Nerves of Steel (41 page)

"Is the scene safe?"  Murphy broke in.

She sighed.  Except for the possibility of a good man dying it was as safe as it could be.  But that wasn't what Murphy meant. It was the first question any police officer, fireman or paramedic was trained to ask: if they became a victim, they were only adding to the problem.

"Yes," she said.  "The scene is safe." 

He probably wanted to know about Sinderson, but she didn't want to tell him over an insecure phone line, besides, she really didn't want to think about Sinderson at all.  She wanted to focus all of her energy and effort on saving Drake.

Cassie sat the phone down, not waiting for their reply.  She had no more energy for talking.

She quickly moved through the house, turning on any lights that she could find that still functioned.  Then she moved Drake's car, pointing it so that the headlights aimed toward the power lines coming into the side of the house.  She went back into the house and checked on Drake.  He was unconscious, his belly now obviously distended, his pulse weak and rapid. 

There was nothing she could do until the transport team arrived.  Cassie cursed her helplessness.  It couldn't end this way, it just couldn't.  She wouldn't let Drake die, not after he had saved her life.  If he hadn't been there, she'd be dead by now.  The realization made her dizzy.

She took a deep breath, steadied herself and went back up the stairs.   She grabbed the phone and went out onto the porch, the drop cloth wrapped around her like a matador's cape flapping in the breeze.

"Zack, you there?"

"We just crossed I-70," came the chopper pilot's reply.

"Do you have my location yet?"

"The state police are supposed to be getting back to us any minute."

"Tell them to hurry, Drake can't wait.  The LZ will be the front yard.  There's electrical and phone lines coming in from the road to the side of the house.  The yard slopes slightly, no trees, no ice that I can see--"

"Hang on a second, the Staties are on the other channel."  She returned to the front room, glad to be out of the wind.   Then Zack was back.

"I've got your twenty.  Be there in five.  Staties on the way also.  Just hang on, doc."

CHAPTER 68

 They were the longest five minutes of Cassie's life as she scanned the skies for the lights of the helicopter.  Then she saw blinking lights moving rapidly across the sky and soon after, she could hear the low throbbing of the Sikorksy's finely tuned engine.  The chopper circled low around the yard and made a perfect landing.

She dropped her canvas cloth, couldn't risk it blowing into the rotor, and ran across to the front of the chopper.  No one tried to talk as they rotated the gurney out of the helicopter and carried it through the snow to the porch.

"What've we got?" The flight doctor raised the visor from his helmet, and she was surprised to see that it was Ed Castro.  Her boss never flew, he hated flying, even more than she did.  She was thrilled to see him--Drake couldn't be in better hands.

"Thirty-four year old male, gunshot wound.  One entry to abdomen, exit to right chest, second through and through to right thigh.  Airway intact, he's in shock, weak distal pulses, abdomen distended.  Hemorrhage controlled from leg wound."  She gave him the synopsis as the nurse and paramedic wrestled the gurney down the cellar stairs.

"You mentioned a head wound?"

"He's DOA."   

"Holy shit," the paramedic muttered as he looked around.

"Get that oxygen on him."  Cassie pointed at Drake.  The medic turned to look at Cassie, and she realized that she must look bizarre with her wet clothes and blood covered body.  "Ed, you'll have to start the IV, I don't trust my hands.  How are his vitals?" she asked the nurse who crouched beside Drake.

"Holding steady."  The nurse wrote the time and the vitals on a wide strip of tape stretched along the thigh of her flight suit.

"Hang the Oneg," Cassie ordered.   "Let's C-collar him and get him on to the back board."  Together they gently moved Drake onto the board, then lifted him onto the gurney.  Footsteps thudded overhead.

"We're down here!" she shouted.  A burly state trooper appeared at the top of the steps, one hand on his holster.  With his help, they were able to quickly move the gurney up the stairs.

"Hey, someone's got to stay and explain all this," the trooper shouted as they began to move out to the Sikorsky.  "You've got some questions to answer."  He grabbed Cassie's arm.

Ed Castro came to her rescue.  "She'll not be answering any questions until she receives medical attention," he told the young trooper in a frosty tone.  A tone Cassie was glad to not be on the receiving end of.  The trooper shrugged and let her go.  She quickly jumped into the chopper and strapped herself into the seat at Drake's head.  She put on a headset and connected it into the box at her side.

