Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,10

by the manager of a nearby convenience store who saw him fall in. Found unconscious, CPR immediately. Still not responding.”

“Jumper?” It made my stomach sink every time we received an attempted suicide, which was way more common than I would have liked.

“Probably.” The medic grimaced. “Found him just downstream from Arlington Memorial. That bridge is a killer.”

“Well, not if we can help it. Vitals?”

“No pulse, no respiration, no shockable rhythm. Compressions and Epi in the field.”

The other EMT kept working on the patient’s chest as we got the gurney into a bay and nurses pushed electrodes from monitors onto his chest and sides.

“Let’s get a rhythm.” I nodded to Shae who was working with the other nurses to hook up ECG leads. Dammit. We couldn’t shock the patient with the rhythm his heart was beating.

“Patient is asystole. Epinephrine administered?” I felt my own adrenaline kick in as I rushed to help the nurses fit a new bag to help with respiration.

The EMT giving compressions glanced up and smiled at me, sweat dripping from his brow. “One mil, given once, doc.”

I did a double-take. It was Owen, my red-headed brother. Relief washed through me. I trusted him implicitly. “Once more. Epinephrine, one milligram. Continue compressions.”

“Roger that.” He nodded and continued grunting and pumping his hand against the patient’s sternum.

Shae administered the IV drug, and I held my breath. It was always touch and go from a flatline. But three quiet breaths later, the heart monitor picked up a single spike of contraction.

“There we go, we’ve got v-tach.” I clapped my hands. “Administering single shock defib.”

Shae put gel on the paddles and handed them to me while Owen leaped off the table. Everyone stood back as I moved forward with the defibrillator paddles in my hands. The shock snapped through the patient while I kept my eyes on the monitors. The line remained in v-tach. I cursed quietly. It could take two minutes, but I wanted it faster.

“Resume compressions.” I handed the paddles back and then made way for nurses to restart CPR.

The tension of shocking someone always took me by surprise, but it was followed by something worse—the two minutes it could take to see if the single shock had worked to get the heart started again. There was a flurry of activity as we rushed to stabilize his temperature, look him over for any obvious injuries, and worked around the patient’s neck brace.

“Take compressions?” Owen called, tagging out of the exhausting task.

“Here.” I stepped in and pulsed pressure against the patient’s chest until my arms and shoulders ached, burned, almost gave up, and kept going while sweat soaked through my shirt.

All eyes in the room were fixed on the monitors, still showing no sign of independent heartbeat.

“Fuck. C’mon.” I whispered and pumped.

“Tag out?” Shae offered to take over the compressions, but I shook my head. I grunted as I kept up the steady pace. I’d bring him back. I knew I would.

Suddenly, the monitor spiked, and a wave of relief moved through the group, everyone so professional that the emotion was almost imperceptible. I let out a heavy breath and swiped the back of my arm over my sweaty brow and let my other hand rest on the patient’s chest where a heart was beating all by itself.

Pulse and breathing back online, Owen slapped my back by way of goodbye as I rushed forward to continue my care of the patient, while he headed back out to work in the field.

“This guy have a name?” I asked the nurses as I helped them hook up more IV fluids.

Shae read from the paperwork the EMTs had left behind. “No ID on him.”

I glanced down at the John Doe, now visible without the ambu-bag over his face, and stumbled backward. “Fuck.”

“Doctor?”

I wiped my face against my shoulder and let out a shaky breath. “Sorry. I know him.”

He wasn’t a John Doe. I knew him as the young man who’d been in the ER only twenty-four hours earlier, full of life. Seb.

A heavy weight landed in my gut. Dammit, I’d had an intuition that his circumstances hadn’t been the most peaceful. The abusive boyfriend or whoever was responsible for the bruises and sprained wrist was surely involved in what might have been a suicide.

It’s not your concern. I could hear my brothers in my head, reprimanding me for getting too involved.

“Oh, shit… Sebastian, right?” Shae tutted her tongue like it was a shame.

I shook off the past and snapped into professional mode. I