Читать книгу California Moon - Catherine Lanigan - Страница 9

Shreveport, Louisiana

Shannon Riley had pulled the worst float assignment of her career at St. Christopher’s Charity Hospital—the ER during a full moon, half the staff down with the flu and a green intern on duty.

“But I’m just a ward nurse,” she said to Helen Mayer, the senior administrator who was standing in the doorway to the staff lounge. “Besides, I just finished my shift. I want to go home.” She rubbed her bleary eyes.

“You? Home?”

“I miss my cat.”

“She’ll survive.”

“Aw, c’mon, Helen. I’m tired. I really do have a life.”

“Yeah? What’s his name?”

“I didn’t mean a guy.” Shannon dropped her face to her hand, cupping her mouth. “Does it always have to be a guy?”

“It couldn’t be anyone else. You don’t have any family.”

“I know this,” Shannon looked away and stared at the wall.

“Sorry.”

Shannon was silent for a long beat. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You’re more than just an employee here. You’re a friend. And that was unkind of me,” Helen said. “Please help me, Shannon. I’ve always counted on you, my ace.”

A slow smile warmed Shannon’s face. “You’ll note this sacrifice on my record?”

“Sure,” Helen agreed. “Come with me. You may be young but you’ve got more experience than I do.” She wagged her finger at Shannon. “You never heard me say that.”

Shannon liked Helen. She’d been the one who’d hired her when Shannon came to St. Christopher’s six years ago.

“This place has been pandemonium,” Helen continued. “Thirteen babies were born before midnight and both the labor and delivery rooms are full. I don’t know where we’re going to put them all. Maternity is on double shift as it is. On Four an elderly cardiac ICU patient died with no apparent seizure even though his latest prognosis was that he’d be going home in forty-eight hours. On Two, a stroke case, paralyzed on his left side, reacted to his meds and ripped out his IV, got out of bed and tried to walk out the door. It took five staff to get him into restraints and in the process they broke his arm.

“ER has been plagued with that three car pileup on I-20 that was just on the news. God! I can’t tell you how I despise minicams! We actually ran out of cast plaster. But the worst part is this flu epidemic. Staff is dropping like flies. The doctors—”

“I’ve heard all your good news. Now give me the bad news.”

“Dr. Scanlon.”

“No way.”

“Sorry,” Helen said.

Rising from her chair, Shannon said, “I like it when you need me.”

“Take that grin off your face and promise me you’ll do me another favor.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to the first one yet.”

“We’ve got a coma and a gunshot to the head coming in from Sabine Pass. The ambulance just left Highway 79. They’ll be here in ten. I don’t have anyone but you. For the record, I’ll state that Chelsea Sikeston is taking this shift. That way, if anything goes wrong…”

“Or right, then she gets the credit.” Shannon didn’t mind the shell game all the administrators played when the situation called for it, but it galled her to no end that twenty-five-year-old Chelsea, fresh out of college with only a year on staff under her belt, out-ranked her because Shannon was only a practical nurse and not an RN. If it was the last thing she did, she would get her degree someday.

The fact that Chelsea used her affair with the wealthy and very married head of administration, Dr. Thornton, to gain special privileges for herself, incensed Shannon, though she pretended indifference.

Helen’s voice brought Shannon back from her musings. “Do I have to say please?”

“Yeah. It would help.” Shannon walked past Helen to the hall and headed toward the ER.

Dr. Bradley Scanlon was not only a new resident to St. Christopher’s, he was new period. After two weeks on staff he’d lost two patients, both in the past six hours. He was exhausted and wanted only to climb onto a cot in the lounge and sleep for two days straight.

“How could I be so unlucky as to pull another shift?” he complained to Shannon as they changed into fresh greens.

“Triple shift is nothing,” she said flatly, cramming her auburn hair into a paper surgical cap. Double wrapping the ties of the smock around her, she heard the ambulance siren at the emergency doors. Two paramedics rushed alongside a gurney bearing the male auto-accident victim the state troopers had dug out from the bottom of the river.

