A Love Like This (12 page)

“I’m sorry, babe,” I said in hushed tones.
“I’m gonna miss my flight. It can’t be helped.”

Ellie was crying in the other room, her
relationship with Harris in shambles. It was impossible to leave
L.A. and head back to New York as I’d planned.

Ryan sighed heavily on the other end of the
line. I could picture the disappointment on his handsome face.

“Julia, the timing sucks!” he said
harshly.

I flushed guiltily. Ryan had been monitoring
the most optimal time to conceive even more diligently than I had,
and he’d only agreed to my impromptu trip to L.A. on the
understanding I’d be home in time for the weekend. It was rare he
had two days off in a row and we’d both looked forward to a weekend
sequestered in bed in our quest to make a baby. But mostly, to just
soak each other up.

“I know!” I said adamantly then lowered my
voice. “I’m disappointed, too. I’m sorry! But Ellie’s a mess,
Ryan.” I cringed when my friend burst into a fresh bout of sobbing
in the other room. Surely Ryan could hear her wailing. “She’s
devastated. Harris broke up with her last night. I just can’t leave
right now.”

“Christ! Why now? I can’t get a
fucking
break!” Ryan’s tone became harder. “I knew this was
coming! She brought this on herself.”

“She’s my best friend! I can’t believe
you’re being so selfish!”

“I’m selfish? I let you run off across the
Goddamn country on a moment’s notice! It isn’t like we can afford
this type of shit, anyway! Ellie needs to grow the fuck up.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to be
dumped by someone you love! It’s never happened to you, so you
can’t understand what she’s going through! You’re being a dick,
Ryan!”

“She doesn’t trust the guy! He might as well
screw around if he gets accused regardless of what he does! Jesus
Christ!”

“I’m sorry if I can’t make it home in time
for the freaking schedule! You’re acting like a spoiled brat!”

“I’m acting like a man who works eighty
hours a week and never sees his wife!” he spat angrily.

“There’s always next month.”

“That’s beside the point, and it wasn’t what
I said! Just forget it!”

“Ryan… I…”

Ellie came out of the bathroom, her face
swollen and blotchy, letting her cell phone drop, unbidden, from
her hand before she landed on the couch next to me and started to
sob quietly, shaking her head. I reached out to take her hand in
mine. Ryan would just have to understand.

I was heartbroken for her and trembling in
the wake of the angry exchange with my husband when he sighed
heavily on the other end of the line.

“When do you think you’ll be home, then?”
His voice was quieter, defeated in response to the sound of Ellie’s
misery in the background.

My heart ached at the tone in his voice. He
missed me which was the crux of his anger. He was always generous
with others, but he was over-worked, impatient and probably horny
as hell.

“I’m not sure. But, I love you.”

He didn’t respond right away and I turned my
back to Ellie so she wouldn’t read my expression.

“Ryan, I said
I love you
.”

“Yeah.”

“Please don’t make me feel guilty for being
here.”

“I gotta go.” He ended the call before I
could respond and I glanced up at my friend.

“Shit!” I sighed as I threw the phone down
next to me.

“I’m sorry, Julia. I’m ruining your
relationship as well as my own.”

“He’ll get over it. He’s exhausted and not
himself.” My words didn’t sound convincing, even to me. “What did
Harris have to say?”

“He won’t take my calls,” she said miserably
before another torrent of tears began. I put my arms around her and
stroked her hair as she sobbed against my shoulder.

“Jane!” I shouted as I ran in with the
paramedics. We were wheeling the patient in from the ambulance
bay.

“Room 5.” I pointed in the direction I
needed them to go. Barry and Neil were the best paramedics around.
I’d seen their skills many times in the months I’d been at St.
Vincent’s, and as far as I knew, none of the others could touch
them. Many patients made it to the hospital alive that might have
died with others attending them.

