But Angie took a step closer to him.
“I can’t let them get to my platoon,” he said, his eyes flashing from Angie to a spot behind her.
“I won’t let them…Corporal? Or Sergeant?”
“Corporal McIver.”
“I’m a Sixty-Eight Whiskey,” Angie said, using the army lingo for combat medic. “Sergeant Cullen.”
“Haven’t seen you around here before, Sarge.”
“I’m an F6.” A flight medic. “Maybe that’s why. But I’ve been around.”
The trembling hand that clutched the knife stilled and the man’s breathing slowed ever so slightly. “You cover me while I get a doctor?”
“Yes, I’ll cover you. But the doctors can’t help until you put the knife down, okay? Nobody here’s going to hurt you, Corporal.”
Stateside, Angie had seen plenty of soldiers with PTSD, but nothing quite like this. She herself had had a few flashbacks, occasional nightmares over the years, but this guy was reliving something; he thought he was actually there, in the theater of war. She tried to catch Vic’s eyes. If security or the cops came busting in, things could get real bad. The sight of a gun or a uniform could tip this McIver guy completely over the edge.
“You!” the man said, pointing toward Vic and Julie with his free hand. “You a doctor?”
Vic bravely nodded, but Julie froze up.
“Doc, I need something for my heart. It’s beating so fast it’s going to explode.”
“All right, sir,” Vic said. “I’m going to ask my colleague here to go get something to help calm you down.” She turned and whispered to Julie. It was at that moment that two security guards roared through the double doors, their Tasers drawn.
“No!” Angie yelled. “Hold on!”
McIver took a lunging step toward Vic, then pivoted toward Angie, grabbing her by the wrist as a Taser dart hit him the chest. He wheeled around, staggered, dragging Angie with him. The hand holding the knife flailed wildly as they crumpled to the floor, his body dead weight on her, the shock of the Taser doing its job and incapacitating him. But a sharp pain lanced through Angie’s upper abdomen. She wrenched herself out from under him, the pain in her side a hot poker. She inched her hand down to where it hurt. It came back sticky with blood. Shit.
The security guards were all over the fallen McIver, handcuffing him, but he was lying on the floor like a fallen tree—motionless, semi-conscious, gasping for air. Shocking someone in agitated delirium wasn’t usually a good idea; people died from it every year.
Julie was at McIver’s side with her stethoscope and barking orders for a stretcher. Before Angie could crawl away much further, Vic was on her hands and knees, bending over her, her face a map of worry lines.
“Angie, are you hurt? You’re gray.”
“I…I think maybe.”
Vic’s eyes traveled the length of her body, settling on what Angie could now see was a bloody patch on her shirt.
“All right, lie back and don’t move. Liv! Somebody! I need a stretcher over here too.”
“Vic, wait—”
“Angie, this could be serious. I think he got with you with the knife. And I know he didn’t mean to, I saw it all go down, but I don’t want you to talk right now. We’re going to get you into a treatment room and take a look at you, okay?”
Angie jerked a thumb toward the man who’d hurt her. He was being hauled onto a stretcher, completely unconscious now. “I think he needs help first.”
“Julie’s got him. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Words deserted her, so she smiled instead. The pain was beginning to flood her senses, fog up her mind. For an instant she was back in Afghanistan, crawling out of the troop carrier she’d been in after it rolled over. The vehicle ahead, a Humvee, had run over a buried mine, and Angie’s vehicle couldn’t avoid the mess in time, glancing off the burning heap and into a ditch beside the road. There was the stink of burning metal, spilled diesel fuel, burning flesh and hair too. Even now the memory of it seared her nostrils, making her want to gag.
“Angie? Angie, stay with me, sweetheart.” Vic. Her voice was calm, measured, but Angie could hear the worry beneath the veneer.