“Is this our John Doe?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic as he quickly checked the chart he was handed. Shoving the clipboard into Shannon’s hands, he began inspecting the patient for internal injuries.

“One and the same, Doc,” the younger paramedic replied. “Collapsed lung. BP is 190 over 130 and coming down. Possible concussion. He’s been out since we found him.”

“Chest tube and intubate him. Seven point zero ET 2. Give him Manatol IV and hyperventilate him,” Dr. Scanlon ordered Shannon who instantly began assembling the proper dosages for the IV. “CAT scan and X rays,” Dr. Scanlon said as he passed his hands along the man’s rib cage. “Feels as if they’re all broken.”

After injecting the proper meds into the IV, Shannon prepared to intubate.

“What’s over here?” Dr. Scanlon asked as he turned toward the second gurney coming into the room.

“Again, unidentified. Richard Doe has been shot, Doc. BP is 80 over 60.”

“I want an EKG and echocardiogram,” he said as he swabbed the blood from the gunshot wound to the man’s stomach. Without glancing at the paramedic, he asked, “Any idea what all these burn marks are?”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “The police were there nearly at the same time as we were. They think he was tortured. I heard one of ’em say it coulda been a cigar.”

Dr. Scanlon continued groping into Richard Doe’s gunshot wound without further comment. “I can’t see dick. It’s buried pretty deep. Nurse, suction.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“What else did the police tell you?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic.

“That the front end of the car hit the riverbed, squishing it like an accordian. The steering wheel rammed into that one’s chest,” he said, nodding toward the other patient. “It shoulda killed him. He must be tough. We had to cut the steering wheel away in order to lift him out of the car. Only thing is, I couldn’t figure where he got the blow to his head.”

“From the same person who shot this man would be my guess,” Shannon said.

“Retractor.” Dr. Scanlon glared back at Shannon as he held out his hand to her. She properly placed the instrument handle side toward his thumb and fore-finger. Using a clamp to clear his view into the interior, Dr. Scanlon dug for the bullet. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll need a cross-match.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Shannon replied. But as she cast a sidelong glance at his patient’s chalky color and at the readout on the monitors, she mumbled to herself, “Richard Doe won’t last that long.”

“He needs Methahexol, morphine and valium intravenously, if he doesn’t defib,” she said.

Just then the heart monitor went off.

“Flat line!” the paramedic shouted anxiously.

“Damn!” Dr. Scanlon blanched.

Shannon grabbed the epinephrine, filled the syringe and handed the hypodermic to the doctor while she automatically spun around and jelled the paddles.

Quickly injecting the epinephrine into the patient’s heart, the doctor took the paddles from Shannon and placed them on either side of Richard Doe’s chest.

“Clear!”

Shannon held her breath as she watched the patient’s lifeless body jerk on the gurney. “Nothing!”

“Clear!” Dr. Scanlon zapped him again.

Shannon didn’t wait for results. There was still a chance to save the other patient. “John Doe is still alive and needs to be intubated.”

With the chilling sound of the monotone heart monitor behind her, Shannon turned to the bloody, dark-haired man on the first gurney. She looked at his face. Glass from the windshield had shattered throughout his dark hair, cutting his scalp and forehead. Though his clothes were spattered with blood from hundreds of cuts, she noticed numerous hematomas.

“He’s been beaten.”

She lifted his arm, moving it forward and back while resting her hand on the man’s clavicle. Depressing her fingers into his rib cage, she rolled the pads of her fingers back and forth, pressing them into the flesh until they nearly disappeared. She counted seven broken ribs. Then she lifted his side and looked at his back.

“Kick marks. Especially around the kidneys.”

Gently pressing her fingers to his kidney area, she felt for lumps or signs of detachment. There were none.

“I’ve lost him!” Dr. Scanlon said, handing the paddles to the paramedic.