“Gunshot to the upper left chest, close
range 22 through the upper lobe and possibly out the back. We
didn’t have time to check for an exit wound, but there is a chance
of spinal injury. Reflexes are dead in the legs. The lung is
punctured, we’ve aspirated, and started saline,” Barry rattled off
the details, while Neil gave the task of bagging over to Jane. “BP:
seventy over thirty, pulse is weak, pupils are fixed and dilated.
He’s in shock and crashed on the way in. We managed to resuscitate,
but it’s a bad one, Ryan.”

The patient was gurgling, literally drowning
in his own blood, and I took over pressing the gauze into the
wound. It was quickly saturating.

“How long?” I asked as we wheeled him into
the room.

“20:13,” Neil responded, hanging the IV bag
on the hook above the gurney. I glanced at the clock. Time was
short. Fucking Golden Hour; survival was more likely if we could
stabilize the patient within an hour of the injury, and already 23
minutes of that was history. Adrenaline coursed through my veins
and my team launched into action as Barry and Neil left the
room.

I looked down at the kid. He wasn’t more
than 16 or 17 years old, wearing gang colors, and now if his life
wasn’t over, he might wish it was. Jane began slicing off his shirt
and jeans, moving calmly and confidently, while another nurse stood
hooking up the monitors. I had to stop the bleeding or he’d die
within minutes. “Start a transfusion. Push two units of O
negative.” Usually the attending resident would make that call, but
he’d left the ER for his dinner break not ten minutes earlier.
“Then page Wagner.”

The wound was a sucking wound—air wheezing
sickeningly in and out of the hole in the kid’s chest. I stuck my
gloved finger in the wound, trying to ascertain the extent of the
damage. It felt contained, mostly penetration trauma with little
cavitation. Jane pulled the fabric free of the boy’s body and began
examining it. His lungs began to fill more easily, his breathing
less labored with my finger sealing the wound.

“It appears to be a single exit wound, right
shoulder blade, Ryan, so there should be no fragmentation. It looks
clean.” It was too dangerous to turn him over to see what we were
dealing with, but there was just a fraction of blood on the back of
the shirt, so the majority of the damage appeared to be in the left
lung. “Blood pressure is dropping, pulse is weak.”

“Push the fluids,” I began, suctioning as
much blood as I could from the wound. Jane appeared at my side with
the clotting medication. She set it on the tray next to me and then
went to adjust the IVs.

Screams from the reception area warned us
mere seconds before the door burst open. Everyone inside was
startled as three young men rushed in. They were all banged up, one
of them—a bulky black kid with his head shaved—was bleeding
profusely. He had one hand holding the gash in his side as he fell
weakly up against the wall near the door for support.

A smaller white kid’s face was bruised and
swollen. He was nervous, tattoos covering both of his bare arms and
neck, while a large Hispanic man wearing a black and white bandana
pushed in front of the other two, waving a large butcher knife.

“Get away from that motherfucker, Doc! He
deserves to die, and we’re gonna make sure he does. He dies, or you
die!” The voice was brutally deep, cold as ice and unmoving;
without remorse.

The surface of my skin ran cold and I paused
for a split second, glancing briefly over my shoulder to assess the
situation. The smaller man had a gun and was waving it around. My
eyes met Jane’s across the patient’s body. She continued to squeeze
the bag with barely a second’s hesitation in her rhythm and I
grabbed the packet of Celox, preparing to continue with my job. Her
face was pinched, I could see she was horrified at the young age of
the patient; he couldn’t be more than 16. And she was terrified; it
showed in the shaking of her hands. Still, she kept working.

“Please put the gun down,” I said. My gloved
hands, covered in blood, had a difficult time opening the
cellophane packet of medication.

Kari, one of the other nurses, moved forward
to the boy by the door of the examination room, who was now close
to falling to the floor. He was weak, blood seeping out of his
wound to spread eerily over his shirt, a dark trail starting down
his right thigh. His eyes were glassy and started to roll back in
his head.
Stupid fuckers! Such a waste. And for what?

“Get him on a gurney, Kari!” I instructed.
“Take him into another examining room!”

