"Over there," Mel exclaimed, pointing in the direction of several demolished vehicles headed north in the southbound lane. "Isn't that Nancy?"
Jude followed the direction of Mel's arm, squinting into the gloom, and felt a surge of relief as she recognized the head trauma nurse. "Yes! Sax must be with her."
She didn't wait for Mel's reply, but hurried as quickly as she could between the jumble of vehicles toward the team from St. Michael's. As she drew near, she could see Sax leaning through the door of a capsized four-wheel-drive vehicle. Jude's heart jumped, and her first instinct was to run to her. What she wanted to do was touch her, just touch her, and feel the solid certainty of her body. Instead, she forced herself to slow down, took a deep breath, and said, "Just keep the focus on Sinclair, Mel. She'll be recognizable to every viewer. We can't get anything better than this."
Moving carefully around open instrument packs and tackle boxes filled with drugs, Jude edged closer to the car until she was nearly touching Sax's shoulder. A man, apparently the driver, was trapped by the collapsed steering column.
"Nancy, get another flashlight in here will you," Sax said tersely without looking around. "I need to tie off this bleeder and I can't see a damn thing."
"I've got one right here, Nancy," Jude said, holding hers aloft and pointing it into the interior of the front seat. The car was on its side, and the bucket seats were angled nearly perpendicular to the ground. The unconscious middle-aged man was suspended in midair by a spear of metal penetrating his shoulder.
Sax glanced up quickly at the sound of Jude's voice. "It's treacherous down here. I'd be happier if you were doing your thing outside somewhere."
"Ditto," Jude replied. "But here we are. Can I do anything besides hold this light?"
"You think you can pass instruments to me? That'll free Nancy up to check other victims," Sax said, turning her attention back to the deep gaping gash in the man's upper arm. "Seeing as you're staying and all."
"I can manage. If I don't know what it is, just describe it to me." Jude allowed herself one brief caress along Sax's shoulder. "And I missed you, too."
"All right, Ms. Castle," Sax replied, registering the touch and smiling to herself. "You're hired. Hand me a hemostat."
Melissa got as close as she could and for the next eight minutes she documented some of the most exciting footage she had ever shot. Sinclair worked without a single break in her concentration or the slightest hesitation in the swift, smooth rhythm of her hands as she clamped and sutured and tied, controlling the bleeding and dis-impaling the motorist so that the paramedics could lift him out onto a backboard.
"Okay," Sax said with a sigh, resting back on her heels as her patient was taken away. She wiped her forehead with her bare arm, managing only to smear the sweat, smoke, and blood splatters around. Glancing at Jude, she smiled dolefully. "A success, I hope. Let's pack up this gear and keep going. Nancy will be triaging so keep an eye out for her. If there's anyone that needs acute surgical attention, she'll call for me. Otherwise, we'll just direct the paramedics to the ones that need to be evacuated first."
"Understood," Jude replied, hastily rearranging supplies in the drug box.
Thirty minutes later they were nearly at the end of the line of involved vehicles. Rescue workers were approaching from the New Jersey side of the tunnel, although several vehicles burning out of control at that end had hindered their progress. Others worked steadily behind them, transporting the injured to safety as quickly as possible. It seemed to Jude that the water level had risen several inches.
"Looks like most everyone is out," Sax said, watching as the EMTs moved a woman with a fractured leg onto a stretcher.
"Things don't look too stable down here," Jude observed. "I think we should consider getting out ourselves."
"I think you're right. Let's turn around and check all the vehicles on our way back to the Manhattan end."
They had nearly reached the beginning of the pileup, just behind the tanker, when they ran into Deb coming in.
"The structural engineers are afraid part of the ceiling is going to give way," Deb shouted when she saw the three of them approaching. "We're double-checking to make sure all the injured are clear."
"All clear back there," Sax said with a jerk of her head indicating the area they had just come from. "Who's running the show outside?"
"Kirkland showed up," Deb said, indicating one of the attending surgeons from Sax's department. "I just left long enough to do this final canvas."
She didn't mention that she had gone in against the orders of the police because she knew that the three of them were still inside. "Let's get..."
