“About two,” Jean said apologetically. “Kate and Regina are both asleep, and I wouldn’t have bothered you, except…” She held up a small rectangular object. “This was on the kitchen table with your keys, and it was going off.”

Instantly awake, Tory stared at her beeper, a cold hand closing around her heart. It could only mean one thing. With a steady hand, she reached for it. “Thank you.”

She read the number as she walked through the house to get her cell phone. It wasn’t the service, and she felt a faint stirring of hope. Just a wrong number. Then she realized where she’d seen the number before. KT’s cell phone.

Sick dread flooded her senses as she calmly punched in the numbers. On the second ring, Tory heard the clipped response that took her back fifteen years.

“O’Bannon.”

“KT, it’s Tory.”

“The service called,” KT said immediately. “Wellfleet paramedics are bringing someone to the clinic because we’re closer than the hospital. Knife wound.”

“Someone?” Tory repeated. Her heart trembled when she sensed hesitation from a woman who never hesitated over anything.

“KT?”

“It’s a police officer, that’s all I know.”

“I’ll be right there.” Matter-of-fact, controlled, professional. Inside, Tory had already begun to bleed.

“I’ll meet you there.”

Grateful for the absence of meaningless platitudes, Tory nodded, then realized that KT couldn’t see her. “Yes. Good. Thanks.”

As she grabbed her keys and rushed for the door, she realized just how glad she was that KT would be there. If it was Reese they were bringing in, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Not again. If it was any of the others, she just might be able to manage. But every time, it took more from her, and she wondered just how much was left.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tory drove with her eyes fixed on the dark road ahead, her hands clenched on the wheel, her gaze narrowed to the flickering columns of light cast into the shadows by her headlights. Her mind was blank. She forced it to remain empty, not to contemplate what she would do, how she would hold the terror at bay, if it were Reese.

“Set up the IVs, prepare the instrument tray, draw up the Valium, morphine, and lidocaine…” She spoke aloud to dispel the thundering quiet, and in the process made the ingrained transition to professional mode. By the time she pulled into the parking lot and saw a single car parked close to the front stairs, she had obtained the practiced calm required of her to deal with an emergency.

The door to the clinic opened as Tory stepped from her vehicle and Pia looked out

“Hi,” Pia said quietly. “KT’s in the back. She thought I might be able to help. Is that okay with you?”

Tory didn’t hesitate. “Sure. You can stand in for Sally.”

As she followed Pia down the hall, Tory gave only a moment’s thought to why KT and Pia had arrived together in the middle of the night. She wasn’t entirely certain how much KT would be able to do one-handed in the midst of a true emergency, and having another medical person available made sense. The paramedics would be able to help as well, but they would be busy monitoring vital signs, managing the airway and fluid resuscitation, and administering meds.

KT turned at the sound of Tory and Pia’s arrival in the treatment room. “Hi, Vic.”

“Where are we?” Tory asked.

“Pia’s setting up the IVs, and I just pulled a major suture tray.” She indicated a large sealed tray that bore the small sticker indicating that it had been autoclaved and the contents were sterile. She placed it on a tall Mayo stand, which resembled a stainless steel TV tray, On wheels, it could be pushed up to or even over the treatment table so that the surgeon could easily reach the instruments.

Tory nodded absently. “Did you draw up the drugs?”

A brief flicker of discomfort crossed KT’s face as she lifted her left hand. “No, I couldn’t.”

“I’ll get them ready, then,” Tory said, brushing her hand lightly across KT’s shoulder as she passed.

“Thanks.” KT glanced across the room at Pia, who met her eyes and smiled gently. She had no time to think about how that smile settled in her chest and seemed to leave no room for pain or uncertainty, because suddenly the building was filled with the noise of clattering wheels and a cacophony of voices talking over one another. The treatment room was the only brightly lit room in the rear of the building, and it wasn’t hard for the emergency team to find them.

All three women turned to the door, braced for the imminent blur of activity and the adrenaline-charged moments that could spell the difference between life and death.

