Nerves of Steel

by CJ Lyons

  Should she try to go for help? How could she--she didn't even know where they were.

  Wanting to scream in frustration, Cassie grabbed one of the canvas drop cloths and took it with her downstairs to where Drake lay, his breathing so loud that it echoed across the walls.

  Sinderson had somehow crawled a few inches toward Drake, blood trailing behind him. He lay there staring at her, confusion in his eyes.

  She ignored him. His head injury would be fatal without immediate surgical intervention, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  Sinderson would soon be dead. She had killed a man. She was a killer.

  Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to think only of Drake. She might be able to save him.

  Drake's breathing was labored and his color ashen. Using the cloth from upstairs, she dressed his leg wound. She gingerly felt his abdomen. He winced.

  "Don't." The word rushed past his gritted teeth.

  Cassie felt his pulse again. Racing and much too weak. The bullet had gone through his liver. He needed blood and surgery to stop the bleeding. Things she could give any patient at her trauma center but there was nothing she could do for him here. She looked up the stairs. If she tried to drag him out to the car she would kill him for sure, and she didn't think she was strong enough anyway.

  His fingers tightened on her arm, pulling her close. "Cell phone," he whispered. She could tell that each breath was agonizing.

  "Where is it?"

  "Took it." She could barely hear him.

  She looked over at Sinderson. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water. He stared at her as she moved over to him, one hand reached out for her. She batted it away, and it flopped to the floor. She forced herself to feel his pockets, but there was no cell phone and no car keys either.

  "Damn it, where are they?" she shouted at the soon-to-be-dead man.

  He smiled at her, then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his body began convulsing. Cassie bit her lip as tears of frustration slid down her face. Sinderson would die soon--and so would Drake if she didn't find a way to get him help.

  CHAPTER 67

  "I'm going to check upstairs," Cassie told Drake. She searched the dusty rooms of the first floor. Nothing there and nothing on the second floor either.

  She sat on the bottom step in front of the living room and thought, tried to visualize herself coming in the door, car keys in her hand. There was no table to put them on, no coat rack, where was the closet? She stood up and looked around again. She found a tiny hall closet under the stairs. In it hung Sinderson's dark wool overcoat.

  Please Lord. She pulled the coat from its hanger and began to search the pockets. There were two key rings in the right hand pocket, one of them Drake's. And, hallelujah, the phone was in the other pocket.

  She dropped the coat and with trembling fingers, she flipped the phone open. She dialed the ER number, electronic tones sang at her, and she was rewarded with the desk clerk's voice.

  "Three Rivers ER, how may I help you?"

  "Jason, it's Cassie Hart. Listen closely. I need a helicopter transport and police here immediately. I have two patients: a severe head trauma and a gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen with internal bleeding."

  "Where are you?" Jason asked.

  She cursed in frustration. "I don't know where the I am, that's the problem. I'm calling from Detective Drake's cell phone. Call the police, tell them what's going on. See if they can trace this. I'll call you back in ten minutes."

  "I'll try my best, doc." Cassie could hear the confusion in his voice.

  "Just do it. I have two dying men out here." She hung up the phone. How much battery time did this thing have? How long would it take to trace it?

  Her only hope was that Drake had some idea where they were. She went back downstairs, taking the coat with her. Drake was noticeably paler, for a second she wasn't even certain if he was alive. As she drew closer she could see his chest rise. She released the breath that had caught in her throat, lay the coat over him and gently squeezed his hand.

  "Hang in there," she urged him. "Help is on its way, but I need to know where we are."

  His eyes didn't open, but his lips moved. She leaned down and was able to hear his rasping whisper. "South on fifty-one," she made out. "East two-oh-one."

  "Okay, I've got it. Please, just hang on, it won't be long." She kissed his forehead, then stood.

  Cassie looked over to where Sinderson lay, his seizure over. He looked dead, but she didn't waste time finding out. She climbed the stairs again and went out to the front porch to look for a mailbox. She saw one down past the car.