A low rumbling that rapidly built to a roar drowned out her words. The ground beneath them seemed to lift and undulate as if shaken by some giant hand. The four of them struggled to keep their footing as bits of concrete and tile began to rain down on them.
"This section is going to collapse," Sax shouted, grabbing Jude and Mel by the shoulders and pushing them in Deb's direction. "Run!"
The four of them and the few remaining paramedics still in the tunnel began to sprint toward daylight, a distance of fifty yards that seemed like fifteen miles as debris began falling faster. Even Melissa finally gave up filming and simply cradled her camera against her chest. She put her head down and ran. One by one they vaulted over the final barrier of twisted metal and chunks of concrete, while behind them clouds of pulverized stone bore down upon them. Jude had just cleared the tunnel mouth when she realized that Sax was no longer by her side. Barely able to see through the billowing dust, she reached out and caught Mel's sleeve.
"Did Sax pass you?" she screamed over the roar of destruction rapidly closing upon them.
"No! She's right behind..." Mel yelled back, looking over Jude's shoulder, her expression one of dawning horror. "Oh god. She's still in there."
Jude turned and ran back down into the darkness. "Go back," she screamed as Mel caught up to her.
"No way."
"There!" Jude exclaimed, pointing to a swatch of blue next to the overturned truck, just barely visible under a powdering of stone and ash.
Sax was lying face down, a trickle of blood streaming down her neck. A three-inch gash on the back of her head bubbled with blood, bone visible at the base. Jude fell to her knees next to her, unmindful of the shards of glass and metal and jagged rock that tore holes in her jeans. Tentatively, she reached toward her. She was afraid to touch her. She had no idea what death felt like and she was afraid that she might find out. Her fingers hovered just above Sax's shoulder, the shoulder she had caressed not long before. This can't be. She isn't supposed to get hurt. She's the one that makes everything else all right.
"Can we move her?" Melissa yelled, her fear making her voice shrill.
"I don't know," Jude said harshly.
"We've got to," Mel said urgently, watching huge slabs of concrete slide from the walls onto the roadbed. "We don't have any time."
Suddenly, Deb's voice instructed calmly, "Let me in there, Jude." As she slid her fingers under Sax's jaw, checking for a pulse, she said, "It's a good thing I saw you two lunatics running back this way." After a few seconds she raised her head and met Jude's gaze. "She's alive."
"She's not moving. Her head..." Jude's voice was rising rapidly, and she felt things begin to break apart inside. She clenched her fists so tightly that the nails dug into her skin. "Deb... what about her neck..."
"I know, Jude. But we have to get her out of here. I'll stabilize her neck and shoulders if you two can lift her body. Can you do that?"
"Yes. Yes, of course."
Together, they maneuvered the trauma surgeon's unresponsive body clear of the tunnel and onto a stretcher. The three of them piled into the back of an ambulance, Deb quickly beginning the routine resuscitation maneuvers. As she wrapped a tourniquet around Sax's upper arm, she yelled to the driver, "St. Michael's. And call ahead for the neurosurgeon. Let them know we're bringing Dr. Sinclair in. You got that? Tell
them Dr. Sinclair is down."
Jude knelt by the stretcher, completely unaware of what Deb was saying or doing. If there was a world beyond this six by six foot space, she had no memory of it. Everything that mattered to her was just inches away in the form of the dark haired woman who lay so frighteningly still.
*****
Chapter Thirty two
As the double doors of the ambulance swung open, Pam Arnold climbed up onto the rear running board and peered into the interior. She hadn't truly believed the frantic, garbled radio transmission, but as soon as she'd heard it she'd hurried to see for herself, leaving her resident alone in the trauma bay to continue with the evaluation of a fireman who'd fallen from an extension ladder while humping hose up to douse a burning vehicle. Blinking in the glare of the vehicle's ceiling lights, she surveyed a scene she would not soon forget. For a few seconds, trying to absorb the reality of it, she forgot why she had been called.
