Silent Scream (25 page)

Clenching the sides of the gurney with her hands, Maddie asked, “So what’s the point of your questions?”

“Because there’s something between the two of you, and it’s far from finished.”  She managed to get in another stitch despite the sudden arch of Maddie’s eyebrows.

“What?”

“You heard me.  I’ve got three more stitches, so could you keep your eyebrows from rising when you want to play dumb?”

“There’s nothing between Gabriel and me,” she snapped, crossing and uncrossing her legs at the ankle.  “And you know it.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort!” she retorted, hurriedly finishing another stitch.  “What I know is that he made you feel safe and human and some part of you let him inside even though you really didn’t want to.”  She finished another stitch.  “Like it or not, he’s still there inside you, waiting for you to realize what’s going on and accept what you might feel.”  She finished the last stitch and tied it off before covering it with a bandage.  “The stitches aren’t the best I’ve done, but they’ll do.”  She tossed the remnants in the haz mat bin along with all the soiled gauze pads.

“Yolanda, I don’t plan on seeing Gabriel again.”  She hopped off the gurney and brushed her bangs over the wound, trying to conceal it.  “I don’t know where you got this crazy idea from, anyway.”

“More’s the pity.”  Yolanda tossed the plastic gloves into the haz mat bin and turned to Maddie, her dark brown eyes flashing with a passion that Maddie hadn’t seen in her before.  The nurse tapped her chest.  “From in here, Maddie.  I got the idea from in here.  Maybe one day you’ll understand what it’s like to feel without thinking.  I just hope Gabriel’s around when you do.”    

The examination room door swung open, and a nurse stepped inside, carrying a clipboard in one hand she tapped against the other as she looked at Yolanda.  "Is Dr. Gilcrest going to be able to assist in the ER?"  She looked down at the clipboard.  "The building exploded.  More casualties are en route, many of which are firemen who were in the hot zone when it blew."

"Of course I'll be able to assist," Maddie replied, stepping away from the table.  "What kind of numbers are we looking at?"  She held out her hand for the clipboard and perused the top sheet.  Despite the calm in her voice and manner, inside Maddie felt her heart rate double, making it difficult to breathe. 
Firefighters wounded?  Dead?
  A cold chill swept down her spine, and even as hard as she tried to hide it, she shivered from the pit of ice forming in her stomach. 
Please don’t let Gabriel be among them.

Her gaze happened on the figure she sought:  five fatalities so far, at least 25 wounded on their way to the hospital.  Another twenty were headed to Southwestern.  "Have they mentioned the status of the fire?"

"Out of control.  Pretty much all of the fire stations are involved in this one--it's too big and threatening.

"In other words, all the firemen have been called in for this one."

"Yeah."

"God."  Maddie handed the clipboard to the nurse.  As she lowered her hand, she saw the trembling of the fingers and felt her chest constricting that much more. 
Please keep him safe,
she thought. 
He's a good man
.  "What's the ETA?"

"Any minute."

Taking a deep breath, Maddie replied, "I'll be right there."

The nurse took the clipboard and strode out the door, leaving it open as she disappeared down the hall.  

"We need to call in Richards and Klein to assist.  Ashford Peterson, and I can't handle this emergency by ourselves."  Maddie tried not to envision Gabriel lying on the table in front of her, his body broken beyond recognition, but she couldn't help it. 

"Sure you're up to this?  You're awfully pale."  She peered closely at Maddie's face.  "Or maybe that's those damned emotions you work so hard to keep under wraps."

Maddie took another deep breath.  "I'm fine.  It's just been one long day."

"It's about to get worse.  I'll go make those calls."  Yolanda headed toward the hallway but stopped short in the doorway.  "You know, you may not have a choice about whether you see Gabriel again."  She drummed her fingers against the doorway molding.  "The question may be whether he is alive or not, and can we save him if he is."

Chapter Twenty-Two

As the patients arrived, Maddie worked on them side by side with Ashford.  Neither of them paid attention to the other, instead focusing on their patients.  There were more than enough of those.  Although Maddie tried to keep busy, her mind wandered back to the conversation she'd just had with Yolanda.  During the weeks since the assault, Maddie had often thought of Gabriel; sometimes, she still saw him in places he wasn't--almost like a ghost haunting her mind.   He was in the cars that passed or in a stranger with dark hair she saw the back side of as she walked behind.  In short, he was always within sight, but never quite near enough to talk to, not that she would have approached him or known what to say. 

