Page 21 of Luck Be Mine (The Defenders #3)
Slow. Smooth. Fast.
Satisfied, Hunt silently celebrated, shoving aside the fog of worry. The responsibility on this end was heavier, the distance sharper. He wasn’t sure he liked either, but tonight’s mission was clean and worth being acknowledged.
§§§§§§§§§§
March 2021 – Fifteen Months Since Injury
? First Cut, Second Chance ?
Finally!
Her turn in rotation.
Cait swallowed hard and took breaths against jittery nerves.
Her hands trembled, and she executed a quick physical therapy exercise to manipulate her fingers.
It took too long to get the feeling back in her hand after she got hurt.
Add the time to get into this retraining program, and the obsessive need to keep testing each finger every time annoyed.
You are healed now, Cait. Quit acting like a green resident.
Disturbed by the whine of the elevator, she distracted herself by checking the other riders.
A young woman in a lab coat was on her phone; the other man was asleep propped in the corner – visitor or staff, she couldn’t tell, although visiting hours were over.
She coaxed the floor numbers to drop from five to four to three…
and finally to one, adrenaline already flooding her system.
The hospital emergency room had accident victims in route, and she was finished with routine surgeries and ready for trauma.
The doors opened and the reality of the moment flooded her.
The cream walls, speckled beige flooring, blue textured curtain dividers defined the treatment areas with local modern art splashing color throughout.
UC San Diego Medical Center’s Emergency Division, one of the busiest in San Diego, buzzed like a beehive with a volume of noise that stupefied.
Nothing good happened after midnight. Emergency rooms knew this. Police knew this. Fire knew this. It was her own medical and personal philosophy and certainly held true tonight.
She put on her old persona and exited at a determined clip before the other two occupants of the elevator could move.
Hopefully, someone woke the guy in the corner.
She did a quick scan for the supervising ER attending physician, Dr. Hugh Day, and couldn’t find him.
Rounding the physicians’ station, she saw the charge nurse and shifted course.
“Dr. Hunter,” Bettina Smith called to her.
“I’m here, Bets.” She stopped at the woman’s side.
Petite and perky, the don’t-mess-with-me vibe came extra.
The four-foot-eight woman had gorgeous mocha skin, wide brown eyes, not a hair out of place, and an attitude that allowed her to use her finger, her stare, and a steady voice to get results.
Even the chief of ER Medicine didn’t argue with her.
“Ambulance inbound. Arrival in two minutes.” Bets studied her handheld device. “Trauma three. Waiting on a surgery assignment.”
Cait hit the prep area and slipped into a surgical gown to cover her scrubs, washed her hands, and put on a pair of latex gloves in one continuous motion.
She made her way to trauma three, but the room was empty so she moved to the doors where the fire department ambulance would enter with the patients.
Bets had made her circuit and was waiting for her.
“Three teenagers. One critical.”
“What happened?”
The lights flashed in the circular drive to the door.
“Street racing. These three were in one vehicle. The critical patient was in the backseat. No seatbelt. Car flipped.”
“Alcohol? Drugs?”
“No information. We’ll have to ask them or test.”
The automatic doors popped open, and Cait wasted no time joining the team waiting for the fire department to wheel them in.
A cop came in first. Dressed in plain jeans and a striped, blue shirt, his badge hung from his belt, and his weapon was on his hip. Tough face. Silver hair. Muscles in all the right places. But his eyes were flat, cop blue, cool, and unreadable.
He stepped out of the doorway and stopped beside her. “Sergeant Frank Walker, San Diego Police. You look new here.”
Cait nodded at the introduction. “New to this hospital. Not new to medicine.”
“Nurse?”
“Nope. Trauma surgeon. Dr. Cait Hunter.” He respected the need for her to stay sterile and didn’t try to shake her hand.
“Well, these kids need you. Especially this first one. Stupid stunt.”
“Defines teenagers, doesn’t it?”
“Yep. Some more than others.”
Bets came to her other side. “Frank.”
“Bets. Bad night.”
The nurse raised a brow. “Yet, you keep coming back.”
Frank snorted. “It’s the job.” A patrol officer caught his attention.
“Nice to meet you, Doc.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Sergeant.”
Dr. Day waited next to Bets, too. “You ready for this, Dr. Hunter?” He was a short, forbidding man with gray, slicked back hair and a scowl that hadn’t changed in the last decade. The man was not her fan.
“Yes.” She forced confidence into her stance. It had languished from disuse and was currently buried under a rusty knife twisting in her nervous gut. Time to resuscitate. She knew how to do this.
