Читать книгу In His Protective Custody - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 10

Unlike his partner, Zane Calloway, Officer Ryan Lukkas liked to talk. When he was nervous, he had a tendency to talk more. And faster. He was talking fast now. Very fast. And driving the exact same way.

“Dunno what this city’s coming to, when two cops can’t even walk into a convenience store in the middle of the day to get a couple of hot dogs and two cans of soda without some kind of a gun battle erupting,” he complained loudly.

Officer Lukkas had raised his voice to compete with the blare of the siren that was piercing the usual ongoing din of the city. The siren was theirs and it was blaring for a very good reason. They needed to get to their destination. Fast.

Needed to, but so far it didn’t look as if that was going to become a reality. Didn’t people respond to sirens and flashing lights anymore? he silently demanded, cursing a blue streak in his head. Up to this point he’d managed to keep the words from erupting on his lips.

“Maybe it had something to do with you saying ‘NYPD, drop your weapons,’” Zane suggested, his voice somewhat labored.

The careless shrug only involved one shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.” He spared Zane a look, worried despite himself. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“Nothing else,” Zane did his best to assure the man, though it got harder for him to focus. The pain was worsening. “You did the right thing.”

C’mon, c’mon. Move! In addition to the siren, he blared his horn. Traffic slowed down even more. “You’re only saying that so I don’t feel guilty.”

“I’m saying it,” Zane replied in his dead, no-nonsense voice, “because it’s true. You want to feel guilty about it, hell, that’s up to you. Me, I’d say feeling guilty is a waste of time—and stupid—in this case anyway.”

Ryan gave Zane another look and swallowed a curse, allowing the words “Oh damn” to break through. “How do you feel?” he pressed anxiously.

Zane’s answer came out in a weakened growl. “Like I’ve been shot.”

“Maybe I can drive on the sidewalk,” he suggested as he looked at the area on either side of the street.

Today was particularly humid and miserable. Why couldn’t these people stay at their jobs or in their homes? It seemed as if every one of the eight million New York City inhabitants were out today, mostly milling around in the vicinity of the vehicle.

Lukkas blew out an impatient breath and slanted yet another look at Zane’s arm. Of course, Zane knew it didn’t look good. The towel that had been wrapped around it was heavy with blood.

“I want to be able to get to the hospital before you bleed to death,” Ryan declared nervously.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re pretty lousy in the stay-calm department?” Zane asked him. “And I don’t need to go to the hospital,” he insisted, not for the first time. “Just stop at the closest pharmacy and get some bandages and gauze and peroxide.” He looked down at his injured arm. “I can take care of this myself.”

“Sorry, tough guy, you’re outvoted. We both know that you’d be better off seeing a doctor.”

“How the hell can I be outvoted?” Zane demanded sharply. “There’s just the two of us.”

“I’ve got two good arms to your one. That gives me two votes. Now shut up and save your strength.”

“If I save my strength for anything,” Zane warned him, “it’ll be to strangle you.”

“Fine,” Ryan bit off, snaking the car around an ice cream truck that had its annoying theme song on. “First we get you patched up, then we’ll discuss you strangling me. Fair enough?”

Zane inclined his head in agreement. There wasn’t exactly much he could do, since Ryan was the one behind the wheel. Zane usually let his partner drive because traffic snarls and logjam conditions didn’t seem to faze Ryan the way they did him.

“Fair enough,” Zane echoed, repeating the phrase grudgingly.

Ryan definitely looked concerned, Zane thought. The man kept glancing at him as if his partner expected him to go up in smoke at any second. There was fear in Lukkas’s eyes.

“I’m okay, Ryan,” he assured the other officer. “I’d be more okay without a bullet in my arm, but I’m okay,” he repeated. “Really,” he underscored when his partner of a little more than a year made no answer. “There’s no need to drive on the sidewalk. Look.” He nodded toward the front windshield. “The cars are beginning to clear a path for us.”

“About time,” Ryan declared, mumbling under his breath. “We’re the police—they should be clearing a path for us.”

“The ‘protect and serve’ is in our part of the deal, not theirs,” Zane reminded him. “They don’t even have to be accommodating if they don’t want to be—unless we arrest them.”

Ordinarily, his partner wasn’t this forgiving of the public. “You just want to argue,” Ryan accused, flooring the vehicle, going all of fifteen yards before he had to slow down again.

Zane slowly let out a labored breath. Was it his imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe?

“No, I just want to stop bleeding. You could have stayed on the scene and brought the gunman in,” Zane reminded him. There was no need for the man to do an imitation of a mother hen. “McKenzie could have taken me to the hospital. Hell, I could have taken me to the hospital.”

“Number one, it was your shot that stopped the thief, so technically you should have been the one to take him in, not me. Two, McKenzie can’t find his way out of a paper bag. It’d take him four hours to get to the ‘nearest’ hospital.” He glanced toward his partner. “And you would have probably bullied him out of taking you there altogether. Aha, aha.” One hand off the wheel, he pointed at Zane’s face. “You’re smiling.”

