* * *
Sarah’s breath caught. Jude was awake, was looking at her, tracking her with his eyes, seeing her.
He was seeing her!
“Hello, there,” she whispered, not caring that tears streamed down her face.
He wanted to say something back, but couldn’t, seemed irritated at the ventilator tubing. She glanced at his oxygen saturation. With the vent delivering oxygen, he was satting at ninety-nine percent.
She wanted to take the vent out.
If she did and he wasn’t ready, she’d have to put it back in, would be risking injury, might not be able to re-establish an airway and would never forgive herself.
But truth was if it had been anyone else, she’d have pulled him off the vent already because she didn’t think he needed it. Not anymore.
Maybe he never had, but she hadn’t been willing to risk not maintaining an airway.
“I’m going to pull the vent, Jude. Don’t you dare make me regret doing so,” she ordered, gloving up and pulling the tubing from him.
He groaned during the removal, but sighed once he was free of the tube.
His hand went to his throat and rubbed the area as if that would somehow help.
“Your throat is going to be scratchy and sore for a while from the tube,” she warned, as she put oxygen on him.
“Sarah.”
Her hoarse name on his lips weakened her knees. “You shouldn’t be talking. Just be quiet and use your energy to get better.”
He shook his head, put his hand to his throat, and hoarsely whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, Sarah, I put those firefighters—He’s awake!” Shelley stopped short just inside the emergency room bay.
“Yes.” Straightening from where she’d leaned closer to him, Sarah forced herself into professional mode, doing another quick neuro examination, checking sensation and movement and reflexes.
Other than obvious intense pain with movement, all good.
“If you wanted to play with my feet—” his voice was raspy, but understandable “—you could have just told me you had a foot fetish.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “You wish.”
He cleared his throat. “I do.”
That had her pausing in her examination. “You wish I had a foot fetish?”
His gaze bored into hers. “That you had a me fetish.”
Sarah’s breath caught. Shelley, who was still in the room, cleared her throat from the other side of the gurney where she checked lines.
“You’ve had a rough night, Jude,” Sarah reminded him, trying to shake off all the emotions bombarding her. “You should focus on breathing deeply and not talking. Really. Just be quiet and breathe.”
“Breathing hurts.”
“Try not to and what I’ll do to you will hurt a lot worse,” she warned in the sternest tone she could muster.
“Mouth to mouth?”
“There you go wishing again. I’ll shove that tube down your throat again and this time I won’t be so gentle,” she threatened. “So be quiet and conserve your energy for more essential things, like breathing deeply.”