She cried out as hands slid her onto a hard plastic board, which was then placed on a stretcher. It reminded her of the pain from the broken wrist she’d suffered in the rollover. Nothing, however, that compared to what had befallen some of her fellow soldiers. She’d managed to apply a tourniquet to a soldier’s leg with her good wrist; a hunk of shrapnel the size of a hammer stuck out of his thigh. She sprinkled clotting powder on the gaping chest wound of another. Jesus, it was awful. A third soldier, blackened from fire, hung half out of the driver’s door of the burned wreck, his eyes still open, frozen in a look of terror.
Someone had hold of her hand as she was being wheeled down the hall. It was Vic. She squeezed it to let her know how much the simple act comforted her.
“Vic.”
“Shh, don’t talk right now. I need you to save your energy. And I need you to stay calm. Can you do that for me?”
Angie nodded. But there are things I need to tell you, she shouted in her head. The reason she’d come here to wait for Vic’s shift to end was so she could tell her that she loved her, that she would wait until however long Vic needed to figure out her life. That she wouldn’t pressure her in any way. She’d been planning to tell her how much she missed seeing her, talking to her, and, well, kissing her too. Kissing her, for sure. She’d been planning to say a lot of things.
“I’m sorry, Vic.” She wasn’t sure whether she’d spoken out loud or not.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Heart rate is one-twenty,” Liv said of Angie. “Respiration is forty, blood pressure ninety over sixty.”
Okay, okay. All good, Vic reassured herself. She took a long, steadying breath, startled by the shakiness in her knees. Angie had a penetrating stab wound to her upper left abdomen, right beneath her ribs. She’d treated these same injuries hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. Piece of cake. And yet…and yet. Her head spun because it was Angie Cullen lying semiconscious before her—bleeding, pale, sweating from the pain. Her Angie. The woman who’d come to mean more to her than she’d ever dreamed possible and in such a miraculously short period of time. Oh, how she’d tried to resist, throwing up roadblocks at every turn, discounting and excusing and denouncing and, as a last resort, ducking for cover. She’d driven Angie away with her stupid insecurities and fears, and for that, she wanted to smack herself. Of course reconciling with Karen was a terrible idea, so why the hell had she allowed Karen a foothold to fuck with her head? Why had she even entertained the idea that she might be confused about what she wanted? And worse, use it as an excuse to pull away from this woman? Oh, Ange, what the hell have I done?
“Vic?” Liv pinned her with her eyes. “Should I get someone else…?”
“No.” It was all hands on deck with Julie and Jeff Greene trying to revive McIver in the next room. Vic was it, and she needed to pull herself together for Angie’s sake. I can’t lose her. Not now.
She took a couple of deep breaths to slow herself down, the way she’d trained herself to do in a crisis. Every command, every move, needed to come with calm deliberation. It was how she exerted her dominance over a situation that was often on the brink of sliding into chaos.
“Give her some O-2 and let’s get an IV in her. Angie, can you hear me?”
Angie nodded weakly.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get a chest x-ray, an abdominal CT scan, EKG, and blood gases. I’ve already alerted Surgery. I can’t be sure yet of your injuries, but it’s a penetrating stab wound in your upper left abdomen. A inch or two in, by the looks of it.” She reached for Angie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’ve got you, okay?”
“This…” Angie winced in pain. “I never thought something…like this…would happen to me. Not stateside. Iraq…Afghanistan maybe.” Her eyes looked more haunted than
scared, and Vic could only imagine the tragedies Angie had witnessed, all of them so far away from home, while overseas. “Will you stay with me?”
Tears pricked the back of Vic’s eyes. She leaned close and whispered roughly, “Baby, I’m not leaving your side. I promise you.”
Twenty minutes later, Angie was on her way upstairs for surgery, Vic holding her hand as the bed was wheeled down the hallway and into the elevator. Angie’s spleen had been lacerated. They’d try to repair it, but if they couldn’t, there would need to be a splenectomy. Which meant she’d gotten off lucky. If the knife had nicked her intestines or a vital organ, Angie would be a world of trouble right now.
