The Color of Destiny (The Color of Heaven Series Book 2) (8 page)

“What’s your name?” the dark-haired one asked.

“Angela Worthington.”

“My name is Scott, and I’m a paramedic. This is John. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Angela described her chest pains, her difficulty breathing, and a pain in her left arm that she had not mentioned to Mia or me.

“Have you ever had pain like this before?” Scott asked.

“No, never.”

“How long has it been going on? Did it start suddenly or creep up on you?”

“The pain woke me about an hour ago.”

While Scott took Angela’s pulse, John said, “I’m going to put this blood pressure cup on your arm, Angela, and then I’m going to attach some EKG leads to your chest so we can find out what’s going on.”

Angela nodded while Mia and I stood out of the way, watching.

I am quite sure that was the moment that sealed my fate, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I made no conscious decision that I wanted to be a paramedic. I couldn’t even see past the fact that I was eight months pregnant and might never finish high school. All I knew was that I worshipped those EMTs, and I was immensely grateful for their skills.

Scott asked, “Can you scale the pain from one to ten? If ten is excruciating––”

“Seven,” Angela said.

The two paramedics locked eyes briefly, then continued their assessment.

“Any family history?” Scott asked.

“My uncle had a triple bypass four years ago. He was fifty-eight.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Are you on any medications? Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Are you on any other drugs? Cocaine, uppers, downers, speed, herbal medications?”

“No.”

“Are you
sure
?” Scott firmly asked. “We need to know everything, Angela, otherwise we can’t help you.”

I knew they doubted her denial because she was so young. It hardly seemed possible that she could be at risk for a heart attack.

“She’s not on drugs,” I answered in her defense.

John, the stocky one, turned his head and looked up at me, as if for the first time. His gaze lingered on my belly for a few seconds, then he went back to work on Angela. He started an IV tube and put an oxygen mask on her.

“It looks like she has ST elevations in lead two,” John said.

Scott called the hospital. “We’ve got a thirty-two-year-old woman with a possible MI. Pain started an hour ago, radiating into the left arm. She’s diaphoretic. Some family history.” He paused. “No, it was an uncle. No drugs, no other risk factors.” Another pause. “Yeah, we have her on O2. Would like permission to give aspirin and nitroglycerin.”

Scott nodded and snapped his fingers at John, who briefly removed the oxygen mask to slip a pill under Angela’s tongue.

Suddenly, I felt a pain in my lower abdomen and clutched my stomach. “Oh no,” I said, looking down at the floor.

Scott hung up and said to Angela, “We’re going to take you to the hospital now.” Then he approached me. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I replied. “I think my water just broke.”

Mia gripped my shoulder. “Oh, my God. Does this mean you’re going into labor?”

“Where are your parents?” Scott asked, still blessedly calm in the midst of all this.

“They live in Bar Harbor,” I replied. “Angela is my aunt. I’ve been staying with her for a while. This is my sister.”

Scott studied Mia’s panic-stricken face. “Then I think you should both come with us to the hospital. You can ride in the ambulance.” He turned to help John lift Angela onto the gurney. “What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Kate.”

“Nice to meet you, Kate. Why don’t you go pack a few things, but hurry up. You have exactly one minute and then we’re out of here.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“How is she doing?” I asked Scott as the ambulance picked up speed.

John was at the wheel. He had turned on the siren as soon as we were underway.

“Why don’t we ask her?” Scott said. “How are you feeling, Angela?”

She lay on the gurney, still wearing the oxygen mask, and gave a thumbs up.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Scott said. “There’s hardly any traffic, so we should reach the hospital in about ten minutes. How about you, Kate?” he said to me. “Are you feeling any contractions?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing after that first time when my water broke. Is this normal?”

“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” he replied. “They’ll take good care of you.”

By ‘they,’ he meant the doctors and nurses on the obstetrical floor at the hospital.

I wasn’t due for three weeks, and I wondered if my premature labor had been brought on by the stress of Angela’s heart attack.

“How old are you, anyway, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Scott constantly amazed me by how he could carry on a conversation while checking an IV or taking Angela’s blood pressure.

“I’m sixteen,” I replied.

“Is that why you’re not living with your parents?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but this is only temporary until the baby is born. They didn’t kick me out or anything like that, but we live in a small town and felt it would be better this way.”

“Are you putting the baby up for adoption?”

“Why would you assume that?” I asked, wanting to hear Scott’s opinion on the matter, because I was still undecided about whether or not I should keep the baby.

Scott shrugged non-committedly. “I just figured that must be the case if you’re having the baby here and not at home. Otherwise, why keep it a secret, if everyone’s going to know anyway?”

It was a reasonable deduction, and just when I was about to tell him that I was leaning toward keeping my baby, Mia said, “I think you should keep it. It’s the right thing. I have a feeling about this baby. She’s going to be special.”

“
She?
What makes you think it’s a girl?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just have this funny feeling. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I promise to help you. We’ll convince Mom and Dad together.”

I had never loved her more than I did in that moment.

Then suddenly, John hollered, “
Shit!
”

He slammed on the brakes.

It all happened very quickly after that. Mia and I tumbled over each other on the bench, then a sudden jarring impact shattered the quiet morning as the ambulance was rammed at a ninety-degree angle by what I later learned was a mid-sized moving truck.