“I’m grimacing, Lukkas,” Zane corrected him. “You just drove over another damn pothole.” This one had felt as if it was big enough to swallow the whole squad car—with room to spare. The jarring motion accentuated the pain in his arm.

“Sorry. Not my fault the city’s falling apart faster than the mayor can come up with the money to fix it.” The siren was on and the lights were flashing. Craning his neck, Ryan stuck his head out the window and shouted, “Get out of the way, damn it! Can’t you hear the damn siren?” he shouted.

His words were all but swallowed up by the noise of the crowds as they made their way through the throngs of humanity that occupied the streets at any given moment of the day.

Zane stared straight ahead, trying to distract himself from the fire in his arm. The streets of the city were always crowded, but it seemed as if they were even more so at this particular time of the day. It was lunchtime.

He looked down at his arm, staring approximately where the bullet had gone in. He would have felt better if there was also an exit wound, but there wasn’t. The bullet was still inside his arm, and despite the hastily secured “bandage” created out of the convenience store clerk’s towel inventory, the wound was oozing blood. A lot of it.

And he was getting progressively more light-headed. Despite his efforts to concentrate, Zane could feel his grasp on his surroundings slipping away from him.

He didn’t like not being in control, and he wasn’t, not here.

Initially, Ryan had wanted to call for an ambulance, but waiting for one would have taken even longer, so he’d opted to allow his partner to drive him to the nearest hospital. In this case that was Patience Memorial.

He hoped that the name wasn’t an indication of what he was going to need to have while he sat around, waiting to be seen.

“Hallelujah, we’re here!” Ryan declared in much the same way that the Israelites must have sounded when, after forty years of aimless wandering, they finally reached the Promised Land.

Directly before the hospital’s main entrance, a security guard directed traffic. Barely out of his teens, the guard stopped making exaggerated hand gestures as Ryan all but stopped right on top of him.

The security guard did his best to sound official. “Emergency vehicle parking is to your left, Officer.” The cheerful grin that punctuated his statement spoiled the effect.

“I’ve got a wounded officer here,” Ryan announced gruffly, pulling the car into the first available space. “I’m bringing him in and then I’ll be out to re-park.”

Jumping out of the black and white, Ryan hurried around to the other side just as Zane opened his door. Zane felt as if the effort to do that simple thing had temporarily drained him. He struggled not to let his fatigue show. “I don’t need you to hover around me, Lukkas.”

“But you might need me to lean on,” the shorter officer pointed out as Zane rose unsteadily to his feet, one hand braced against the hood of the vehicle.

The loss of blood had made him even more dizzy than he’d anticipated. A lot more. Zane scowled as he tried to support himself for a moment, leaning against the side of the vehicle. He didn’t like displaying weakness of any kind. It was disconcerting enough to be weak, much less to show it. But apparently this wound left him no choice.

“Yeah, maybe,” Zane finally said grudgingly.

Ryan raised his eyes to Zane’s. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile this time around. “Don’t worry, I won’t mention this later,” Ryan promised.

Zane eyed him skeptically. Doubt was always his first emotion, but then he relented. “You’re okay, Lukkas,” he said quietly, staring straight ahead.

Ryan smiled, exceedingly pleased. “Coming from you, that’s like getting a five-star rating.” With Zane’s arm stretched across his stout shoulders and holding tightly on to the man’s wrist while supporting his waist with his other hand, Ryan turned toward the security guard. “Which way’s your ER?”

“You can get there right through here,” the man said. His hand was already on the telephone receiver. “I can call for a wheelchair for you if—”

“You do and it’s the last call you’ll ever make,” Zane growled. The security guard immediately stepped away from the wall unit.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Ryan muttered, shaking his head.

“Nobody told you to,” Zane reminded him with more than a little effort.

“Having a partner die on me would’ve looked bad on my record,” Ryan informed him, a note of finality in his voice.

The ER was dead ahead, its entrance guarded by three registration booths, providing the first line of defense. A fast track was available for New York’s finest, and the woman at the first desk immediately waved them into the interior of the facility. At the same time, she was on the intercom, alerting any available staff members that a wounded police officer was coming in and needed immediate attention.

In the middle of an outpatient procedure, Dr. Gloria Furst looked up in response to the announcement she’d just heard. She glanced around the area for the closest attending physician.

Her brown eyes narrowed as she found one.

“Pulaski,” she called out. “Looks like you’re up. See if you can help the man in blue without messing up this time.”

Alyx’s smile was one she’d practiced nightly in the mirror because glaring would only get her into more hot water. “I wasn’t aware of messing up last time, doctor.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” the doctor commented crisply, her voice frosty. “But you’ll learn, Pulaski. You’ll learn—maybe.”

Alyx drew in a deep breath, told herself that she could and would survive this nightmare and went to find her patient.

Her patient, she was told, was in trauma bed number seven. She made her way over to that section, which turned out to be closer to the front than the back.

Drawing back the curtain, Alyx didn’t look at her newest patient until she was all but on top of him. And then she stopped dead.

Unwilling to lie down as the attending nurse had requested when she took his vitals, Zane was sitting up on the side of the bed. He came across as the very personification of impatience.

“You,” he said in surprise when he saw her.