More than once, she'd wondered what it might have been like if they'd met under different circumstances.  But that would never be possible, and Maddie didn't want to think about the woman he’d met--the one who’d known fear so intimately.  Maddie shuddered.  She never wanted to be that person again, and if that meant letting go of Gabriel, she could do it.  Besides, that woman had had a self-destructive side, and Maddie didn't want to be her.  Some things were just too difficult to do and keep breathing.

Besides, just because she was drawn to him did not mean the reverse was necessarily true.  Perhaps he, too, saw only the victim she had been, and if Maddie never asked him what he saw, she'd never have to feel that humiliated again.  There were some things that cost too much.

Another gurney bumped hers, prompting her back to the ER.  Although it had been relatively calm before, now it bustled with EMTs nurses, and loaded gurneys, overflowing into the halls, and collecting in front of the triage area.  There were more than twenty firemen among the patients.  At least fifteen civilians were also among the wounded.  Each time she faced a new patient, she tried not to see the uniforms of the firemen and quickly asked for their vitals and assessed them before she peered at their faces, lest she find Gabriel staring back at her.

The current patient, a tall black fireman, suffered not only from burns all over his legs but also shrapnel embedded in his chest from when the building had exploded.  "It hurts," he whispered, grabbing Maddie's arm and drawing her close so he could whisper to her.  "I can't take this pain anymore."  Tears pooled in his eyes and overflowed down his face, washing the dirt from his skin where the tears trailed downward.  "Please," he implored her, "I can't take this!"

"I'll take care of you."  She looked over at Yolanda, who had just finished noting vitals on another patient, and waved her over.  "I need a morphine drip started on this one." 

"Will do," Yolanda replied, threading her way through the ocean of gurnies toward the supply area to get an IV post and the paraphernalia needed to start the intravenous fluids.

Maddie turned back to the man and squeezed his hand reassuringly.  "You're going to be just fine.  The nurses will start an IV with pain meds to take the edge away."  She scrutinized his uniform, trying to discern which station he'd come from, but she couldn't tell.  "What station are you with?"

"Seventeen," he grunted, keeping his eyes clenched shut.  Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his face in two thick streams.

Maddie inhaled sharply and grabbed the gurney to steady herself.  "Was Gabriel Martin on duty with you?"

"He was called in," the man rasped, struggling to breathe.

"Did you see him?" She kept a tight hold on the gurney.

"He..was on the….stairs when it blew."

"Oh, God," Maddie whispered, and her hand flew to cover her mouth.  "Oh, God," she repeated and started looking around the room as if she knew he were there.

"Are you all right?"  Yolanda caught her arm as she placed the IV pole by the man's head.  "You look like you're going to pass out."

"I'm fine…It's Gabriel.  He was on the stairs when the building blew up."  She began scanning the victims of the explosion, looking for him.  "I have to find him."

Yolanda gripped Maddie’s arm, keeping her from leaving.  "Maddie, there are a lot of people here who need your help.  You don't even know if he will be brought to this hospital, do you?  They could have taken him to Southwestern."

For a fleeting second, Maggie thought of jerking away and searching through the patients, but as she kept staring at Yolanda's determined frown, she abandoned that thought.  She had a responsibility to the people who had been brought here for treatment, not to Gabriel.  Still, that didn't stop the rush of her heart or the burning fear of not knowing whether Gabriel were alive.

With each patient, she went through the motions of healing, but all the faces blurred in a dark mass; none of them were the one she sought.  Although most of the patients arrived at the hospital alive, a handful had died enroute, and a few passed away just inside the hospital.  Those victims were quickly shuttled to the morgue, but even the out-of-sight, out-of-mind game did not allow any of them to forget.  As the sea of faces swam in front of Maddie, she began to feel a surge of hope as she examined a twelve-year-old girl who had sustained a broken ankle from evacuation efforts during the fire.  Maybe Gabriel hadn't been hurt.  Maybe he'd been far enough down the stairs so that when the building had blown up, he'd managed to get clear unharmed.  Maybe the Pope could fly, too.

