It had been one of the longest nights of his life.
War. It had been war. The hospital staff fighting against the elements, Mother Nature, and time.
Most of the damage to people that happened in a tornado came from debris and construction materials crushing them. As a trauma surgeon, he was the best qualified to treat those injuries.
As the head of the department, he was needed. If nothing else, just to keep his people going.
He was going to take a few hours to rest, before clocking back in sometime in the early morning. Virat was back after a three-hour break, ready to take over some of the burden, as was Cage. The two of them were going to handle things while Allen and Rafe rested.
He’d gotten ahold of Shelby, finally. Less than thirty minutes earlier, she’d called his phone. He’d been lucky to have signal. She hadn’t spoken directly to him but had left a message.
Shelby was ok.
His sister had slightly injured her leg—according to her own report—and her condo had lost part of its roof, but her unit was unaffected. As was his, a few blocks down. She had been able to get a ride to the house she’d inherited from Logan instead. She and a few friends were going to stay there for the night, as it was closer to wherever she’d been with her friend Daryn, before making themselves useful in the morning. Shelby had volunteer search-and-rescue training, though she’d only been in the field a few times; her closest friend’s father had been a former search-and-rescue supervisor with the TSP.
After what had happened to Shelby when she’d been an undergrad, Allen had encouraged her learning from that man. It had given her a sense of agency in a time she’d desperately needed it. Shown her that not all TSP were evil. That was a lesson he half suspected his sister still needed to learn.
Allen was going to head there and see his sister for himself as soon as he could.
After he checked on Izzie, Annie, and Nikkie Jean. He hadn’t gotten many chances to swing by. To see Nikkie Jean for himself. No one really knew what had happened to her out there tonight. Just that she had been found unconscious near city hall and hadn’t fully surfaced yet. She’d been carried to FCGH by a doctor from County who had found her in the rubble. His fear for her safety had shifted to concern because of her condition.
She should have wakened by now.
There was no sign of physical trauma causing this condition anywhere. Allen had ordered another round of blood tests, but the lab had been partially destroyed, and half the technicians had been injured.
That seriously hindered the hospital’s effectiveness. FCGH’s people were on it. Those that had been off shift had already shown up and were trying to salvage the lab as best they could.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked Izzie.
“I’m holding down this chair, Dr. Jacobson.” Izzie had a snark that he hadn’t missed before in their few interactions. But now, it was far more concentrated—and aimed in his direction. “What does it look like I’m doing, yoga?”
She looked at Annie, and the worry was written right there for him to see. Then she turned toward the other woman’s bed. She had put the chair right between the two, where she could be next to them. The two beds that were normally in the room had been moved closer together by orderlies in order to fit a third bed in. The same had been done on every floor they could.
Rafe ran a well-oiled machine. People had known what they were supposed to do.
Most of them had done it.
What she needed to be doing was resting in the bed the orderlies had put in there by the rear wall. Annie and Nikkie Jean weren’t exactly going anywhere.
“Staring. Worrying. Making yourself sick, imagining the what-ifs. They are going to be ok. Annie has no signs of infection, and the damage will heal. Nikkie Jean is most likely finally napping.” He knew it had to be more than that, but he couldn’t stand the fear in big brown eyes. “We all know that she’s like a kid on sugar. Go, go, go. Crash!”
“Annie will wake worried. About her kids and her house. Nikkie Jean will wake unable to see much and afraid.” Nikkie Jean, who suffered from low-vision challenges, had been brought in without her glasses. They’d been lost in the wind.
“And you? Where