Page 30 of Breathless
“Don’t pull it out.” Tonya dropped the boxes she carried and rushed over to her side. “Chaney, look at me, you’re going to be okay. I’m calling 911. Hang in there.”
“Why shouldn’t we pull it out?” Deidre asked.
“Because she’ll bleed out more if you do,” Tonya said. “Polly, get Hannah.”
“Right,” the other volunteer said, discarding her boxes as she ran down the hall.
“How the hell did Roger get out of isolation?” Tonya mumbled, punching in the numbers on her phone. “I thought he was leaving this morning. Ugh, hello, I need an ambulance sent to The Village immediately. We’ve had a volunteer stabbedwith what looks like a handmade knife. She’s bleeding around it, we’ve left it intact, so she won’t bleed out.”
Chaney’s eyes closed and she tried to breathe softly to keep the pain at bay. She could hear running footsteps all around her and several voices, but even though they were near, they felt far away. Or maybe it was she that felt removed from the present. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was she wanted the pain to go away. She wanted the sharp object sticking in her to be gone, but she understood what Tonya had said about it, keeping her from bleeding out. The less blood she lost the better.
A cool hand was at her forehead, brushing her hair away and then she heard Hannah’s soothing voice. “Chaney, the ambulance is here. It won’t be long now.”
“Rawlins?” she murmured.
“He’s coming. He was in the ceiling of the boys’ dorm running wiring for the security system,” Hannah said. “We had to locate him.”
“Roger.” Her eyes fluttered and she tried to smile. “His parting gift.”
“I’m so sorry. He will be found,” Hannah promised. “He will be punished.”
“Better me than Josie,” Chaney said before everything went black.
The beeping soundof the vitals machine mixed with the blast of cold, sterile air woke Chaney sometime later. The pain was gone. She was glad for that. An IV stuck out of the top of her hand and it looked as if she were alone in the room. She pressed the call button on the side of the bed.
“Can I help you?” a nurse asked.
“I’d like a status on my condition please,” Chaney said, wondering where Rawlins was and if his absence meant hehadn’t been allowed with her because they weren’t related. But surely that wouldn’t be the case since he was her protector. Hank Patterson would be able to pull the necessary strings with the hospital, wouldn’t he?
“Someone will be right there.”
“Thank you.” She moved the sheet that covered her body and tried to see where she had been stabbed. However, the hospital gown was securely around her, and she was lying on it when she tried to move a pain shot through her abdomen. “Okay, that wasn’t a smart decision.”
Biting her bottom lip, she laid her head back until the pain went away. She wondered if she’d had to have surgery to repair any damage. It made sense if she did. But where was Rawlins?
She looked over at the beeping vitals monitor and saw that her heart rate and pulse looked good, but that was all she could understand. There was an IV bag, but she really wasn’t sure if she had a medicine pump for pain. Not that she needed anything. Sure, it hurt, but she wasn’t in that much pain. It had hurt worse after she’d been stabbed.
Closing her eyes, she drifted off, but was jolted awake again when the door to the room opened and a woman a few years her senior came in wearing a pair of scrubs. “Miss Daniels, I’m Dr. Pirelli. I’m the surgical resident who performed your abdominal repair. You were one lucky young woman that no vital organs were severed.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” Chaney said.
“I’m sure it doesn’t right now, but after a couple of days of bed rest, you’ll be up and as good as new,” Dr. Pirelli said, pulling over a rolling stool and sitting down beside the bed. She pulled out a color photo from her doctor’s coat pocket and showed it to her. “The shank the kid made didn’t go deep at all because the blade area was so short. We’re more worried about infection because of the unsterile material he used for theweapon, so we’re pumping you with antibiotics in your IV. We’ll keep you overnight for observation and if everything looks good, you should be able to go home after twenty-four hours.”
“So, it didn’t even nick my intestines?” Chaney asked.
“Not at all. Which is a great concern being in the abdominal region,” Dr. Pirelli said. “Like I said you were very lucky. You shouldn’t even have a scar.”
“That never even crossed my mind.”
“I want to check your wound to make sure it hasn’t started bleeding,” Dr. Pirelli said, lifting her blanket and then the gown without a problem. “It looks good.” She walked the stool backwards before standing. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
“Thank you,” Chaney said.
The door opened as Dr. Pirelli turned to leave and Rawlins came in. His hair looked damp, and he was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. Had he gone back to her condo to shower?
“Hello, doctor,” he said. “Is she doing okay?”
“Excellent. I’ll let her fill you in,” Dr. Pirelli said.