  She returned inside and grabbed another drop cloth to wrap around her. She looked for boots but could only find some old rubber shoe covers thrown into the corner of the closet. She put these on after wrapping her feet with strips of cloth.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the cold, her feet burning as she crossed the snow-covered yard. She wrapped her arms around her, cursed her wet clothes that invited the wind to suck away all her body heat and energy. At least the snow had stopped, they could fly. She hurried down to the mailbox and squinted at the faded numbers, thankful for the moonlight.

  Cassie made her way back to the house, tried to ignore her uncontrollable shivering and called Jason again. This time he immediately turned the phone over to someone else.

  "Dr. Hart, this is Sergeant Murphy," came a reassuring voice.

  Murphy, she knew him, he was always stopping by the ER for coffee and gossip. "Murph, glad you're there. Drake says we're off Route 201, east of Route 51. The only address I could find was a rural delivery route number ten, house number ends in three-seven."

  "Got it. We've state police standing by, we'll relay that information to them."

  "Get a chopper in the air headed this way. Drake's really bad off, we need to get him into the OR."

  "They're on the pad, I'll have Jason tell them to take off."

  "Good. There's room to land on the front lawn. I'll turn all the lights on in the house and turn the car lights on."

  "That's fine, Doctor. Just leave the cell phone on while you do that."

  "Okay. First, send a message to the chopper crew to have six units of O neg ready to go and a pleuravac and chest tube tray. A vent also," she said quickly, her thoughts racing. Most of that was gear the team would have anyway, but she wanted to be sure.

  "We copy that," a second voice came over the phone. This one was overlapped by static.

  "Zack, is that you?"

  "Yes. We'll be taking off as soon as the blood gets here. Winds are pretty high, so weight's an issue. I've got a full crew and room for two, is that enough?"

  Cassie knew that he was asking if she was functioning or if she was going to be another patient.

  "That'll be fine, Zack."

  "Glad to hear it. I'll talk to you soon to get LZ details. We're taking off now."

  "Is the scene safe?" Murphy broke in.

  She sighed. Except for the possibility of a good man dying it was as safe as it could be. But that wasn't what Murphy meant. It was the first question any police officer, fireman or paramedic was trained to ask: if they became a victim, they were only adding to the problem.

  "Yes," she said. "The scene is safe."

  He probably wanted to know about Sinderson, but she didn't want to tell him over an insecure phone line, besides, she really didn't want to think about Sinderson at all. She wanted to focus all of her energy and effort on saving Drake.

  Cassie sat the phone down, not waiting for their reply. She had no more energy for talking.

  She quickly moved through the house, turning on any lights that she could find that still functioned. Then she moved Drake's car, pointing it so that the headlights aimed toward the power lines coming into the side of the house. She went back into the house and checked on Drake. He was unconscious, his belly now obviously distended, his pulse weak and rapid.

  There wa
s nothing she could do until the transport team arrived. Cassie cursed her helplessness. It couldn't end this way, it just couldn't. She wouldn't let Drake die, not after he had saved her life. If he hadn't been there, she'd be dead by now. The realization made her dizzy.

  She took a deep breath, steadied herself and went back up the stairs. She grabbed the phone and went out onto the porch, the drop cloth wrapped around her like a matador's cape flapping in the breeze.

  "Zack, you there?"

  "We just crossed I-70," came the chopper pilot's reply.

  "Do you have my location yet?"

  "The state police are supposed to be getting back to us any minute."

  "Tell them to hurry, Drake can't wait. The LZ will be the front yard. There's electrical and phone lines coming in from the road to the side of the house. The yard slopes slightly, no trees, no ice that I can see--"

  "Hang on a second, the Staties are on the other channel." She returned to the front room, glad to be out of the wind. Then Zack was back.

  "I've got your twenty. Be there in five. Staties on the way also. Just hang on, doc."

  CHAPTER 68

  They were the longest five minutes of Cassie's life as she scanned the skies for the lights of the helicopter. Then she saw blinking lights moving rapidly across the sky and soon after, she could hear the low throbbing of the Sikorksy's finely tuned engine. The chopper circled low around the yard and made a perfect landing.