The sound of crunching metal and smashing glass was explosive in my ears. Mia slammed into me. I felt the crack of her skull against mine and the tangle of her flailing limbs as she rolled over me.

When John first hit the brakes, Angela’s gurney shot forward against the driver’s compartment like a projectile, then she spun like a log on water as we flipped over sideways. Three times apparently. I have no memory of that. The last thing I remember is the concern I felt at the terrible pain in my belly when I was flung violently into a shelf of medical supplies.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The accident occurred at 5:58 in the morning. I was later told that on the evening news, it was reported that the driver of the moving truck had been up all night helping his girlfriend clear out of her apartment.

He was drunk, and he died instantly when he flew through the windshield.

o0o

I woke twelve days later to the monotonous beep of a heart monitor. When I was finally able to grasp that this was not a normal awakening, I struggled to open my eyes, but my body didn’t seem able to respond to my wishes. I was confused by this, but it was nothing compared to the throbbing pain in my head and a slow realization...

I was lying in a hospital bed, because I had been injured in an ambulance accident.

“Kate? Can you hear me? I think she’s awake. Lester, go and get someone.”

Though my mind was in a fog and the pain in my head made it difficult to think clearly, I could at least recognize my mother’s voice. I then became cognizant of the fact that my left arm was in a cast.

All at once, memories rushed at me like blinding flashes of light.

I was riding in the ambulance. There was a loud crash. I saw Angela’s gurney fly through the air.

With growing panic, I began to breathe heavily. “My baby... Is my baby okay?”

My father hurried into the room with a nurse. She checked my vitals. I couldn’t understand why no one would answer my question.

“My baby...” I said. “Mia...
Where’s Mia?”

“Try to stay calm,” Dad said. “We need to make sure you’re okay.”

“Everything looks good,” the nurse told him. “I’m going to call the doctor.”

My mother began to weep.

I could barely find the strength to move, but somehow I managed to slide my hand up onto my belly.

It was
flat
.

My father leaned over the bed. “I’m sorry, Kate,” he said. “It was a very bad accident. No one survived but you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

But I didn’t feel lucky at all. I felt as if my father had just pushed me off the roof of a tall city skyscraper. I was plummeting fast, trapped in some sort of horrific dimension of disbelief. I thought I might be dreaming. It couldn’t be true. Yet I knew it was, because my stomach was flat and there was a scar, low on my abdomen, which meant my womb was empty. I was no longer carrying a child inside of me. My body had been jostled about violently and I was ravaged and broken.

My baby was dead.

And Mia, Angela... All dead.

Yet here I was.
Alive.

The rescue team had called it a miracle, because both paramedics died on the scene, as did as Angela, Mia, and my unborn child.

I was the only survivor.

But why me?

Into the Future

Chapter Thirty

February 17, 2007

Do you remember the woman from the frozen lake? The one who had no vitals when we transported her to the hospital? Her name was Sophie. She had been dead for more than forty minutes before they revived her, and I couldn’t seem to get her out of my head.

“Did that woman from the lake ever come out of her coma?” I asked Bill as we headed out on a call.

“I asked about her yesterday,” he replied. “They said she still hasn’t woken up. She’ll probably be a vegetable.”

I gazed out the window as we sped past a playground. “Slow down. There are kids around here.”

“You’re always telling me to slow down, but can I remind you that this is an emergency vehicle? We’re
supposed
to speed.”

“You know how I feel about that,” I replied.

Bill and I had been partners for six months before I told him what happened to me almost twenty years earlier. Like most people, he was surprised I decided to become a paramedic after something like that. I’ve often wondered about that myself, and I have no answer to give, except to say that this is what I was born to do.

We raced through an intersection and nearly collided with two cop cars that fishtailed around the corner ahead of us. I instinctively gripped the door handle to hang on.

o0o

When we arrived at the scene—which was an apartment building parking lot in a rough section of town—the cops were clearing people out of the way. Bill and I hurried to get the stretcher out and wheeled it toward a man who was lying face down on the pavement next to a rusted-out white van.

A woman was on her knees beside him, screaming hysterically. “Hurry!” she shouted at us. “He’s shot!”

One of the cops helped pull her to her feet. “Move back, ma’am. You have to give them some room.”

I knelt down and saw a blood stain at the man’s right shoulder blade. “Turn him over,” I said to Bill.

We rolled the victim onto his back. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with long, thinning hair and a beard. There was another stain of blood on his chest. “The entry wound is here,” I said. I searched for a pulse. My gaze met Bill’s and I nodded. “He’s alive. Let’s get him on the stretcher.”

Bill helped me lift him, and as soon as we started wheeling the victim toward the ambulance, another van pulled into the lot and a news team spilled out. The cameraman started filming us, while a female reporter plugged in a microphone and began interviewing witnesses.

By that time, we had reached the ambulance and were sliding the stretcher into the back. I got in, and Bill shut the doors behind us. Seconds later Bill was back in the driver’s seat and we took off for the hospital, with lights flashing and siren blaring.

This was my life now, and chaos felt as natural to me as breathing.

Chapter Thirty-one

A full trauma team was waiting for us when we arrived. I quickly gave my report to the doctors as we wheeled the victim inside, explaining that the bullet had entered the right lateral chest and gone straight through. I stepped back when we reached the trauma room.