There was shuffling outside the room and I
could only assume that the staff was moving the other patients out
of the ER. At least, I prayed they were.

“No! He ain’t going no where!” The gang
leader shouted. He moved around the table where my patient lay,
like a predator ready to pounce.

“He’ll bleed out in a few minutes if we
don’t attend to him.” My eyes met his without flinching.

“He’s dead already.” The man dismissed his
friend with deadly calm. “This little cocksucker stuck him in the
gut. Killed my little brother, too, so he has to pay.”

My chest filled painfully as I sucked air
hard into my lungs. The smaller kid bounced back and forth on his
feet, a small handgun dangling from his hand. I recognized his
jittery demeanor and glazed over eyes. He was definitely high. The
last thing we needed was for the gun to be dropped and go off with
an errant bullet ricocheting around the room. “We might be able to
save your friend but you have to let us try.”

“I said! He’s already dead!” The larger man
shouted. The fifteen seconds that it took for all of it to go
down seemed like a decade. I glanced at Kari, who was kneeling next
to the frightened, wounded boy, trying to part his blood-soaked
clothes with gloved hands, murmuring softly that he’d be okay. We
all knew he wasn’t, even if they did let us treat him.

“What are your names?” I asked, trying to
distract the men long enough to figure out what the fuck I was
going to do. The kid on the table might live if I could finish what
I’d started.

The barrel of the gun painfully nudged the
base of my neck, pushing into my flesh and making it burn.

“I’m the Grim Reaper,” the smaller kid said
over my shoulder with a cackling laugh. He was so close that his
sour breath whizzed past my nostrils. He smelled of whiskey, sweat
and blood. His voice was whiney and high-pitched. “If you know
what’s fucking good for you, asshole, you’ll stop trying to save
that worthless piece of shit. We ain’t fucking around! I’ll shoot
you!” He jabbed the gun into my flesh again, harder this time. I
couldn’t help but cringe, pain shooting sharply down my neck and
shoulder. The leader’s eyes narrowed and his thin lips lifted in an
evil grin.

“The doctor is just doing his job!” Jane
said. The bravery she showed was admirable, but I could see the
horror in her blue eyes, her brow pinched with immense strain. My
own heart was thumping sickeningly in my chest as if counting down
to my own death. I tried to focus on the kid in front of me, and
getting the powder in the wound without attracting too much
attention.

“And I’m just doing mine, bitch!” The leader
moved forward and shoved her roughly to the floor. She screamed,
then fell against the table with a grunt, sending some of the steel
instruments clattering to the floor.

“Do you really think you can get away with
this?” Jane asked, looking up at the man as she slowly rose to her
feet with a wince and positioned herself back at my side. “This is
a hospital. There are hundreds of people here. You can’t kill
everyone!”

The man laughed, sneering maniacally, his
tone sinister and his rotten teeth showing the black discoloration
of a meth addict. “I can kill you and everyone in this room, bitch!
After that, will you give a flying fuck? Will your family care that
you saved this dirt-bag? You’ll be dead; lights out.”

I tried to fill the wound with the
medication as inconspicuously as I could but my mind was on one
person. I closed my eyes for a brief second and my soul seized.

Julia.
Would the last time I spoke to
her be an argument on the phone? I never answered her when she told
me she loved me. I fucking hated myself in that moment.

For the first time in this nightmare, her
beautiful face flashed before my eyes. Our entire relationship
passed in front of me in a rapid series of stills. My heart thudded
so loudly I thought it would burst from my chest, and my throat
tightened, bile rising up until I thought I was going to vomit. I
coughed and wiped at my forehead on the sleeve of my scrubs. I
realized that if I let this boy die, I’d be breaking my Hippocratic
Oath, yet, if I saved him, we’d all probably get killed. We’d
probably get killed anyway, I acknowledged. I felt like I was
suffocating and wanted to be rid of the confining surgical mask and
eye guard that was standard operating procedure when treating an
open wound.