But he could trust their working relationship, so he leaned on it now.
“Ice and morning rush hour are always bad. I’m going to bet we’ve got some broken bones, head trauma, maybe stress-induced cardiac events.” With any other partner Gabriel wouldn’t gamble on the injuries they’d find on accident scenes, it could come off as callous, but no money was ever involved. It had actually turned into a teaching method between them, or more for Penny. She didn’t have medical school under her belt, but she had extremely good instincts, and the more she learned, the better at her job she got. She’d already gotten to the point where she could anticipate his needs at least as well as any nurse he’d ever worked with in the ER.
“I’m gonna bet on...some kind of bashing chest injury. Pneumothorax. Hemothorax. Something like that. Flail chest, maybe. Breathing difficulties. Did you double-check inventory on your last shift? What do I need to grab when we jump?”
He went through a list of what he’d grab, confirmed his freshly stocked bag, and told her to grab the board and he’d grab oxygen then run ahead.
“Two minutes,” she announced, and then groaned into the headset in a way that set him instantly alert.
“What is it? Are you sick?”
“Look down there.” She nodded ahead to the accident scene they were still a good mile away from. Headlights and taillights pointed in all different directions, and there was an overturned tractor trailer blocking two lanes.
“Where are you going to set down?”
“Back of the semi, there’s a clear space where cars can’t get until that thing is moved...”
“Okay.” He unbuckled and climbed into the back to grab his bag and a couple of items, assuming she wasn’t ill since she hadn’t said, and didn’t look it, then held on as she touched down.
The chopper bounced a little and then actually slid, which was new.
“Are we sliding?” he shouted over his shoulder.
“For about a second. Careful when you climb out.”
“You too.” He looked at the board, considering if it’d be too much for her to carry with the slick conditions, then grabbed the oxygen and went ahead with his original plan.
That was another reason he didn’t want her flying right now, because he factored her well-being into every decision, and there wasn’t time for that on the ground.
He wrenched open the door and eased out then, with the bags on one shoulder and oxygen on the other, began slipping his way around the semi, and had to grab the hulking metal beast twice to keep from falling down.
Just on the other side of it, one of the cops organizing the scene met him and directed him to his patient’s vehicle, an upside-down rust-colored SUV with glass shattered all around.
“My pilot is coming with the board—direct her.”
He didn’t worry that she’d see the wreck, but there were at least fifteen cars he could see with massive damage and no doubt casualties, and he needed her to find him.
He hurried along a path through the wrecks that had been obviously hand-salted, and which provided him better traction. Another NJSP trooper had crawled in through the passenger window. Gabriel could only see legs and feet and so rounded the vehicle to gain access from the other side.
“I’m Dr. Jackson,” he said immediately as he looked inside. On the roof, lying over a shattered sun roof, a man lay on his back, white button-down shirt saturated with blood and a tire iron sticking out of his chest.
The officer sat upright, wedged between the seats so she could apply pressure.
“We didn’t take it out,” she said immediately, “but he’s still bleeding. I applied pressure as best I could...”
“Okay, get out and when my partner gets here, direct her in that side,” he ordered, and lifted up so he could better examine his patient, almost wishing the man was unconscious. “What’s your name?”
“Darren.” He said the short first name, and Gabriel could tell he was having trouble breathing. Damn if Penny hadn’t nailed it. She hadn’t called an open pneumothorax, but she’d called chest damage and difficulty breathing.
“I’m going to get you to Manhattan Mercy, Darren. As soon as I can.” He gloved and pulled the compress away from the base of the wound, doing his best not to move the iron, but even a slight touch caused more pain. “I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to decide if we can pull it out.”
“I wish you would.”
Penny appeared at the other window and crawled in, dragging another bag with her and pulling out oxygen to hook up to the bottle he’d carried.
“His name is Darren.” Gabriel filled her in, handing her the bottle. “He needs a line and he needs morphine.”
Judging by the usual length of a tire iron, Gabriel estimated that Darren had about four inches of metal jammed into his ribs. The difficulty breathing could be because of the pain—the more it hurt to breathe, the more shallowly people breathed.
Penny didn’t waste any time. She tied off his arm and threaded in a catheter before Gabriel could listen to his chest to decide whether to pull out the iron.
“If we lay the seats down, we can get probably get him out the hatchback,” she said, flushing the line. “Darren, I’m going to give you something for pain, and you’re going to go to sleep. We’re going to take you by air to the hospital, so you will be in the hands of a surgeon within a quarter-hour, okay?”
He nodded, and Penny injected the morphine, flushed the line again, and hooked up a saline drip. Before she was done, Darren was unconscious and Gabriel could listen to natural, painless breathing.
“His lungs are wet,” he muttered to Penny. “Okay, lay the seat down there, I’ll get mine and go around the back to get the hatchback and pass in the backboard.”
She got done first, and he heard her on her radio. “Wet lungs, tire iron protruding. I don’t know if we’re going to tube him, but he’s breathing on his own for now. If we can’t get him out of the vehicle with the iron in, we might have to pull it. He doesn’t have time to wait for them to cut the doors off.”