"How're you doing, doc?" Zack asked as soon as he had them safely in the air and headed back to Three Rivers.

"Just hurry," Cassie urged. 

Finally, she saw the lights of Pittsburgh draw near.   A few moments later she could make out the helipad outside the doors of her ER. 

Zack brought them down gently, and they scrambled out of the helicopter while it was still running hot.  Cassie kept up as best she could, but the waiting surgical resident and trauma nurse hustled the gurney through the doors, leaving her standing in the cold beside the helicopter.  Ed Castro took her arm and helped her inside the ER where he sat her down into a wheelchair.

He began to push her down the corridor.  Cassie saw the looks on the faces of her coworkers.  From their expressions she must look half dead.  No wonder, she was soaking wet and covered in hers, Drake's, and Sinderson's blood.  Her nose was still dripping mucus and blood, she tried to wipe it, but was rewarded only with a wave of pain.  It didn't matter, as long as Drake was going to be all right.

Then Ed turned the chair into one of the critical care rooms.  "Take me up to the OR," she demanded.

"No."  He closed the door behind him.  "You need to be taken care of, I don't know how you stayed on your feet as long as you have.  You're frozen, you've lost blood, your nose is broken, Lord only knows what other injuries you have.  Was that really Neil Sinderson?"

She looked at him and realized it was futile to argue.  Finally she nodded.  "Yes, it was.  I killed him."

Ed leaned against the sink.  "Jesus, Cassie, what happened?"

"Sinderson killed Fran Weaver. And he poisoned Richard.  If it hadn't been for Drake, I would have been next."

"The press is going to have a field day with this."  He shook his head.  "We'll deal with them and the police later.  First, you get out of those clothes."  He opened the warmer and gave her two blankets.  He turned his back and picked up the phone while she struggled with her sweater.  "Rachel would you join me?  Yes, it is Cassie Hart."

A few minutes later Cassie found herself on the gurney wearing a hospital gown and bundled in warm blankets.  The nurse didn't ask anything, and Cassie was glad.  This whole process of being a patient was so humiliating.

Ed examined her injuries, ordered an IV, lab tests, tetanus booster, X-rays and surgical consultation.  Suddenly she wasn't a doctor or a person anymore, just the trauma in Room Two with multiple facial and extremity injuries.  Her head CT was normal, urine dipped negative, nose was broken and would require surgical repair as would her right Achilles tendon. 

Her forearm laceration was deep but did not require surgery so Ed sutured it himself while they were waiting for her room to be ready--there was a delay in processing the admission because Cassie didn't have her insurance information with her.

"Don't you have a wife to go home to?" she asked Ed after she finished arguing with the admissions clerk.

"Hold still." He placed a subcutaneous suture.

"How's Drake?"   Every time she asked, no one would give her a straight answer--you lose your clout when you became a patient, she was learning.

Ed glanced at the clock.  "You asked me that ten minutes ago.  Believe me, when I hear something, you'll be the first to know."

She sighed.  She'd asked Rachel to call his mother in Florida and talk to his fellow police officers.  Several of the detectives had tried to interview her, but Ed had chased them out each time.  She closed her eyes, prayed for him to finish.  God, this waiting was worse than anything.  She sat up again.

"When are we going to hear anything?  Will you call upstairs?"

"I said, hold still," he snapped.  "I know why they say doctors make the worst patients."

"Goddamn it, Ed, I'll sign out AMA and go see for myself."

"Just a minute, only two more to go."  He finished repairing the laceration, then stood up.  "I'll go call--you," he said in a threatening voice, "stay put.  Rachel, if she moves, put her in restraints." 

Rachel applied antibiotic ointment to the laceration and dressed it.  "We were so worried when you called," she chided Cassie.  "Ed insisted on going in the helicopter, and you know how much he hates flying."

"I know," Cassie admitted. 

Ed returned.  "He'll be out of the OR and in ICU in twenty minutes.  The surgery went fine, patched up his liver without problems, the bullet missed the vena cava."

"They ran the bowel?"

"Yes, no perforations."

Cassie lay back.  Drake was going to be okay.  