  She dropped her canvas cloth, couldn't risk it blowing into the rotor, and ran across to the front of the chopper. No one tried to talk as they rotated the gurney out of the helicopter and carried it through the snow to the porch.

  "What've we got?" The flight doctor raised the visor from his helmet, and she was surprised to see that it was Ed Castro. Her boss never flew, he hated flying, even more than she did. She was thrilled to see him--Drake couldn't be in better hands.

  "Thirty-four year old male, gunshot wound. One entry to abdomen, exit to right chest, second through and through to right thigh. Airway intact, he's in shock, weak distal pulses, abdomen distended. Hemorrhage controlled from leg wound." She gave him the synopsis as the nurse and paramedic wrestled the gurney down the cellar stairs.

  "You mentioned a head wound?"

  "He's DOA."

  "Holy shit," the paramedic muttered as he looked around.

  "Get that oxygen on him." Cassie pointed at Drake. The medic turned to look at Cassie, and she realized that she must look bizarre with her wet clothes and blood covered body. "Ed, you'll have to start the IV, I don't trust my hands. How are his vitals?" she asked the nurse who crouched beside Drake.

  "Holding steady." The nurse wrote the time and the vitals on a wide strip of tape stretched along the thigh of her flight suit.

  "Hang the Oneg," Cassie ordered. "Let's C-collar him and get him on to the back board." Together they gently moved Drake onto the board, then lifted him onto the gurney. Footsteps thudded overhead.

  "We're down here!" she shouted. A burly state trooper appeared at the top of the steps, one hand on his holster. With his help, they were able to quickly move the gurney up the stairs.

  "Hey, someone's got to stay and explain all this," the trooper shouted as they began to move out to the Sikorsky. "You've got some questions to answer." He grabbed Cassie's arm.

  Ed Castro came to her rescue. "She'll not be answering any questions until she receives medical attention," he told the young trooper in a frosty tone. A tone Cassie was glad to not be on the receiving end of. The trooper shrugged and let her go. She quickly jumped into the chopper and strapped herself into the seat at Drake's head. She put on a headset and connected it into the box at her side.

  "How're you doing, doc?" Zack asked as soon as he had them safely in the air and headed back to Three Rivers.

  "Just hurry," Cassie urged.

  Finally, she saw the lights of Pittsburgh draw near. A few moments later she could make out the helipad outside the doors of her ER.

  Zack brought them down gently, and they scrambled out of the helicopter while it was still running hot. Cassie kept up as best she could, but the waiting surgical resident and trauma nurse hustled the gurney through the doors, leaving her standing in the cold beside the helicopter. Ed Castro took her arm and helped her inside the ER where he sat her down into a wheelchair.

  He began to push her down the corridor. Cassie saw the looks on the faces of her coworkers. From their expressions she must look half dead. No wonder, she was soaking wet and covered in hers, Drake's, and Sinderson's blood. Her nose was still dripping mucus and blood, she tried to wipe it, but was rewarded only with a wave of pain. It didn't matter, as long as Drake was going to be all right.

  Then Ed turned the chair into one of the critical care rooms. "Take me up to the OR," she demanded.

  "No." He closed the door behind him. "You need to be taken care of, I don't know how you stayed on your feet as long as you have. You're frozen, you've lost blood, your nose is broken, Lord only knows what other injuries you have. Was that really Neil Sinderson?"

  She looked at him and realized it was futile to argue. Finally she nodded. "Yes, it was. I killed him."

  Ed leaned against the sink. "Jesus, Cassie, what happened?"

  "Sinderson killed Fran Weaver. And he poisoned Richard. If it hadn't been for Drake, I would have been next."

  "The press is going to have a field day with this." He shook his head. "We'll deal with them and the police later. First, you get out of those clothes." He opened the warmer and gave her two blankets. He turned his back and picked up the phone while she struggled with her sweater. "Rachel would you join me? Yes, it is Cassie Hart."

  A few minutes later Cassie found herself on the gurney wearing a hospital gown and bundled in warm blankets. The nurse didn't ask anything, and Cassie was glad. This whole process of being a patient was so humiliating.