He hadn’t directed her to say that, but she was right. It really was a shame that she hadn’t had the patience for medical school.
With the seats were laid back and the hatchback opened, and they managed to get Darren out of the overturned car. As soon as they had cleared it, Penny hung the saline on Gabriel’s shoulder as usual, and they moved as swiftly as they could for the chopper.
While they’d been in the vehicle, someone had thrown down what looked like cat litter on the ice, and around the jack-knifed truck to the chopper, so their path was easier. Barely more than a minute after they’d loaded the stretcher, Penny had them in the air.
* * *
The doorbell had Penny jolting awake on the sofa where she’d fallen asleep. It took her several seconds to ground herself and remember what was going on. Miranda. Visit. Right.
She scrambled upright and smoothed her hands over her hair, praying it wasn’t sticking up like crazy. Gabriel had gone out to do Christmas shopping because she’d practically shoved him out the door earlier. This seemed like the kind of visit to not have your significantly strange other hanging around for.
Flinging the door open, she put on her best smile, and waved Miranda in.
“Oh, wow, did you do all this or hire someone?” her sister asked after the hug of welcome, leaving Penny to close the door. “Or is that even a service you can hire, like a Christmas interior decorator?”
Miranda hadn’t grown up the same way Penny had, something that Penny often forgot. They’d had Miranda in the family for about half of her life now, long enough for everything to normalize to the point that it felt as if she’d always been there. The only way Miranda was any different from her brothers, aside from being female, was not having had to suffer through the sickness of the baby sister ruining
fun things.
“You actually can, but I didn’t hire anyone. I bought all the stuff, intending to put it up, but I came home from my shift on the floor the other day and Gabriel had put it all up.” Nice lead-in. She was almost proud for just slipping that in there.
“Gabriel Jackson? Your partner? Why?”
“I guess he was being sweet,” Penny said, something she’d been quietly smiling about every time she’d looked at the twinkling lights, even while things had been tense between them. “He’d just moved in, which we haven’t told anyone yet, and he still has his place for now but, yeah. He’s living here. For now. But it’s still cone-of-silence stuff because it’s a trial run and we’re not doing so well with it. Have...things to figure out.”
Miranda knew Penny’s history, so she looked suitably surprised by the news. “What things do you have to figure out?”
She ushered Miranda to the kitchen and put on the kettle. It was time for tea and another antiemetic. And the part of the conversation she wasn’t exactly looking forward to.
“Oh, mostly how to be together without messing everything up. We’ve got reasons to try and figure it out.”
Miranda draped her coat and bag over one stool and sat at the other, amusement in her voice. “You mean like you love him?”
That part of the conversation Penny was not ready for. “Reasons like...I’m pregnant.”
Time for Miranda’s second shock in as many minutes. “Uh, congratulations?”
Penny nodded, and after getting the mugs ready for when the water was hot, she went to stand on Gabriel’s side of the island—in the kitchen, facing her sister on her own usual stool. “Thank you. It is... It’s good news. I do want the baby, and so does he, so that’s good news. But...um...boy, you know, in my head I didn’t just go storming right into the heart of this conversation as soon as you walked through the door.”
“There’s more to the conversation than you’re living with someone and pregnant?”
“Yeah.” Penny sighed, leaning her elbows on the counter because if she put her hands on the polished marble, she’d start tapping or fidgeting. “I know we don’t talk about, you know, Dad and your mom, and pretty much all that, but even knowing that you’re bound for Spain and marriage and duchesshood...duchessdom?... I was a little worried that my deciding to be a single mother could be uncomfortable for you. And I didn’t want you to find out from anyone else, or in front of anyone else, which is why I shoved Gabriel out the door about half an hour ago. You can yell at me if you feel...you know, moved to yell at me.”
“But you said Gabriel moved in.”
“Well, yeah, temporarily. Because we’re both hot for each other and too stupid to know how to have a relationship. I’m not ready for marriage, and neither is he, no matter if he’s willing to sacrifice himself at the altar for the baby. He’s got a bad marriage in his past, and I’ve got Mom and Dad. I’m pretty much in awe that any of us, let alone all you guys, want to get married. It’s fine for you, I mean if you’re happy with it, which I assume you are on account of saying yes... I’m just not, which isn’t just about them. We’re not navigating the obstacles very well.”
Miranda nodded like she understood, and Penny didn’t explain further. “But you want to be with him?”
“I don’t know what I want.” She looked at the sparkling tree, then back at Miranda. “No, that’s not right. I know I don’t want a husband to try and control me, stifle my freedom, grow to hate me, but stay together because of pride and obligation, any of that. But I want to be with him, at least when he’s not being an idiot.”
She took a moment from her breakdown to pour the hot cider into cups, then followed with the hot water, teabags and cinnamon sticks. Then placed one in front of her sister and went to join her on another stool. “How did you get there? Or were you always hoping to get married?”