That was an awful lot of maybes.

"I'm Dr. Gilcrest," Maddie said, "and I'm going to help take care of you."  She peered at the girl's leg, noting where the bone gouged the flesh.  Maddie winced inside at the jagged edges of the bone.

Tears clouded the girl's face, and she inhaled and exhaled sharply.  "It really hurts."

"We'll see what we can do about your pain."  She turned to Yolanda.  "Give x-ray a heads-up that she needs that leg done so we can tell the extent of the damage inside."  She scribbled a note on the girl's chart and patted the girl’s shoulders, where long, chestnut locks lay.  "Emily, we're going to take some x-rays of your leg to see how much is hurt on the inside."

"Maddie," Yolanda said, carrying a clipboard, "come with me."   She tugged at Maddie's arm, half-dragging her away.

Maddie felt the pit of her stomach fall as she stared at the nurse's pale features.  She knew something Maddie didn't.  "Did you find him?" she whispered as the two of them walked away, Yolanda leading her toward the triage area where the newer patients awaited treatment.  Maddie groaned when she saw all the stretchers filled with people.

"No… not Gabriel.   I found someone else."  She stopped in front of one of the gurneys lining the hallway just after the triage nurses’ station.  "She doesn't look so good, Maddie."  Yolanda peered at the woman on the stretcher and then offered Maddie the chart she held.

Maddie peered at the patient--a petite blond woman, her face darkened with soot and stained with blood from small lacerations caused by broken glass, some of which was still embedded.  An oxygen mask covered her face, and each faint breath fogged the mask.  Black mucous clustered beneath her swollen nostrils.  Despite all the blood and soot, despite the mask, despite the woman's unconsciousness, Maddie recognized a familiarity to the woman, but she had no clue who she was.  She kept staring at the blonde hair tinged with black and tried to imagine her eyes open and the blonde hair clean of soot.  Then it finally came to Maddie: Tammy.  It was Tammy.  The world seemed to narrow to a small hole of light, and darkness closed in around her.  She felt the blood pumping through her body at a frantic pace, and she forced herself not to think, not to feel. 
Think of her as a patient, just like any other, someone who needs your help.

"She needs a bronchoscopy," Maddie heard herself say in a neutral tone.  "Where was she found?"  Despite the conversation, Maddie's thoughts raced.  She needed to call Sam and let him know Tammy was here.

"In her apartment, probably sleeping."

Maddie picked up her hand and peered at the top, where more tiny lacerations decorated the skin with dried blood.  "How long was she inside?"

"We don't know.  The EMT who brought her in said the fireman who rescued her was in bad shape and couldn't give any additional information, which is one reason we don't know as much about her condition as we would like."

As Maddie watched Tammy's face, she thought,
I need to call Sam.  He would want to know she's here.
  She started to head for the closest phone but then saw all the gurneys filling the room with patients who needed care.  Some of them were critical and couldn’t wait.  Realizing there was no time to contact Sam personally, she turned to Yolanda and handed her the clipboard.  "I need to ask a favor."

"Okay."  Frowning, Yolanda accepted the clipboard.

"Call Sam Martin at the Owens Police Department.  Let him know Tammy is here."

"I'll take care of it."

Maddie walked toward another patient, a fireman who lay so still on the gurney she wondered if he were alive.  Even as she began assessing him, all she could think about was Gabriel.

* * *

Hours later, Maddie had finally finished the last assessment and paperwork.  As she sat on a stool and scribbled notations on a clipboard, she felt tension knotting her shoulders, and she stretched, trying to ease the dull ache.   Glancing at the clock, she realized it was 2 a.m., which probably explained why her body only sluggishly obeyed her commands as she set the chart back on the counter.  Lifting her hand, she rubbed the back of her neck. 

Both she and Yolanda had checked the roster of names available for all the patients who had been admitted to Memorial in regards to the fire, and they both had come up empty in discovering any information about Gabriel.  Maddie brushed the bangs from her face and tried to remain positive.  Couldn't that mean he had been one of the lucky few who had not been injured?  Perhaps the fireman she'd treated earlier--Ramsey, wasn't that his name?--had been mistaken when he’d thought he seen Gabriel.  Hadn't it happened fast enough so that mistakes were more than probable?