said to hurry. He’s in real bad shape.”
“I’m right behind you,” he said before shooting me an apologetic smile. “Hunter and I will review Adi’s progress when I get back. I’ll give you a call later.”
I nodded but I was feeling strangely numb. The words “motorcycle accident” and “wasn’t wearing a helmet” had thrown me right back to that moment when I’d gotten the call about Adi.
Blood drained from my cheeks, and my hands trembled, but I couldn’t let him see how upset I was. Someone else needed him the same way we had that day. I didn’t want him to be worried about me when his focus had to be on them.
“Go,” I said. “We’ll talk later.”
He ran out with the nurse and Hunter took off after them. There was a bad feeling in my stomach as I watched them go. Without really knowing why, I held my hand out to Adi and nodded toward the door.
“Let’s go, baby. I think we might be needed downstairs.”
Chapter 31
CHRIS
Hunter was only steps behind me when I ran into the ER. My shoes squeaked on the floors when I took the final corner and spotted the nurse waving frantically at me.
She was standing next to a gurney with a bloodied mess of a man lying on it. All I could see at first was his torn-up leathers and matted dark hair.
“He’s in bad shape, Doctor Matthews,” the nurse said when I skidded to a halt beside her. “We tried pulling Doctor Kelso away from his patient, but they’re rushing to surgery.”
“Do we know his name?” I asked, glancing up at her. “Or any other details about him? Allergy bracelet, organ donor card? Anything?”
She shook her head. “The paramedics searched his pockets. They said they didn’t find anything.”
I cursed under my breath but nodded my acknowledgment of what she’d said. “Let’s get him hooked up.”
Machines were beeping wildly in the ER and all the closed rooms were taken, leaving us to rush our patient to an area separated from the screaming, crying, general chaos by only a privacy curtain.
Allowing it all to fade into the background, I took my first good look at the man. He was a big guy and there was something vaguely familiar about him. His face was pretty messed up, but I noticed Hunter growing pale when the patient tried to turn his head up toward him.
At this new angle, I was only barely able to make out the few inches of his skin that wasn’t battered, bloody, and swollen. My heart kicked into overdrive in my chest.
Craig.
“Get April,” I said to Hunter while getting Craig connected to a beside monitor to measure his vital signs. “We need to know if he’s got a DNR.”
From the looks of things, chances were good that we were going to need to resuscitate him within the next few minutes. While I determined which one of his injuries to attend to first and started stabilizing him, Hunter yanked open the curtain and, to my surprise, stopped dead in his tracks.
“April, could you come here for a minute?” he asked urgently. “Rhonda will stay with Adi. It’s important.”
Frowning as I nodded at the nurse to go, I turned slightly and saw April and Adi had followed us after we’d left the PT rooms. April was as white as a sheet, clearly already having figured out who the patient was.
The gurney was too far away and too high for Adi to be able to see her father, but I repositioned my body to block her view anyway. As I stemmed yet another bleed, I sensed April’s trembling body next to mine.
“Is it him?” she asked, her voice tight with fear.
“Yeah. Do you know if he has a living will or anything else that would prevent us from working on him? The paramedics couldn’t find anything.”
She stiffened. “Not that I know of. He’s allergic to bees, but Chris…”
I gave her a sharp look. Without her having to say a thing, I knew what that “but Chris” was about. This man had made her life hell on more than one occasion. He was taking her to court and trying to take her daughter away from her out of jealousy and spite.
Given the seriousness and extent of his injuries, there was a very good chance he might not make it anyway. No one would look twice at his case if I just didn’t quite give it my all.
The erratic beeping of the monitors told me I still had