And that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER 69

Drake woke with a throbbing head, throat rubbed raw, and a hose running out of his nose.    He'd been kicked in the chest by a mule, every breath was a surge of fire through his body.  That was how he knew he was alive--being dead couldn't possibly hurt this bad.

He opened his eyes, but saw nothing except bright lights and white ceiling tiles.  "Hart," his voice was barely a croak.  He tried again.  "Hart?"  He tried to sit up, but his head spun and his vision went black.  "Where's Cassandra Hart?"

"I already told you, she's fine.  Now hold still while I give you some medicine," a woman's voice commanded.

"No." He batted her arm away.  He struggled again to sit up, this time succeeding.  He looked down at his body in surprise.  Not only did he have a tube in his nose but there were also tubes coming from both his chest and abdomen.  A small nest of three of them in his shoulder led to some bright yellow fluid hanging on a pole.  One in his bladder too, he realized at the same time that he saw that he was naked under the flimsy hospital gown.

"Hold still, you'll tear your stitches," the nurse said, a firm grip on his arm with one hand.  With the other she pushed a button, and the head of his bed came up, just in time for him to slump back against it.

Damn, he felt as weak as a newborn.  Where the hell was Hart?  What had happened?  He remembered her telling him that everything was going to be all right, but everything else was a fog.

"Where's Dr. Hart?" he asked again, his voice stronger this time.

The nurse looked at him and sighed.  "I've told you a hundred times, she's fine.  She had her surgery this morning.  How about you go back to sleep?  I'll give you some pain medicine."

"No, please.  I need to know.  What happened?" Drake could tell by the look on her face that he'd asked that before.

"It's the sedation, it disorients some people," came a friendly voice from the doorway.

Drake looked up and saw Hart smiling at him.  Christ, she looked like hell.  She looked wonderful. 

Both her eyes were blackened and almost swollen shut, her nose and upper lip were also swollen with stitches in her lip bristling like black hairs.  Her left arm was bandaged and she was wearing hospital scrubs, leaning on crutches, her left leg in a cast. 

But she was there, alive and relatively whole.  Finally he felt able to breathe again.

"Dr. Hart, the patient really needs his rest," the nurse told her.

Hart took Drake's chart.  "JP drainage minimal, chest tube to water seal, good I and 0's.  You should be up and about in no time, Detective," she said.  "When are they pulling the chest tube?" she asked the nurse.

"Dr. Alexander said tomorrow if his x-ray is okay."  

"How 'bout his gut?"

"Postop ileus.  After he passes gas he can have clears."  Both women looked at him expectantly.  "Have you passed gas yet, Mr. Drake?" the nurse asked.

Drake closed his eyes.  "I hate hospitals," he moaned. 

He heard footsteps leaving the room and risked opening his eyes again.  Hart smiled at him.  Then he looked closer.  There was a sadness in her eyes.

"Are you all right?" he asked.  "You look like a truck ran over you."

Her smile faded.  "I'm fine."

"What happened to Sinderson?" Parts of it were coming back.  Drake remembered lying on a cold floor, watching Sinderson convulse, his head bloody and drool pouring from his mouth.

She took his hand as if preparing him for bad news.  "He's dead.  Thanks to you."

He frowned.  "All I remember is coming down the stairs and the gun going off.  I don't remember ever hitting him."

"You didn't, but you got the tire iron close enough to me so that I could grab it."  She paused, a shadow crossing her face.  "I killed him."

Drake was silent for a moment.  Had he really done something so stupid as going down there armed only with a tire iron?  How had she managed to kill Sinderson on her own? 

Shame tackled him, grabbing his insides and giving them a hard kick.  He should have been the one to take Sinderson down, not her. 

"Are
you
all right?" he asked, squeezing her hand, but she let it lay limp in his, not returning the gesture.

"I'm fine."

He couldn't meet her gaze, what could he say to her?  He was the one who lived with a gun at his side, she was the one who was supposed to save lives.  How could she stand to be near him after he had let her down like that?

He looked into her eyes, the light there that had mesmerized him was faded, gone dull. Because of him, because he hadn't been able to protect her, to do his job—jeezit, it was almost as bad as Pamela.   No, worse.  Hart he cared for, he had thought—stupid, man, letting himself dream—maybe they had a future, a chance together.