“Not always.” Miranda answered that first, and then stirred the tea with the cinnamon stick, watching the mug for a long moment. “It’s okay, I’m sorry to know that you’re struggling, wish I had some advice. We had some obstacles too, but I guess sometimes you have to decide it’s worth letting go and just trying. Or that’s what it was for us.”
“Letting go of what?”
Miranda shrugged. “Fear? Protecting yourself?”
“Oh, is that all?” Penny lifted her mug and took a drink, chuckling over the warm liquid.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Losing myself.” The words flew from Penny’s mouth before she thought them through, then she shook her head. “That’s not exactly it. I’m apparently riddled with issues, but the truth is that I’m willing to try, which is more than I ever thought I would be. It just doesn’t seem like he really is willing to try. He has this strange yo-yo thing going on. Sometimes he is so sweet it just about kills me, and then, usually right after he’s been amazing, he shoves me so far away that I end up in another room, in another city, on another planet.”
Miranda took her hand, and Penny admired the stunning ring on her finger and stopped this pity party.
“Mateo picked a good ring.”
It was easy to go with a subject change when there was nothing helpful to say, or when the subject turned to happier news. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“I’d wear it. I mean, not to marry Matteo, obviously. I meant I’d wear it and I hardly ever wear jewelry. So you know I like it.” Penny blathered out a bunch of stupid words, grunted at herself and took a sip of her tea. “When’s the wedding? Do I need another dress fitting? Because if it’s not soon, I’m going to be hard to fit. I know that I’m not going to have a big ole belly by Charles and Grace’s wedding, that’s right around the corner. The other day when we were doing the dress fitting, that was all that was going through my mind. Not that you don’t deserve a big fairy-tale wedding. If anyone does, it’s you. Flowers and titles, and all the love. And I’m babbling again.”
Soon they were talking all things wedding, from the beautiful dresses Grace had chosen for them and her maid of honor, Dr. Helena Tate, to speculation about when their cousin Jude and Dr. Sarah Grayson were heading for the altar. Penny would admit feeling a little envious about Miranda’s coming move to Spain. Maybe next year Penny could take her baby to Spain for Christmas, spend it there if Gabriel wasn’t here.
She took another drink of the tea, mostly to mask how her throat had closed up and her eyes watered, and she found herself looking at the single present under her Christmas tree. The gift she’d picked up for Gabriel yesterday and slipped under the tree before he’d gotten home from work.
The kicker of their relationship, and the part of her parents’ marriage Penny didn’t want to think about, was knowing it was lopsided. She loved him, but he didn’t love her, and she didn’t know if that also mirrored her parents’ relationship. She’d rather think that at this late hour in their union they hated one another equally. It’d be even worse if one of them was still in love, still suffering.
The gift she’d put under the tree was supposed to show Gabe she still planned on him being there when Christmas finally rolled around in a couple of weeks. Sure, she’d gotten a kiss for it—not on the head—and he’d then taken the opportunity to debate whether it was better to open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but things were still tense. She couldn’t tell if he’d picked up on the subtext of her only gift purchase so far.
His wife had left without warning, though, so maybe she’d have left a gift for him just to maintain the fantasy of a happy marriage. Or maybe she’d been fooling herself and had then had just snapped one day and gone. All Penny had was Gabriel’s words, and he’d been so hurt by it all, she couldn’t really count on him having seen it clearly.
“Penny?”
“Sorry, I heard you. It’s going to be a month of weddings with Charles’s coming up, and you probably before the
new year.” She heard that much at least and, goodness, she had to pay better attention. She’d invited Miranda here to talk about her wedding and shining future, not Perilous Penny’s. “Forgive me. I invited you over and I’m terrible company.”
“It’s okay. Do you want to call him?”
“No. He’ll be back in...” Penny looked at the clock “...forty-five minutes, or about that. And considering how punctual he is, probably forty-four minutes.”
“Should I be gone before he gets here?”
“Only if you want to flee. If you do, you have forty-three minutes to tell me how to fix this first, because you’ve obviously got your life together better than I do.”
CHAPTER NINE
“GROUNDED,” GABRIEL REPEATED, sitting on the bench in front of his locker to tug his boots off and change out of his flight suit, more for Penny than himself. Twice in one week Old Man Winter had invited himself to the city, and while it was possible to fly when the roads were slick, it was something else to fly when the snow fell this heavily.
Penny sat a couple feet down the bench from him, attention focused on her phone, but he knew she’d heard him by the pinching and vigorous pink shade of her lips, still angry that the decision had been made without her. “I’m looking at the radar, and there are gaps in the front. We will probably be able to take runs here and there, just not right now.”
“Flying requires visibility.” He cringed inwardly at himself. Even to his ears it sounded like he was talking down to her, because he was trying to soften the conflict, where he’d have just been direct before and let her be angry. So much for maintaining their working relationship.
“I know, I’m the pilot. When there are gaps in the cells, I’ll be able to see for short runs.”
He shook his head, but knew he wasn’t going to be able to argue her out of hanging out and hoping. It was the same frustrating battle as sending her home when she was sick. “You’re saying you’re not going to go to the floor and help out?”
The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle Page 12