She had to let her go at the automatic doors leading into the surgical suites, and it was like a physical cleaving of something from her body. A hollowness crept into her gut as she stumbled down the stairwell back to the main level, tears blurring her vision. Angie would be okay. She was healthy, young, would tolerate surgery well. And if it came to a splenectomy, it was really no big deal. People lived long, healthy lives without one, so it wasn’t that. It was…
Christ, she didn’t know what it was, except she was scared, desperate for everything to be okay. How incredibly different this was from a typical patient, someone she’d treat in the ER before either shipping them home or off to Surgery, Cardiology, the Medical Floor, ICU…somewhere else. Once they were gone from her sphere of concern, it was onto the next patient without so much as a glance back. There was always someone else about to come through the door, and once her role was completed, that was it, out of sight out of mind. It was the only sane way to do her job, to be able to focus on the tasks at hand. But Angie… She didn’t, couldn’t, let her go. Screw the rest of the patients piling up in the waiting room. Angie was not just anyone. Angie was everything, and that, she realized, was something she’d been waiting for, wanting more than anything, and for a very long time.
“Hey,” said Julie, intercepting her outside the stairwell door. “You okay?”
Vic leaned against the wall, holding herself like she might unravel. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“You look a little green around the gills. Angie okay? I hear she went up to Surgery.”
“She’s okay. Spleen. What about McIver?”
Julie shook her head. “He didn’t make it.”
What a waste, Vic thought. All of it. A guy—a former soldier—dead. And he’d hurt Angie. Goddammit. For what? What had been the point of it all?
“Vic, go home. Or go wait for Angie to get out of surgery. The rest of us can cover the department, plus I’ve had Dr. Atkinson alerted that she might have to come in if things get busier.”
“I appreciate it, but no need. I’m okay, I’ll—”
“No. You’re not. I know you outrank me, but I’m putting my foot down.” There was a don’t-fuck-with-me edge to Julie’s voice that Vic appreciated. “And if you don’t listen to me, you’ll have Liv to answer to.”
Vic snorted a laugh. “Well then. In that case, I’d be wise to take your advice, Dr. Whitaker. I know when I’ve been sufficiently ganged up upon.”
“Smart woman.” Julie patted her shoulder. “I’ll be up to check on you and Angie later.”
“Thanks.” Vic turned to head up the stairs again before halting. “And Julie?”
“Yes?”
“When things settle down…I’d like to get to know you better. We haven’t really had much of a chance yet to become friends, and I’d like to change that.”
“Me too.” Julie smiled. “I’d like that a lot.”
* * *
Angie had no idea how much time had passed, but she sure as hell knew where she was. In the recovery room. In the hospital. Images flashed in her mind. The big ex-soldier with the panicked eyes and the knife in his hand, smelling sour, looking haunted. The security guards rushing in, the stumble, the blade catching her, the explosion of pain in her side. Fuck. Vic holding her hand, bending over her, talking quietly to her in the treatment room before the sedation kicked in and everything had gone black.
“How’s the pain?” a nurse asked her. “Between one and ten.”
“Um…” She squirmed a little to test herself, and the tiny move shot a bolt of pain through her side. “A four, I think. What have you got me on?”
“Fentanyl. Don’t worry, we’re going easy on it.”
“Where’s…what happened…in the OR?”
She was still groggy, but she remembered being wheeled up to surgery, Vic telling her something about her spleen being injured.
“The surgeon will be by to talk to you. Then you’re being moved to a bed.”
“What about Vi…Dr. Turner?”
“Ah, good, the patient is awake.”
It was Vic, and a glow warmed Angie from the inside, spreading outward, like the sun warming everything in its path. The haze of pain, the uncertainty of what had happened to her, instantly vanished, because Vic was here. Smiling at her. Looking at her like everything was going to be okay.
“Hi, Dr. Turner,” the nurse said. “I’ll be right over here if either of you need me.”
“Thank you, Jessie.” Vic sat down on the vacated stool beside the bed and gingerly took Angie’s hand—the one without the IV in it. “I’m so happy to see you awake.” She stroked the back of Angie’s hand softly.
