Page 58 of Luck Be Mine
“Alcohol? Drugs?”
“No information. We’ll have to ask them or test.”
The automatic doors popped open, and Cait wasted no time joining the team waiting for the fire department to wheel them in.
A cop came in first. Dressed in plain jeans and a striped, blue shirt, his badge hung from his belt, and his weapon was on his hip. Tough face. Silver hair. Muscles in all the right places. But his eyes were flat, cop blue, cool, and unreadable.
He stepped out of the doorway and stopped beside her. “Sergeant Frank Walker, San Diego Police. You look new here.”
Cait nodded at the introduction. “New to this hospital. Not new to medicine.”
“Nurse?”
“Nope. Trauma surgeon. Dr. Cait Hunter.” He respected the need for her to stay sterile and didn’t try to shake her hand.
“Well, these kids need you. Especially this first one. Stupid stunt.”
“Defines teenagers, doesn’t it?”
“Yep. Some more than others.”
Bets came to her other side. “Frank.”
“Bets. Bad night.”
The nurse raised a brow. “Yet, you keep coming back.”
Frank snorted. “It’s the job.” A patrol officer caught his attention.
“Nice to meet you, Doc.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Sergeant.”
Dr. Day waited next to Bets, too. “You ready for this, Dr. Hunter?” He was a short, forbidding man with gray, slicked back hair and a scowl that hadn’t changed in the last decade. The man was not her fan.
“Yes.” She forced confidence into her stance. It had languished from disuse and was currently buried under a rusty knife twisting in her nervous gut. Time to resuscitate. She knew how to do this.
The critical patient rolled through the door. Two other ambulances lined up to unload. Cait recognized the paramedic on duty and went to him. “Stats?”
Seagal scowled at her. “Stupid racing stunt. Car flips. Patient unrestrained in backseat. He’s fourteen. Unconscious. Serious head injury. Plus, he got thrown over the seat and collided with the dashboard before the car flipped and jammed him on the floorboard between his brother and his best friend.” Seagal shook his head. “Back may be broken. Blood loss, bp low but stable. Collar on before we moved him. IVs established in route. Pain meds by protocol.”
“Alcohol, drugs?”
“Smelled alcohol. Drugs unknown. Whether the kid used any is unanswered. Brother is incoherent. Friend is unconscious.”
“The other car?”
“Took off before the cops got there. Video will have to tell the police investigators what happened.”
“Copy. I’ve got him. Good work. Let’s move him to trauma three.” The assembled team included nurses, two orderlies, and both fire department medics. In a smooth transition, they got the boy moved to a table in the trauma room.
“X-rays, blood work, get the monitors on him. Let’s see what we’ve got.” The trauma nurse assigned to this case had years of experience. On solid ground, Cait knew she could leanon the nurse’s experience to learn the flow. Clear, concise, and organized, Hannah Malone was a tall woman who towered over everyone in the room.
The monitor went into erratic beeping as soon as they plugged the boy into their system.
“Blood pressure dropping,” Hannah called. The orderlies worked at shedding the boy’s clothing.
“Bleeding internally, I’m betting.” She examined the boy's torso, noting the many bruised places and the probability of broken ribs. “Don’t wear a seatbelt and become a pinball in a sea of crushing metal,” she muttered to herself.
