I got to him. I knew he was in bad shape, but I told him he was going to be okay.”

“You did what anybody would do.”

“Maybe I placed the chest tube wrong. Maybe I went for the wrong bleeder. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken. “There was so much blood. I could have missed something—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He was just a kid. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t get to him fast enough. I stayed in the hallway, hiding. If I’d gotten to him sooner—”

“If you’d gotten there sooner, you might be dead. Amanda, I know it hurts, but you can’t do this to yourself.”

She stopped talking then, but he didn’t know if he’d gotten through to her.

Sighing, he walked her over to the bed and got her under the covers, though it was only about nine o’clock.

“I was planning to work on the bathroom tonight,” she said plaintively, and it was so off-topic, so unexpected, that he almost burst out laughing.

She was going to be okay. She might not be ready to let the boy go, but mentioning the remodeling was her way of saying that she knew life went on.

“The bathroom can wait until the weekend.”

She sighed. “I guess.”

He slid the tray over her lap. “Here. Eat your soup.”

He wasn’t asking and for once she didn’t argue. Instead, she shrugged and lifted the spoon to her lips.

When she was finished, she slid down the pillows and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Stay with me?” she asked.

“As long as you want.”

Amanda smiled at that. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Simon.”

He started to argue with her, but she turned the light off before he could even begin to mount a defense. “I’m not going anywhere, Amanda,” he said fiercely, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into his chest.

She didn’t answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY

AMANDA WOKE ALONE, though when she rolled over she could still smell Simon on the sheets next to her.

Sitting up, she squinted against the bright sunlight and tried to figure out what time it was. The clinic was closed for the next three days at least, until the police finished their investigation, so she didn’t have anywhere she needed to be. Which was a problem, because the desire to pull the covers over her head and burrow in was almost overwhelming.

She forced herself to get out of bed. She’d made a promise that she wasn’t going to hide anymore, wasn’t going to give in to the bad days, and she didn’t intend to break it.

Slipping a robe over her nightshirt, she went in search of Simon. She hoped he hadn’t left for work already. She wanted to talk to him, to thank him for taking care of her last night when she’d been so out of it.

She needed to do better. She knew that. But since Gabby, she’d had a horrible time dealing with her patients’ deaths—especially the young ones. She knew their parents’ grief, and it was hard for her to separate herself from it. She’d have to learn to cope or stop practicing medicine, but for now she was going to give herself a break. When she was better, when she’d healed some more, she would deal with it. Until then, she’d concentrate on doing what she’d been doing.