Page 35 of Flashback
“Sure. It’s in the oven, should be warm by now.”
Every chair at the table besides his and Mazey’s scraped along the floor as en masse, they headed for the kitchen, whether they’d finished dinner or not.
Laughing, Mazey said, “Guess they all want pie.”
“Oh, yeah, but they’re running so Jack doesn’t eat it all like last time.”
“I couldn’t believe he—”
The call alarm blasted through the speakers placed in every room of the base. “Shit. That’s a full alert,” Rylan said as he stood.
Stampeding feet thundered, the noise echoing off the walls as everyone made their way to the ready room to pull on their gear. Rylan chose to wear his flight pants all the time when on shift, but he needed to grab his jacket and helmet. He picked up both on the run as he listened to Devon yelling information as everyone did their job and headed for the choppers.
“Collapsed deck at a winery. Multiple injuries. Services onsite. We’re evacing a six-year-old female with head and possible spinal injuries and a twenty-six-year-old female who is at approximately thirty-two weeks gestation, currently believed to be in premature labor. We’ll get more info about our patients on route. Bex, you take the six-year-old, Rylan the expectant mother, they want Mazey on her not Tate.”
“How many weeks did he say she was?” Mazey asked as she jogged up beside him.
“Thirty-two.”
“That’s not good. We need to stop labor if that’s what’s happening,” she spoke more to herself than him as they climbed into the chopper and hooked up their headsets. “Hey, Devon, what are the woman’s injuries other than early-onset labor?” Mazey asked through their headsets.
“I believe she’s currently impaled through the abdomen by a timber beam.” Devon’s concern rang in Rylan’s ears.
“Fuck.”
Rylan glanced at Mazey, although it wasn’t necessary since they could communicate through the coms. “What are you thinking?”
“That we’ll be lucky if it’s only the mother who’s impaled.”
Gritting his teeth, Rylan did his job. He and Devon raced through preflight checks, and they were off the ground less than three minutes after the alarm sounded.
Now he just hoped they got to the woman and transported her in enough time to save her and her baby.
15
There was blood everywhere. It covered the patient, the gurney, the floor, as well as Mazey and the paramedic who accompanied them to the hospital.
They’d been pumping in units since before the choppers arrived on scene, and if Mazey and her new bestie Levi couldn’t get the bleeding under control, it wouldn’t matter how much they put in her veins.
And none of that dealt with their other problem.
The woman was definitely in labor, and from Mazey’s assessment, she’d be delivering a baby in the next few minutes.
“Go go go go!” she screamed into her headset the second the side door was secure. “What’s our ETA?”
“Twenty, but I can do it in fifteen,” Rylan’s voice filled her ears.
“Make it ten.” Fucking hell. It needed to be five. They needed an OR now. She ripped open more padding and packed it around the timber spike still stuck through the woman’s torso. “Levi, get another bag of saline hooked up and grab more blood so we’re ready to go when that one drains.”
“Her pressure’s dropping.”
“Jeez,” she muttered. “You know what to do, do it. I’ll deal with our other patient who’s determined to make a hasty entrance into this chaos.”
Mazey steeled herself against the emotions crowding in close. If she thought about the chances of this situation turning out like the last premature delivery she’d dealt with, she’d freeze up and be useless. This mother and baby needed her at the top of her game.
“We’re changing destination,” Rylan said in her ear. “I’m redirecting to Golden Valley. They’re closer, and they have an obstetrics department and NICU that can handle this. We’ll be there in five.”
Mazey didn’t have time to agree or disagree. The baby’s head was crowning, and they weren’t getting out of this delivery. “Goddamn it. I’ve got a head. Tell them we’re coming in with two patients. One condition unknown.” She didn’t want to consider whether the timber spear had hit the baby on the way through the mother’s body. The baby’s crown showed no damage, but that didn’t give Mazey any relief.