Shannon glanced at the young doctor’s ashen face, and realized there was no way he could handle another death tonight.

He stepped next to Shannon. Eyes vacant, he looked at her patient. “Good job, Riley.”

“I’ll take him up to X ray myself,” she said, glancing at the paramedic behind her as he pulled a sheet over the dead man’s face.

Police and state troopers scurried in the hallway as Shannon and the paramedics wheeled their patient out of ER.

Brushing past a holstered gun, she shivered. How ironic. Guns and lifesaving equipment in the same room.

Police officers jammed the doorway, forming a blockade against the approaching local news-station reporters who couldn’t wait to film gruesome live shots of bloody bodies for their early-morning newscasts.

Minicam lights blasted Shannon in the face. She froze. “What the—” Shielding her eyes with her hand, half covering her face, she turned away and quickly pushed the gurney toward the elevator. Accidentally, she bumped into one of the reporters.

“Hey, watch it,” he growled.

Her mouth went dry. “Sorry,” she said tensely. She avoided eye contact with the man by keeping her head down.

“Hey, is that one of them?” He turned on his camera.

Shannon felt the blood drain from her face. Though her hands were shaking and her knees quivered, she pulled the sheet over her patient’s head. “Please don’t,” she said meekly.

“I was only doing my job,” the heavyset young man said defensively.

“Me, too,” she mumbled, hurrying past him.

Grumbling, the cameraman turned away.

Shannon made it to the elevator in a flash and impatiently depressed the button twice. She could hear the barrage of questions and the distinct voice of the chief of police, Jimmy Joe Bremen, talking to Dr. Scanlon as they emerged from the ER.

“Did he say anything before he died?” Jimmy Joe asked, pushing aside his underlings.

“No.”

“Did you remove the bullet?”

“Yes,” Dr. Scanlon said wearily.

“Forensics will want it. The body as well.”

“I understand.”

Jimmy Joe’s large belly heaved up and down when he spoke and his lungs rattled, reminding Shannon of the pneumonia he’d had last winter when he’d been admitted to the ER with a high fever. He was the most demanding and stubborn patient she’d ever attended.

She hit the elevator button again.

She realized now that Chief Bremen had lied to Dr. Timmons when he said he hadn’t touched a cigar for over a year. What bothered her most at the time was that he lied so effortlessly and convincingly. She didn’t trust him and it gave her the jitters to be anywhere near him.

Jimmy Joe pressed past the reporters into the hall and Dr. Scanlon followed.

The reporters swarmed.

“What about the other John Doe? Did he say anything? Did you find anything on him we might have overlooked?”

“No, nothing. Should I have?”

Jimmy Joe scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t know. These two fellas were in a bunch o’ trouble, but without any identification and no witnesses, we’re at a loss.”

A brash young female reporter stuck a small microphone in Dr. Scanlon’s face. “What have you got, Doctor?”

“Other than the fact that I place the gunshot wound at around midnight since he hadn’t yet bled to death, the only other medical specifics I can give you at this time is that one man is dead and the other barely alive.”

Jimmy Joe pressed his index finger in Dr. Scanlon’s bony chest. “When the other one comes around, I want to know about it.”

Dr. Scanlon frowned, rubbing the sore spot. “Of course, but it won’t be any time soon. He’s comatose.”

Jimmy Joe slapped his gray hat against his trousers as he walked toward the elevators. “I’ll check on him in the morning.”

“It is morning, Chief,” Dr. Scanlon said wearily.

Jimmy Joe smiled wanly. “Then I’ll call you later,” he said and ordered his men back to the station.

The elevator doors opened. Shannon secured the gurney, IV and respirator on the elevator.

“Appears it’s going to be a nice day,” Jimmy Joe said, watching her as she pushed the gurney into the elevator.

She held her breath, feeling his eyes free-falling across her backside.

Shannon rammed her thumb against the fourth-floor button and glanced down at her patient. When the doors slammed shut, Shannon exhaled with relief. “Safe once again.”