Something had to change. Whitney and Eddie were both so stubborn. He’d have to be the one to make the first move. Stage a Come-to-Jesus meeting or something similar. They needed to sit down and talk and figure out a way to move on-together.
Mick truly believed the three of them could make it work, but they were probably going to have to make some hard decisions. Whitney was correct. She couldn’t marry both of them, but she could marry one of them legally. Which one was up to her, of course. The non-legal spouse could be married to the other two in a private commitment ceremony of sorts.
But first, he had to get Eddie and Whitney in the same room again and keep them there long enough to say his piece.
“Well, hell,” Joe Edgemont said with a sigh as he stared at his phone. The Pediatric Emergency Medicine specialist shook his head. “There’s another robbery in progress according to the news. Shots fired. Lots of police and ambulances on the scene.” Joe scrolled down on the screen and rolled his eyes. “Shit, we’re the closest trauma center to this one.”
Mick groaned and shoved back from the table. His colleagues grumbled and did the same. They’d been slammed the last week with a rash of gunshot victims from a gang turf war. It seemed that every summer the old feuds were reignited. One-hundred-plus-degree temps and bad tempers did not mix.
All at once, the pagers clipped on the waistbands and pockets of Mick and his other emergency-room colleagues beeped. He tossed his uneaten salad in the trash and checked his pager. Three gunshot victims, two critical, with an ETA of four to seven minutes.
As Mick fell into step behind Joe, his cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and saw Eddie’s name. A ripple of panic burned his belly. God, what if Eddie had been called to the scene? Was he one of the victims? They never separated perpetrators from victims in the pages or radio reports.
He slid his finger down over the screen to answer. “Eddie, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eddie’s voice sounded unnaturally tight and thick. “It’s Whitney.”
Mick’s stomach dropped. “What happened to Whitney?”
“They shot her, Mick.” Eddie’s voice cracked. “It’s bad.”
Mick placed his hand on the nearest wall to steady himself. Whitney? Shot? What the hell was she doing at that bank? Not that the details mattered at the moment. “How bad?”
“A round to the chest, another to the belly, and one to the shoulder. She was conscious when I got there, but she faded fast and there was so much blood, Mick. It was even coming out of her mouth.”
Mick’s gut lurched at that last bit. Had the bullet punctured a lung or worse? The fear in Eddie’s voice only heightened his anxiety. “Are you in the ambulance?”
“Yes.”
“Can the medic take the phone?”
“Uh, hang on.” There was a shuffling sound, and a few seconds later a female voice came across the line. “Yeah?”
Mick recognized the woman’s voice immediately. “Tamara?”
“Dr. O’Loughlin?”
“Oh, thank god it’s you.” Mick breathed a bit easier. Tamara was one of the best paramedics in the whole damn city. She’d served in Afghanistan and Iraq and had saved lives out on the mean streets of LA that shocked even Mick. Girl had mad skills, and he was grateful she was using them on Whitney. “Give me a rundown of my- the patient’s-injuries.”
Mick listened intently as he hurried to the emergency room. Phone squeezed between his ear and shoulder, he gowned up and grabbed some gloves. He snatched a pair of safety glasses from the bin, too. His stomach heaved as Tamara mentioned Whitney’s down-trending vitals. She didn’t have to say anything more. Whitney was circling the drain.
“We’ll be on your doorstep in less than a minute.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Mick replied, the wail of a nearing siren bouncing off the nearby buildings. He snapped his phone shut and stuffed it in his pocket. Turning to the charge nurse, he said, “Page Allison. I’m going to need my cardio goddess on this one.”
From Tamara’s description, Mick felt sure Whitney’s lungs were collapsing. They’d probably sustained some kind of damage from a ricocheting bullet. If Whitney’s chest had to be cracked, he wanted Allison to be the one to do it. She had the magic hands, after all.
Mick slipped on his safety glasses and tugged on the gloves as the ambulance pulled into the bay. He followed Sally and Desiree out the doors and met the stretcher on the sidewalk. Eddie’s ghostly white face was bad, but the sight of Whitney’s limp, bloody body struck him hard. For a few moments, all he could do was stare at the sight of the woman he loved so much.
Shaking himself from the stupor of surprise, Mick took charge. He issued commands to get an OR prepped while they stabilized and got the stretcher rushed into the nearest trauma room. As he did his initial assessment, Tamara gave her report again, and Sally cut off Whitney’s clothing. Mick ordered the necessary X-rays and other tests while Desiree established a second IV line.
“Lots of bleeding here, Doc.” Sally shook her head as she wiped at Whitney’s belly with gauze squares. “Should I page Dr. Cardenas?”
At Sally’s prompting, he glanced at Whitney’s abdomen. Paging an obstetrician-gynecologist suddenly sounded like an excellent idea. “Yes.”
There was just so much blood. Mick worried about what he’d find once he got her belly open. With that amount of hemorrhaging, there had to be a major vessel involved or something very vascular…like the uterus.
His gaze moved back to the monitors. Her blood pressure was tanking. She had decreased breath sounds on the right, and her oxygen saturation levels were uncomfortably low. He didn’t like it one bit.
“Not good,” Allison said as she strode into the trauma room, her focus on the monitors. She unlooped the stethoscope from around her neck and stuck the ear pieces in place. She listened to Whitney’s chest and made a face. “I don’t like this, Mick. What are the wound trajectories like?”
“Three entrance wounds on the front,” Mick said, judging the angle of the wounds. “Let’s roll her so we can count exit wounds.” He needed to know how many bullets were possibly embedded in her tissues or organs.
Mick, the nurses, and Allison took hold of Whitney and rolled her onto her left side. Almost immediately, alarms clanged. Whitney’s blood pressure plummeted, and her heart rate took off wildly. He quickly scanned her naked back for exit wounds and found only one. “Belly wound was through and through. The other two are still in there somewhere.”
They dropped her back down, but her blood pressure and heart rate remained at dangerous levels. Allison listened to her chest again. “This lung is collapsing. Get me a chest tube tray.”
Mick assisted Allison as she placed a tube in Whitney’s chest to relieve the building pressure of free blood. A gush of dark red blood filled the tube and poured into the attached container. Although there was some immediate relief, it wasn’t enough. Whitney’s lungs were in bad shape.
“I need to get in there as soon as possible,” Allison decided. “Get those X-rays, and meet me in the OR.” She gestured with her head to the adjacent trauma room as she stripped out of her bloody gloves and yellow gown. “Let me check this guy out and I’ll be on my way up, okay?”
Mick nodded and turned his full attention on keeping Whitney stable. Alarms continued to clang. Blood flow eased up a bit in the chest tube but not by much. He ordered packed red cells and hoped she would hold on just a little bit longer.
Sally picked up the ringing phone and spoke for a few seconds before hanging up. “Dr. Cardenas is heading into the OR for an emergency C-section, but she’ll pop into your OR when she’s finished. Lancaster is up on the L &D floor if you need him before then.”
Mick preferred Daniela, but Lancaster would do in a pinch. “Thanks, Sally.”
Another nurse popped her head into the room. “OR three is ready.”
“Let’s go.” Mick kicked the brakes on his side of the gurney and waited for his team of nurses to get the equipment ready to go. As they rushed out of the room, he caught sight of Eddie hovering in the doorway. He couldn’t ever remember seeing Eddie look so scared. Mick paused just long enough to catch Eddie’s gaze. He desperately wanted to reach out and touch his arm, but his gloves were bloody.
