Questions were still being fired at him. “What happened to her? Has she ever passed out before?”
“I don’t know what happened to her,” Stefan lied, and forced belief into the minds of any hearers.
The tall doctor said, in a voice of controlled urgency: “Get her hooked up now!”
“What’s her general health like?” the redhead demanded at the same time.
“She—she’s always been healthy. Tonight—I just walked into her dorm room—she was waiting for me—I was supposed to meet her there. But her door was ajar and when I went inside I saw her lying on the floor, dead out. I grabbed her and headed this way.”
The tall doctor was saying, “Get two large bore IVs in her! I want two liters normal saline wide open! And let’s get her labs: blood type and cross, CBC, CMP, coags, UA, UDS, and a pregnancy test.”
Stefan opened his mouth to say that Elena wasn’t pregnant, but the redhead was saying, “You didn’t call nine-one-one?”
“I thought she might be dead! I wasn’t waiting an extra second!”
Now they were putting very large IV needles into the crooks of both Elena’s elbows. Stefan felt his eyes fill with tears as they hung two bags of clear fluid over IV poles, their contents dripping through tubes into Elena’s arms. Elena hated needles. She should be screaming in fury—but she might never make a sound again.
Because of him. Because he had lost control; because he was a monster.
“Is she pregnant?” the red-haired man asked sharply.
“No!” Stefan said, shocked and angered—and surprised at himself for both reactions, since they were doing a pregnancy test anyway. “She is definitely not pregnant!”
By this time Elena had been hooked up to machines that blinked and beeped and displayed numbers. Her clothes had disappeared; she was wearing a hospital gown.
As everyone seemed to focus on the displays of the machines, a moment of silence descended.
Someone, somewhere said, “Mother of God.” And then the hubbub came back. “Pressure’s only forty over thirty!” “Pulses are very weak—thready—” “Extremities are cold and clammy!” “Extremely poor cap refill—” “But there’s not a cut or bruise on her anywhere!” “And not a bloodstain, either—”
Stefan scanned the graying doctor’s mind. Need to get fluids into her right now, the woman was thinking. She’s crashing!
Yes, yes, Stefan thought. Elena needed fluids; needed blood specifically, but maybe saline solution would help. The red-haired man had disappeared, freeing up Stefan’s mental resources, but a new doctor had entered the small room, and Stefan tensed as he glanced at the stranger’s mind.
He was the trauma surgeon. He looked harmless, conferring quietly with the graying ED physician, but his job was to “open Elena up and look for leaks inside” and of all things Stefan did not want that. Elena wasn’t leaking anywhere inside, and if this man operated on her he would kill her.
Suddenly words dragged him out of his brooding haze.
“—if we do that we can at least rule out ectopic pregnancy,” the trauma surgeon was saying to the tall doctor.
“I agree,” the woman said. “Let’s get a pelvic ultrasound on this girl.”
No, no, no! Stefan thought. Elena didn’t need the test. She needed blood. Just blood. Why couldn’t they see that?
At that moment the slender, brown-skinned doctor said, “Her labs are back! Her H and H is 4 and 14!”
Hemoglobin and hematocrit, Stefan’s mind translated. Blood values at last—but so low! If not for his constant attention she would have been a corpse ten minutes ago.
The tall doctor sucked in her breath and said, “Call the blood blank; we need to activate an MTP right now.”
Stefan, just on the point of Influencing the doctor again, felt an almost painful wave of relief flood over him. A massive transfusion protocol. Blood for Elena at last.
Or not exactly blood, he realized, as he rifled through the tall doctor’s mind. Six units each of packed red blood cells, fresh frozen plasma, and random donor platelets.
But, he thought, when the doctors saw that Elena was hanging onto her progress as they pumped blood products into her they would keep giving her more.
For the first time, trembling inside with the fragility of the hope, Stefan allowed himself to believe that Elena might survive.
He wanted to kiss the tall graying doctor and the slender, brown-skinned doctor. He even wanted to kiss the mahogany cheek of the trauma surgeon, who had refrained from opening Elena up and killing her. But more than anything, with an anguish that he had to dampen to endure, he wanted to see Elena wake up.