Protecting What's Mine(90)

“Car into a structure, possible cardiac arrest,” Brody yelled back, shrugging into his gear.

“Feel like taking a ride, doc?” Linc offered.

A trauma physician on the ground was never a bad thing. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed her med bag and loaded it into the chief’s vehicle. In seconds, Linc was climbing in behind the wheel, wearing the bottom half of his gear. Sunshine watched mournfully from the end of her leash as they pulled away.

“Be a good girl,” he called to her through his open window.

Accustomed to lights, sirens, and speed, Mack triple-checked her supplies on the drive while Linc stayed on the radio with dispatch, gathering information. The engine was behind them, and an ambulance was en route, too.

They left the town limits and made the turn toward farmland and houses with big yards.

Dusk was falling, and there was a chill in the air.

“Here we go,” he said to her. “Command arriving on-scene.”

Together they exited the vehicle and jogged toward the wreck.

It was a sedan, or what was left of it, crumpled into the front porch of a tidy white farmhouse that sat up against the road. The driver was still behind the wheel.

“He’s not breathing, and I can’t find a pulse,” a man in jeans and flannel said from his vigil at the open driver’s side door.

“Thanks. Let’s get him out,” Mack said.

“I’m with you,” Linc said. He caught the lightweight tarp Brody threw him and spread it on the ground a few feet from the car. “Lighthorse, assume command and get the engineers inside. See if the structure’s safe.”

“On it, chief.”

The ambulance hadn’t arrived yet, and it took Mack, Linc, and another firefighter to ease the man out from behind the wheel and onto the ground. Blood covered his face from the airbag.

“Pop-Pop!” There was a boy crying in the arms of the farmer’s wife.

Mack swore ripely.

“What?” Linc asked.

“It’s Leroy Mahoney. That’s his grandson, Tyrone,” she said, cutting Leroy’s sweater down the middle. “No pulse. No breath.” His lips were already tinged blue.

“Fuck,” he hissed.

“Go,” she insisted. “Take care of the kid. He trusts you.”

“Lighthorse, take over here,” he called.

Brody appeared and dropped to his knees. “What have we got, doc?”

“Sixty-eight-year-old male. Possible STEMI. Starting CPR until we get a defibrillator from the EMTs. Check him for any other injuries.” She started compressions while Brody worked his way down Leroy’s too-still body. “Get me some light here.”

She didn’t look up when a floodlight lit up the tarp. She didn’t pay attention to the sirens as they approached or the engineer team gearing up to go inside the house. The only thing that existed in her world was Leroy Mahoney’s still heart.

She paused after the rescue breath and checked vitals. “No pulse. No breath.”

“Possible broken wrist, needs stitches on the forehead. Not sure about any neck or spine injuries,” Brody reported as she began the next round of compressions.

“Get the epi in my bag for me,” she said, counting compressions internally. “Front pocket right on top.”

There was a flurry of activity behind her.

“Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to step back.” A paramedic loomed over her.

“That’s Dr. O’Neil, not ma’am, and you’re in my light,” she snapped. “I need a line in his arm now. And one of your guys needs to check the kid. He was in the back seat.”

An EMT hurried off while the “ma’am” man knelt opposite her and shrugged off his bag. “You get any epi in him yet?”

“Nope.” Sweat coursed like a river down her back. “Third round of compressions. No breath, no pulse.”

Leroy was bagged, and the second the IV port was in, the paramedic delivered the epinephrine. Another EMT slapped EKG sensors in place.

“Charging.”

“Go.”

“Nothing,” he said, reading the portable screen.

“Shock him and call for the chopper,” she decided, swiping her forearm over her forehead. Her ankle ached from the awkward position.

She delivered another round of compressions, another shock. Another shot of epinephrine. They pushed fluids into the line. Still nothing.

“Fuck me,” she muttered.

She didn’t dare look up at Tyrone. But she could hear Linc’s soothing voice, the kid’s quiet sobs. “You are not doing this tonight, Leroy,” she growled. “Go again.”

Again and again, they repeated the process.

“Looks like internal bleeding,” the paramedic noted, spotting the violent purple bruising around Leroy’s chest.

“Chopper is eight minutes out,” Brody reported.

“We don’t have eight minutes,” Mack said. “Put him on the backboard and get me a scalpel.”

“What are you doing?” the paramedic demanded.

“We’re opening him up.”





43





Linc had practically grown up on scenes like this. Flashing lights, fast, coordinated movements by the men and women who stood between the horror and the crowds of onlookers. Faces bathed in red and blue. The tension of dozens of human beings praying, hoping together.