The trauma fellow, her back braced for balance against the partition that separated the transport section from the cab, was attaching EKG leads to the chief of the division of trauma, who lay unresponsive on the stretcher, naked from the waist up, an IV running into her left arm and a stiff cervical collar immobilizing her neck. The film person-the redhead-was on her knees next to the gurney, Saxon's left hand clasped between both of hers. The look she gave Pam as she turned at the sound of the doors opening was wild--not with hysteria--but with some kind of ferocious protectiveness. In the far corner of the small space a grimy, bedraggled blond in a ratty baseball cap held a camera at eyelevel. Pam shook her head. This was not happening. Saxon Sinclair was not lying on that stretcher.
Pam squared her shoulders and narrowed her gaze, focusing on the patient. As she stepped inside, she asked brusquely, "Is she stable?"
"Vital signs are rock solid," Deb answered steadily, pulling the sheet up to cover Sax's breasts while watching the blood pressure monitor. "Pupils are equal and reactive, but sluggish."
"No respiratory problems?" Pam asked, leaning down to flick her penlight into first one, then the other, of Sax's eyes. She edged aside a few inches to allow the EMTs to pack up the monitors so they could remove the stretcher from the ambulance.
"Nope--she's breathing fine all on her own. She never lost her pulse or pressure."
"Was she ever conscious in the field?"
"No, she's been unresponsive since we found her," Deb said a bit dispiritedly, "but I think we're dealing with just the closed head injury."
"What about the blood?" Pam asked, nodding toward the stain on the sheets and the streaks down Sax's neck, lifting and flexing Sax's limbs as she talked. "Good tone, no hypereflexia," she muttered.
"Her head is cut-something hit her," Jude murmured, wincing as she stood up. Her legs were sore from the lacerations she'd not noticed earlier and her muscles were cramped from kneeling on the rough corrugated floor of the ambulance.
"Stein?" Pam asked, glancing from Jude back to the trauma resident for confirmation as the paramedics slid the gurney from the truck. At Deb's nod of assent, Pam added, "I want to get her right to the CT scanner. They're holding it for us. You good with that?"
"Yes. I'll go with you, just in case there's a problem," Deb replied as she climbed out, Jude and Melissa right behind her.
Hurrying alongside the wheeled stretcher being steered by the paramedics, Pam was about to suggest that the civilians wait in trauma admitting, but one look at the redhead's face made her change her mind. Mentally sighing, she figured it couldn't be any more of a zoo than it was already going to be, seeing who the patient was, and it didn't look like anything short of a nuclear blast could budge the woman from Sinclair's side.
"What's your name?" Pam asked as they commandeered an elevator.
"Jude Castle," Jude replied distractedly, watching Sax's face for some kind of movement. Sax, wake up, for God's sake. Just open your eyes. Just-just come back. Unmindful of Pam's intent stare, she smoothed the backs of her fingers over Sax's cheek. "Can you tell anything yet?"
The eyes she lifted to Pam's were dark with anguish. Pam had seen the look a thousand times. She would have given her the stock answer- Too soon to tell, I'll know more later --not because she didn't care, but because she couldn't share every single person's pain and still be able to work. But it was Saxon Sinclair lying there and this woman so obviously loved her.
"There's no sign of focal injury-no paralysis or anything else to suggest major brain damage," Pam said gently. "That's good. That means there's probably no surgical problem that's causing pressure on one part of the brain. The CT scan will tell us that for sure."
"Then she'll wake up soon? She'll be all right?"
Pam hesitated. "Look…"
"Please," Jude said quietly.
"If it's just a concussion, she'll have a mega headache and nothing else to show for all of this," Pam acquiesced with a sigh, hoping she hadn't just shot herself in the foot by breaking her own rule never to prognosticate. Glancing at Mel, she asked pointedly, "I'd prefer not to have this conversation on tape."
"Sorry," Melissa said, quickly terminating the tape. "It's automatic. You're welcome to see it and we'll erase…"
"Fine, fine," Pam said curtly as they began to disembark, her mind already back on her patient. Stopping at the double doors to the CT suite, she added, "You two will have to wait out here. As soon as I see the scans, I'll let you know. Has anyone called her family?"
