Love On Call

Pale, so pale, a large gash running from the hairline at her right temple across her forehead, and blood, so much blood. Cervical collar, IV lines, EKG leads on exposed flesh. Mari pushed to the side of the stretcher, ran to keep up, gasped, “Glenn.”

Glenn’s eyes were open, staring and unfocused, her pupils wide and dilated. Mari registered somewhere in the midst of the kaleidoscope of images the flicker of movement in the storm-gray pupils, reactive and equal, normal.

“I’ve got her,” Antonelli said.

And Mari had to step aside to make room and they were past her and Glenn was gone. Galvanized, she sped down the hall after them. The EMT pushed the stretcher into treatment room two and everyone converged around Glenn, blocking Mari’s view. Suddenly helpless, she stood in the opening of the cubicle and wondered at the value of all her training when the only thing that mattered at that moment was saving Glenn, and she could not help. Nothing mattered, nothing at all, except Glenn.

Reality receded to the tableau beneath the blinding spotlight and she just stood there, waiting for the unknown. Just as she had been doing since the moment the doctors had informed her she had a potentially terminal illness, and life as she had known it had ended.

Hands grasped her shoulders and Mari shuddered. Flann bent down, peered into her eyes. “You okay?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded hollow, empty. Dead.

“Stay here. Let me get a look at her and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Mari nodded.

“Stay right there,” Flann said firmly. “She’ll want to see you. All right?”

Mari dragged in a breath. She was done being dead inside. “Yes, yes. I’m here.”

Flann strode into the treatment room and the crowd around Glenn’s bed gave way as if the sea were parting before an inexorable force. Mari followed close in her wake. No one was keeping her away from Glenn any longer. Flann leaned over the side of the stretcher, and Mari hovered by her right side.

No breathing tube. Saline soaked gauze on her forehead, still actively bleeding. Mari scanned the monitors. Pulse ox 95. BP 80 systolic. IVs running wide open. Stable.

“Glenn,” Flann said in a strong clear voice. “You with me? You know me?”

Glenn blinked slowly, winced.

“Glenn?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You know where you are?”

Glenn blinked again and her eyes rolled. She wet her lips. “What about my unit?”

Flann glanced at Antonelli, raised an eyebrow.

“She kept muttering there was an IED,” Antonelli said. “She thinks she’s in Iraq.”

Flann gripped Glenn’s shoulder. “It’s Flann, Glenn. You’re at the Rivers. Car accident. We’re all okay.”

Glenn swallowed and groaned softly. “No fire?”

“No. You’re okay. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.” Glenn’s lids flickered closed. “Damn.”

“Chest, belly? Glenn, hey, tell me where.”

Mari focused on the X-rays that came up on the screen on the wall over the bed. “Fluid in the right costophrenic angle. Rib fracture.”

Flann followed her gaze. “Not too bad, though. Damn, I like putting in chest tubes too.”

“Belly films look all right,” Antonelli chimed in.

“Looks like you’re taking a trip down to CT to make sure everything’s where it should be inside your head,” Flann said. “I’m headed to the OR but Harp will be here.”

Glenn grimaced. “Mari. Tell Mari—”

“I’m here.” Mari nudged Flann aside, gripped Glenn’s arm above the tangle of IV lines. “Right here.”

“Don’t…worry.”

Mari laughed weakly. “Never. Just let everyone look after you for a change. Rest now.”

Flann pulled off her gloves. “Antonelli, you and Bruce take her—”

“I’ll go down with Antonelli,” Mari said.

Flann gave her a look, slowly nodded. “All right. If there’s any change while you’re downstairs, let me or Harp know right away. When you get back up here, one of us will take care of that laceration.”

Glenn said softly, “Just don’t let Antonelli do it.”

Antonelli laughed.

“Don’t sweat it,” Flann said. “We’ll make sure you’re still handsome.”

Mari backed just far enough away so the staff could get Glenn ready for transport.

“What about the other one,” she asked Flann.

“I’m about to explore his belly. Damn lucky Glenn pulled him out of his Hummer. The thing blew up right after the first responders got them clear. Looks like he ran through the intersection at about a hundred miles an hour, T-boned Glenn, and totaled her Jeep. If Glenn hadn’t been in something that big…” She shook her head. “Damn lucky for both of them.”

Luck, fate, chance—was that really what life was all about? Maybe. But what did it matter? Glenn was alive and here, now. And so was she.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“No focal swelling,” Harper muttered as cut after cut of the head CT scan appeared on the computer screen.