  Ed examined her injuries, ordered an IV, lab tests, tetanus booster, X-rays and surgical consultation. Suddenly she wasn't a doctor or a person anymore, just the trauma in Room Two with multiple facial and extremity injuries. Her head CT was normal, urine dipped negative, nose was broken and would require surgical repair as would her right Achilles tendon.

  Her forearm laceration was deep but did not require surgery so Ed sutured it himself while they were waiting for her room to be ready--there was a delay in processing the admission because Cassie didn't have her insurance information with her.

  "Don't you have a wife to go home to?" she asked Ed after she finished arguing with the admissions clerk.

  "Hold still." He placed a subcutaneous suture.

  "How's Drake?" Every time she asked, no one would give her a straight answer--you lose your clout when you became a patient, she was learning.

  Ed glanced at the clock. "You asked me that ten minutes ago. Believe me, when I hear something, you'll be the first to know."

  She sighed. She'd asked Rachel to call his mother in Florida and talk to his fellow police officers. Several of the detectives had tried to interview her, but Ed had chased them out each time. She closed her eyes, prayed for him to finish. God, this waiting was worse than anything. She sat up again.

  "When are we going to hear anything? Will you call upstairs?"

  "I said, hold still," he snapped. "I know why they say doctors make the worst patients."

  "Goddamn it, Ed, I'll sign out AMA and go see for myself."

  "Just a minute, only two more to go." He finished repairing the laceration, then stood up. "I'll go call--you," he said in a threatening voice, "stay put. Rachel, if she moves, put her in restraints."

  Rachel applied antibiotic ointment to the laceration and dressed it. "We were so worried when you called," she chided Cassie. "Ed insisted on going in the helicopter, and you know how much he hates flying."

  "I know," Cassie admitted.

  Ed returned. "He'll be out of the OR and in ICU in twenty minutes. The surgery went fine, patched up his liver without problems, the bullet missed the vena
cava."

  "They ran the bowel?"

  "Yes, no perforations."

  Cassie lay back. Drake was going to be okay.

  And that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 69

  Drake woke with a throbbing head, throat rubbed raw, and a hose running out of his nose. He'd been kicked in the chest by a mule, every breath was a surge of fire through his body. That was how he knew he was alive--being dead couldn't possibly hurt this bad.

  He opened his eyes, but saw nothing except bright lights and white ceiling tiles. "Hart," his voice was barely a croak. He tried again. "Hart?" He tried to sit up, but his head spun and his vision went black. "Where's Cassandra Hart?"

  "I already told you, she's fine. Now hold still while I give you some medicine," a woman's voice commanded.

  "No." He batted her arm away. He struggled again to sit up, this time succeeding. He looked down at his body in surprise. Not only did he have a tube in his nose but there were also tubes coming from both his chest and abdomen. A small nest of three of them in his shoulder led to some bright yellow fluid hanging on a pole. One in his bladder too, he realized at the same time that he saw that he was naked under the flimsy hospital gown.

  "Hold still, you'll tear your stitches," the nurse said, a firm grip on his arm with one hand. With the other she pushed a button, and the head of his bed came up, just in time for him to slump back against it.

  Damn, he felt as weak as a newborn. Where the hell was Hart? What had happened? He remembered her telling him that everything was going to be all right, but everything else was a fog.

  "Where's Dr. Hart?" he asked again, his voice stronger this time.

  The nurse looked at him and sighed. "I've told you a hundred times, she's fine. She had her surgery this morning. How about you go back to sleep? I'll give you some pain medicine."

  "No, please. I need to know. What happened?" Drake could tell by the look on her face that he'd asked that before.

  "It's the sedation, it disorients some people," came a friendly voice from the doorway.

  Drake looked up and saw Hart smiling at him. Christ, she looked like hell. She looked wonderful.

  Both her eyes were blackened and almost swollen shut, her nose and upper lip were also swollen with stitches in her lip bristling like black hairs. Her left arm was bandaged and she was wearing hospital scrubs, leaning on crutches, her left leg in a cast.