The critical patient rolled through the door. Two other ambulances lined up to unload. Cait recognized the paramedic on duty and went to him. “Stats?”
Seagal scowled at her. “Stupid racing stunt. Car flips. Patient unrestrained in backseat. He’s fourteen.
Unconscious. Serious head injury. Plus, he got thrown over the seat and collided with the dashboard before the car flipped and jammed him on the floorboard between his brother and his best friend.
” Seagal shook his head. “Back may be broken. Blood loss, bp low but stable. Collar on before we moved him. IVs established in route. Pain meds by protocol.”
“Alcohol, drugs?”
“Smelled alcohol. Drugs unknown. Whether the kid used any is unanswered. Brother is incoherent. Friend is unconscious.”
“The other car?”
“Took off before the cops got there. Video will have to tell the police investigators what happened.”
“Copy. I’ve got him. Good work. Let’s move him to trauma three.” The assembled team included nurses, two orderlies, and both fire department medics. In a smooth transition, they got the boy moved to a table in the trauma room.
“X-rays, blood work, get the monitors on him. Let’s see what we’ve got.
” The trauma nurse assigned to this case had years of experience.
On solid ground, Cait knew she could lean on the nurse’s experience to learn the flow.
Clear, concise, and organized, Hannah Malone was a tall woman who towered over everyone in the room.
The monitor went into erratic beeping as soon as they plugged the boy into their system.
“Blood pressure dropping,” Hannah called. The orderlies worked at shedding the boy’s clothing.
“Bleeding internally, I’m betting.” She examined the boy's torso, noting the many bruised places and the probability of broken ribs. “Don’t wear a seatbelt and become a pinball in a sea of crushing metal,” she muttered to herself.
“Get blood going on him,” Hannah ordered.
The x-ray technician entered the room. “Whatcha need, Doc?”
“Chest, back, neck and arm.”
“Blood drawn and on the way to lab.” Hannah handed off a vial to an orderly to relay.
Cait continued an examination of the boy’s torso and limbs. “Let’s hope no alcohol.”
Ten minutes later, the X-rays were on her iPad, and the infusion of blood had settled the kid’s blood pressure. But a dark mass in the kid’s belly confirmed internal injuries, and his back was broken between the 4 th and 5 th vertebrae. His arm had a slight fracture, too.
“Let’s get him upstairs, and call Orthopedics with these X-rays.”
Bets appeared in the doorway. “Surgery?”
“Yes. Where?”
“Surgical room 5C.”
Cait swallowed a complaint. She hated that room. Equipment wasn’t top-notch, but she wasn’t able to compare her military equipment experience with the civilian world. “Let’s move him people. Parents?”
Bets checked her handheld. “On the way in.”
“Anything I should know?” Cait lagged two steps from the team.
“I’ll tell you when I have more information,” she called, going the other direction. “Police contacted them. Proceed until notified otherwise.” The head nurse disappeared into a treatment room, and Cait doubled her steps to get to the elevator with the gurney. Her pulse didn’t slow.
Dr. Carey Gray waited for her at the elevator doors. The chief of the retraining program was tall and lean. His blonde hair was covered in a surgical cap. His gray eyes matched his name, and he looked her over. “I’m observing.”
Only a few years her senior, the man had retrained, too, and knew the ups and downs. She had no problem with his oversight. Her gut settled. A good sign. “Surgical 5C.”
He frowned, then made a face. “I hate that room.”
She grinned. “Me, too.”
He rode the elevator with them and stopped her as the team rolled the bed to the surgical room. “You have this. One step at a time, and this kid is lucky he’s getting you.”
Surprised, she nodded. “Thanks.”
“Don’t get cocky.” He let her go ahead of him.
She grinned and followed the gurney. “Let’s fix this kid, Hannah.”
“On it, Dr. Hunter.” The woman accepted Cait’s skills, expected her to perform the surgery, and the nurse’s faith rejuvenated her confidence.
She sympathized with this kid’s future. A flash of when she hit the wall in Afghanistan blurred her vision, but she swallowed hard against the deep-well of unwanted memories and crammed them away. Hunt, though active and busy, had pulled her close and held her together.
Hopefully, this kid had family who would do that for him, too.
She steadied.
Surgery first. Memories much later.
§§§§§§§§§§
May 2021
? The Shape of Normal ?
Hunt let himself into the apartment, frustrated and annoyed that GPS put Cait still at the hospital.
He wrestled his jagged homecoming emotions against the three weeks of boring routine at sea and a cancelled mission.
The early morning hours left only muted light spread on the entry floor of their apartment.