"Oh god," Jude gasped. "Maddy-I don't even know her number."
"Try Saxon's on call room-there should be something in her wallet…"
And then the neurosurgeon was gone, and so was Sax. The heavy windowless doors swung shut and Jude was left standing in the stark, harshly lit hallway, wondering how everything had changed so quickly.
"Jude?" Melissa asked softly. "Who's Maddy?"
"Her grandmother," Jude said dully. "I need to call her."
"She'll be okay, you know," Melissa began uneasily. Man, she felt inadequate. She'd never needed to comfort Jude before. She couldn't ever remember her being really upset even, not personally, not about the kinds of things that people usually got upset about--a love affair gone south or a professional setback--nothing that had ever hit her somewhere deep like this had. Jude was always in control; Jude always managed to stay a safe distance away from all the upheaval that plagued most people's lives. "Jude-these people are not going to let anything happen to her. She's…hell, she's…"
"She's just flesh and blood, Melissa," Jude bleakly, "and she's vulnerable, just like all of us." She passed a trembling hand over her face, then seemed to pull herself together with conscious effort. "Come on-let's go see if we can get a key to her on call room."
*****
As she opened the door and stepped into Sax's on call room, Jude thought about the first morning they had met--Sax standing a few feet away, peeling off her faded jeans, looking unconcerned and wholly oblivious to just how damned attractive she was. And totally unaware of the effect she was having on Jude. Jude realized now she'd been hooked from that moment. First her body, then her mind, and now-so much more. Everything. There was a small kernel of panic growing in the pit of her stomach, and she had to work very hard not acknowledge it.
She's going to be fine. You're not going to lose her now.
"Her jacket's on the chair," Melissa observed, watching Jude cautiously. Her friend was standing still, her expression distant, her entire body rigid with tension. "Want me to look?"
"No," Jude replied softly, forcing herself to concentrate on what needed to be done. "I'll do it."
Crossing the room, Jude lifted the black leather jacket, caressing her palm over the surface worn smooth by years of use. She thought of the times she had rested her cheek against it while pressed against Sax on the motorcycle. She wanted to rub her face on it, to search for some lingering hint of the heat of Sax's body or a breath of her scent, but she felt the pockets instead, finally locating the wallet in the inner left hand one. Opening it, sh
e found Sax's driver's license in a clear plastic slot with several other cards behind it. Sliding them out, Jude shuffled through them, noting a medical license, a health insurance card, a donor card, and a finally a card with In case of Emergency typed on it. Maddy's name and number were there.
"She even looks good in her license photo," Melissa remarked, peering over Jude's shoulder, trying to distract her friend from her worry. "That's not fair. Nobody looks good in those."
"Mel," Jude asked, her voice tight, "do you think we need to bring this…donor card?"
"Jeez, no," Melissa said sharply, watching Jude's hands tremble. "Put it back. She's probably awake by now."
"Yes, of course, you're right. I'll call Maddy from radiology and let her know what's happened. The CT scan must be done."
They were almost there when they heard the overhead PA system blare.
Code Blue…Radiology STAT…Code Blue…Radiology STAT…Code Blue…
They looked at one another and ran.
*****
"She's seizing," Deb announced breathlessly as she careened through the doors of the CT room, nearly plowing into Jude and Mel on the other side. "Fuck. Where do they keep the crash carts around here."
"What happened?" Jude cried, her fear building as she realized that Deb looked-scared. "Deb?"
"I don't know. We were moving her out of the CT scanner and she started…shaking…sort of." As she spoke she grabbed a red cart on wheels and began pulling it behind her. "The code team should be here in a second-I've got to get back in there."
Deb pushed the doors open ahead of her with her shoulder and Jude and Melissa followed her inside, never even stopping to discuss it. Pam was bent over the stretcher, lifting Sax's eyelid with one hand, peering intently at her pupils.
"It's the damnedest thing," she muttered to no one in particular. "It looks like REM, but it isn't. Not like anything I've ever seen before."
Radclyffe - Passion's Bright Fury Page 22