No response. I glanced across. Beckett was facing away from me, but I could see the tension in her back. Everyone was looking at her expectantly and she’d frozen, unsure where to start. I turned back to my patient and started trying to stem the bleeding while I talked. “What’s his pulse ox?”
“Um…85,” she said, her voice high and tight.
“Okay. You’re going to need to intubate him.” It wasn’t hard to make my voice soothing. I really felt for her. I remembered how terrifying it had been when I’d run my first trauma and I’d had two years of ER internship by that point. “You ever do that?”
“Once. I mean... I watched a Resident do it.” She paused and I imagined her biting her lip. “Four years ago.”
“You can do it. Head back, visualize the cords…” I talked her through it, step by step. Credit to her, she didn’t miss a beat. Meanwhile, I was trying to put pressure on all the places my guy was bleeding from, but I’d run out of hands. I called Taylor over to help. “Don’t get cut!” I warned her as I showed her where to press.
“I’m in!” Beckett called triumphantly.
I relaxed a little as I heard a nurse start to pump the intubation bag and fill the man’s lungs. “You’re doing great!” I called. By now, I had my hands, Taylor’s hands and a nurse’s hands all pressing on the guy’s leg to stop the bleeding. It was working, but it was dangerous as hell. Taylor was actually having to pass her arms through a couple of the razor-sharp coils of wire to reach him. Where the hell is Maggie with those wire cutters?
My eyes flicked to the guy’s arm: the nurses had rolled up his sleeve to attach a blood pressure monitor and I could see a couple of tattoos: one that was definitely from prison and a weird one that caught my eye. Two crossed rifles beneath a clenched fist. I’d seen that one before.
Fuck.
I looked up at the crowd of men milling around. And this time I spotted them: Colt and his son Seth.
My heart started to pound. “Call Earl, get him over here.” I’d thought we were rid of Colt. Now we had his whole gang in our ER. Razor wire...at a guess, they’d been breaking into somewhere when these guys got injured.
Just seeing that bastard again made me automatically twist around and check that Beckett was okay: that deep, protective urge again. But it was the wrong thing to do because she looked up and saw my expression, then turned and saw Colt herself. I watched as she went pale. Shit. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about. Taylor noticed, too, and caught Seth’s eye. She looked down at the injured men, then back to him: what are you mixed up in? And he just glanced at his dad and gave a tiny shake of his head, apologetic or can’t talk or both.
Part of me wanted to throw the whole gang out of the hospital. But both guys would die if we didn’t treat them. We’d just have to do our jobs and hope Colt didn’t turn violent.
At that moment, Beckett’s patient crashed.
I heard it first as a collective intake of breath from the nurses and then the steady tone of the heart monitor. “Talk to me, Beckett!”
Her voice was strained. “His heart’s stopped! I—get the…” Everyone was talking at once and I lost her voice under the hubbub. So did the nurses: I could hear them muttering in confusion. ”You’ve got to speak up, Beckett!” I called. “People have to hear you!”
I could hear her struggling to make that small voice big. Then it broke free, shaky but clear. “Defibrillator paddles! And 1mg of Epi!”
There was a bustle of activity. I heard Beckett cursing, praying, then the whine of the defibrillator and the thump as it discharged. And then, at last, the steady beep of a healthy rhythm. She’d done it. I craned around and just managed to catch her eye. She was white-faced but she gave me a quick nod of thanks.
Maggie ran up with a pair of wire cutters. At last! I had to nod to her where to cut because I didn’t have a hand to spare. In a few minutes, we’d have cut this godawful stuff off him and then—
He woke up.
It was the one thing none of us had been expecting. He’d been out cold since he was brought in and it hadn’t occurred to us that he’d come round. But as Maggie tried to nudge a loop of wire out of his leg, it scraped a nerve and suddenly he was screaming, half-sitting up. Everything twisted and moved. Maggie’s wire cutters snipped. The wire, suddenly free, uncoiled with a metal shriek. We all jumped back from the gurney. But Taylor, whose hands were within the loops of the wire, had to move slower to avoid slashing her wrists. The end of the wire sprang towards her face.