“Oh, Vic. I’m so glad you’re here. What the hell happened?”
“I just talked to Tim—Dr. Kennedy, your surgeon—out in the hall. He’ll be in to chat with you in a few minutes. They had to repair your spleen, but he thinks it went well. He didn’t have to do a splenectomy. They’ll check in a week or two to see if it’s functioning properly. If not, they might have to remove it at that point. And I talked to your mom.”
“You did?” Her family would be sick with worry; she was surprised they weren’t camped out in the hallway, trying to bust their way in.
“And yes, they’re crazy with worry, but I think I convinced them to stay home and get some sleep and to visit you in the morning. But I basically had to tell them you were in a coma for the next few hours and wouldn’t even know if they were here or not.”
Angie started to laugh, but it hurt too much.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart? How’s the pain?”
The blaze in Vic’s eyes, the map of worry on her forehead, the urgent stroking of her hand, was almost too much for Angie to bear. A tear and then another rolled down her cheeks. Shit. She didn’t want Vic to see her cry. She was a fucking ex-soldier, for Christ sake. What had happened to her sucked, but she wasn’t mortally wounded, wasn’t going to die. It was nothing compared with what she’d seen others have to deal with.
Vic reached up and thumbed the tears away. “Oh, Angie, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking, her eyes glistening.
Angie pulled her hand away. She didn’t want them both dissolving into tears. Instinctively she wanted to protect Vic. “I’m okay. I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”
“No. I hate what happened to you. I should have handled the situation differently. I should have made sure security was better apprised of what was going on instead of rushing in there like a house on fire. And then when—”
“Shh. Stop, okay? He was a ticking time bomb. And he wasn’t going to go quietly.” They were both experienced enough to know how volatile situations like these were, how unpredictable someone suffering a mental breakdown could be, how fast events moved.
Vic’s gaze wandered as she retreated into her own private contemplation of the tragedy. Her face took on the hard and unforgiving expression of someone who wasn’t about to stop blaming herself, no matter what Angie said.
“What happened to him? McIver?”
Vic shook her head.
“Shit.”
“Look,” Vic said. “I’m so sorry you were there, that you got caught up in it. Why were you there? In the waiting room?”
“I…I was waiting for you.” I’d wait until the end of time for you, Victoria Turner, only I
never got the chance to tell you that. “I…I was—”
The surgeon, a tall man garbed in scrubs, cleared his throat loudly as he strode past the empty recovery room beds to Angie’s side, the bounce in his step giving no indication that it was the small hours of the morning. “Dr. Turner. Ms. Cullen.” He smiled and pulled up an extra stool. “Let’s have a chat, shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vic had managed three hours of sleep in the staff lounge, enough to get by on, but she wasn’t entirely firing on all cylinders as she took the elevator up to Angie’s room on the surgical floor. Maybe she could blame her crazy idea on her exhaustion. She would if she had to, because she was taking a sizable gamble with it.
Angie’s parents, her brother Nick and his wife Claire hadn’t left her side all morning. Vic was envious of how close they were, of how much they doted on Angie and how Angie pretended she was indifferent to their attentiveness. But Vic knew Angie ate it up, and so she should. She was lucky to have such an involved, caring family who loved her unconditionally. People learned how to love and be loved from the people who surround them in life. In Vic’s case, she’d learned love only because it was the polar opposite of what she’d been taught. It was like figuring out beauty when all you saw was ugliness.
“Vic, honey,” said Suzanne, pointing to an empty chair. “Did you get some sleep?”
“A little.”
Claire smiled warmly at her, and Vic decided she would like to get to know her better. She could be a good friend. In fact, all of the Cullens could be good friends. Vic had never felt so comfortable with a pack of strangers.
“We’re here for the day if you want to go home,” Claire said helpfully.
Vic ignored the vacant seat and continued to stand. “I will a little later, thank you.” She caught Angie’s curious eyes and held them for a moment, aware that she’d struck the pose of someone about to make an announcement. Which she was.
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