“Me,” she confirmed. At least her breath was returning, she thought. Thank God for the small stuff. “Officer Calloway, I’d recognize that scowl anywhere,” she added, infusing a deliberate note of cheerfulness into her voice. And then she looked at the wound. “Let me guess. Someone decide that they weren’t thrilled with your attitude?”

“It was a convenience store robbery in progress. We stopped it,” Ryan told her proudly, puffing up his barrel chest just a little. And then he smiled brightly. “Ryan Lukkas.” Putting out his hand, he introduced himself. “I’m his partner.”

“My condolences,” Alyx replied, her face dead serious. After pulling on her umpteenth pair of rubber gloves, she gingerly removed the hastily applied, blood-soaked towel and then swiftly examined the wound. “Looks like you’re carrying around some metal. The good news is, we can get it out without messing up an OR.” She raised her eyes to his. “That is, if you’re game. If not, I’ll book an OR and we’ll put you under.”

He didn’t want to waste any more time. Nodding at his arm, he said, “Do your worst.”

She had a feeling that he only respected confidence. So she displayed it. “Have no fear, Officer. Even my ‘worst’ is damn good.”

Stepping back, she called to a nearby nurse and requested a surgical extraction tray with a full complement of instruments, plus a local anesthetic and a needle and thread. The nurse returned quickly, bringing the tray and syringe with her. Setting everything down before Alyx, the older woman went to fetch the needle and thread.

Zane watched as she picked up the syringe. Although able to take a bullet—this wasn’t his first—he’d never been very fond of needles. He blew out a breath, bracing himself. “You don’t have to hang around,” he told Ryan. “Go back to the precinct.”

“You kidding?” Ryan cried. He had every intention of remaining to the bitter end. “I’m not about to leave you.”

Zane didn’t particularly want his partner hovering about, watching him trying not to wince. “Isn’t he supposed to wait outside?” Zane asked Alyx.

“Not if he doesn’t want to,” she answered. She saw right through the man. “You afraid that you might show a little emotion, Officer Calloway?” she guessed.

He seemed to withdraw even further into himself right before her eyes. “Get on with it,” he ordered.

The man would never run the risk of being voted Mr. Congeniality by his peers.

“Yes, sir,” she retorted crisply as if she were a soldier and he the high-ranking commanding officer. “This won’t take too long,” she assured him. “We’ll be done before you know it.”

Alyx unwrapped the tray and left it positioned on a small, adjustable hospital table. Reaching for a small, rectangular packet, she tore it open and removed the antiseptic wipe from inside. Unfolding it, she liberally applied the wipe to his wound, making sure she got the entire area and beyond. The officer stiffened as if he’d been shot again. The antiseptic packed quite a sting.

Heaven forgive her, she felt a fleeting surge of satisfaction.

“Hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

Alyx was fairly certain that Officer Calloway would deny feeling any pain even if he had a bayonet sticking into him. Her father had been that kind of a man, refusing to acknowledge pain because real men didn’t complain.

Gritting his teeth, trying to think of other things, Zane allowed his eyes to slide over her scrubs. “So I guess you really are a doctor.”

She widened her tolerant smile. The man was not the smoothest talker. Finished, she tossed the wipe into a wastebasket. “Yup. Got my diploma from the back of a comic book and everything.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You didn’t.” She spread out the instruments on the tray, wanting to make sure she had everything she needed before she got started. “But you did rub me the wrong way the other night.”

“You rubbed her?” Ryan blurted out, his eyes wide. He’d been silently listening all this time, trying not to get on Zane’s nerves. The bullet in his partner’s arm had been meant for him. If Zane hadn’t pushed him aside, he’d be the one on the hospital bed now—or a slab in the morgue. “And you didn’t say anything? Damn it, Zane, you’ve really gotta learn how to share and tell me things. I’m your partner.”

Zane fixed him with a cold look. “That can be changed.”

Alyx glanced at Calloway’s partner, who came across a great deal more affable than the man she was about to work on. “So I take it that he’s this surly with everyone?” she asked the officer.

Ryan nodded and allowed a sigh to escape. “For the most part.”

“Again, my condolences,” she said. Reaching for the syringe, she held it up and pressed the plunger just enough to release the tiniest drop of solution to make sure that there wasn’t an air bubble going into his arm. “This’ll numb your arm so that you won’t feel anything while I’m working,” she explained.

“Too late,” he bit off, his arm still stung from the antiseptic she’d applied.

For some reason, he could almost feel her smile across his lips as it slid over hers. “Then I guess in this situation we can say better late than never,” she countered.

Alyx paused just before she gave him the injection, pretending that she was trying to recall the steps to the procedure.

“Now, how much of this do I give you?” she murmured under her breath.

“You don’t know?” Zane exclaimed, suddenly alert.

The next second, Alyx jabbed the needle just above his wound.

“It just came back to me,” she informed him cheerfully, then did it again, this time injecting him just below the wound.

Zane gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead. He could feel moisture gathering in his eyes. Damn it, now she would think he was crying.

In all honesty, Zane couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. Maybe never. He hadn’t even cried at his father’s funeral.

The day his heart officially broke.