Protecting What's Mine(4)

He could feel the environment shifting around them. Men and women in uniform brought with them a sense of calm, a perception of control.

But here on this scrap of crispy brown grass stained with blood, it was still life and death. The girl had been found fifteen feet from her crushed bike. Unconscious, unmoving.

The waterfall of sweat that had started in the car had yet to cease, though Linc had stripped out of his jacket. He was going to need six showers just to feel human again.

His shoulder throbbed. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, flesh still pulsed with the painful burn. But every hand with medical training was a necessity right now.

Fire departments and cops converged and dispersed around them, each with their own tasks. Traffic control. Clean-up. Patient transpo.

Linc looked down at the pale, bruised face of the woman. He didn’t recognize her. Had this happened in Benevolence, odds were he would have known her first name. Maybe even what street she lived on.

“Chopper coming?” he asked the EMT. The gauze he held to the victim’s leg was already saturated. She wouldn’t last in an ambulance.

“En route. Two minutes out.”

“She the worst?” he asked. He’d only witnessed a small corner of the carnage.

The paramedic spared him a quick glance. “Sure as hell hope so.”

But it was likely there were worse. The skeletal remains of minivans and sedans all around them predicted it.

No tarps yet, he thought grimly. But given the dozen mangled vehicle corpses, it would be a miracle if the coroner wasn’t needed.

Accidents happened. People died.

But what kept him going, what kept them all going, was what else happened at every scene.

Between twisted metal and over broken glass, strangers helped strangers. Bystanders became heroes on someone else’s worst day. They fetched water bottles and corralled pets. Applied pressure to wounds, lent cell phones and shoulders. They offered strangers hard hugs and whispered promises that everything would be okay.

A pretty young thing in a green dress gently cleaned blood from an elderly man’s face with a napkin while an EMT checked his vitals. The man’s wife clutched his hand to her chest. Silent tears tracked down her lined face.

Linc didn’t care for the hero label when others applied it to him. He was trained for this. He had years of experience. He chose this profession. But the woman, probably on her way to meet a friend for lunch, hadn’t. The truck driver supporting a limping teenager and the teenage girl whispering jokes to the man on a stretcher? Those were the real heroes.

“Chopper’s coming.” The paramedic fastened the leg strap on the spine board. “Let’s get her closer to the landing zone.”

Linc gripped the board with his left hand and winced when they stood.

“Sorry, man, didn’t know you were banged up,” the paramedic said. “Yo! Someone with two good hands!”

“It’s nothing,” Linc insisted. His shoulder took exception.

“Shit, chief. Must have been one hell of an extension cord.” Brody Lighthorse, the bald, tattooed, Benevolence FD captain and Linc’s best friend, appeared out of the wreckage and grabbed the end of the spine board.

“Never a dull moment,” he shot back. Linc jogged alongside, still applying pressure to the leg wound while Brody and the paramedic quickly made their way through cars and casualties.

The helicopter touched down nice and neat on the west-bound lane dotted line. The cargo door was already opening, and a doctor jumped out.

“What’ve we got, gentlemen?”

Even over the sound of the rotors, the huskiness of her voice made him forget about the ache in his shoulder. And that was before he saw those eyes. Cool, bottle green. An old scar ran under her left eye, adding an interesting asymmetry to an already arresting face.

The paramedic recited the particulars—internal bleeding, possible spine injuries—while the doctor whipped off her stethoscope. She was long-legged and sure-footed. Her short dark hair was pulled back in a messy, stubby tail. Loose, wavy strands had already escaped and framed that face. She wore red, red lipstick.

“Looks like you’ve got a mess on your hands,” she shouted over the rotors to Linc. “Glad there’s only one for me.”

He opened his mouth, but words failed him.

“Real miracle, doc,” Brody called back. He tossed an elbow into Linc’s side. “Cat got your tongue, chief?”

“Let’s see if we can get ourselves another one of those,” she said. “Load her up.”

As the flight nurse and paramedics shoved the spine board into the chopper, the doctor’s gaze slid Linc’s way again in cool assessment. His tongue felt two sizes too big for his mouth.

He’d never had trouble talking to women. Hell, he’d flirted outrageously with his kindergarten teacher on the first day of school.

As the flight nurse—a big, burly, bearded guy—started an IV, the doc’s eyes zeroed in on Linc’s limp arm. “You getting that checked out, Lefty?” she asked.

His tongue finally loosened. “You doing the checking, Doc Dreamy?” he croaked.

She paused for a second and arched an eyebrow. “Haven’t heard that in a long time,” she said. “Nice try, but I don’t play doctor.”

With an emphasis on the word play and a wink, she was climbing back aboard. “Let’s get this bird in the air!”