The first thing Tory saw was the irregular swatch of maroon in the center of Reese’s chest. She had tried to prepare for that, but the shock ran through her, leaving numbness in its wake. For one pain-filled second, her mind closed down, refusing to acknowledge what her eyes had registered. Then, with the next breath, her vision cleared. There was blood soaking Reese’s shirt, but Reese was walking, running, really, with her hand on the end of the stretcher being pushed by the paramedic.

It’s not Reese. It’s not Reese. She focused on the lean body recognizable even beneath the mountain of resuscitation equipment. Oh no. Not again. Bri!

“What do we have?” KT asked the paramedics, reaching out with her right hand to guide the stretcher alongside the treatment table as Tory placed a stethoscope on Bri’s chest.

“Lungs are clear,” Tory said.

“Knife wound to the neck,” the paramedic said, holding the oxygen mask against Bri’s face with one hand and a pressure dressing to the left side of her neck with his other. The gauze beneath his gloved fingers was soaked with blood, and a steady trickle ran down onto the stretcher.

“Airway?” KT knew that any knife wound to the neck could injure the trachea, causing blood to seep into the windpipe, fill the lungs, and prevent oxygen exchange. Many victims of penetrating trauma to the neck died from asphyxiation, not blood loss.

“Oxygen saturation is excellent, 99% on four liters,” a second paramedic noted, balancing the multiple monitoring devices on the far end of the stretcher with both hands as they moved. “No blood in the posterior pharynx either.”

“Good,” KT observed. The other structure at riskin addition to the many huge blood vessels in the neck was the esophagus, and if it were perforated, blood would back up into the mouth and eventually compromise the airway as well.

“Bri?” Tory said quietly, moving the oxygen mask aside enough to look at Bri’s face. Bri’s eyes flickered open, dazed but aware, “Hey, sweetie. Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Bri whispered hoarsely.

“Are you hurt anywhere else? Your chest, back, belly?”

“No.” Bri’s eyelids flickered closed, and then she opened them again with effort. “Neck hurts,”

“I know. We’ll take care of that.” Tory reached across the treatment table for the sheet beneath Bri. “Let’s get her over here.”

Many hands grabbed the sheet from both sides of the stretcher while one of the paramedics stabilized Bri’s neck.

“One, two, three,” Tory counted and everyone lifted, swinging Bri in the makeshift sling onto the treatment table. Then Tory took her first look around the room and saw an ashen Nelson and shell-shocked Allie standing inside the door. She looked up at Reese. “Take them out of here.”

Reese looked hesitantly from Bri to Tory, as if she might protest, but nodded grimly. “Okay.” She put her hand on Bri’s thigh and squeezed. With the barest hint of tremor in her voice, she repeated, “Okay. See you in a minute, Bri.”

As Reese turned and shepherded Nelson and Allie out into the hall, Tory moved to the head of the table next to KT. She met KT’s eyes and saw in them the steady focus and intensity she’d always found so comforting in the midst of a trauma. “Ready to take a look?”

“Let’s get the suction hooked up first and load the sutures. You’re going to have to be ready to clamp and tie.”

Tory shook her head. “There’s nothing wrong with your dominant hand.” Her gaze never moving from KT’s, Tory said over her shoulder to Pia. “Can you glove KT’s right hand, please.”

“Of course,” Pia replied. She looked at KT. “Size?”

“Seven and a half.” KT stepped over next to Pia, removing the immobilizer on her left hand as Pia, wearing sterile gloves herself, opened a second pack of gloves. “Glove them both.”

Without a word, Pia held up the left glove, stretching open the cuff so that KT could slide her hand inside. “Careful not to extend your fingers when you push in here.”

“I’ve got it,” KT said as she eased her damaged ringers into the tight latex. “At least I won’t contaminate the field with it now.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” KT replied sincerely. Then she turned back to the table and said briskly, “Let’s get this bleeding stopped.”

“Give her four milligrams of IV morphine,” Tory said to the paramedic before reaching down, suction cannula in hand, and removing the pressure bandage from Bri’s neck. Immediately, a heavy stream of dark blood poured out of a five-inch laceration that extended along the side of her neck, parallel to her jaw, two inches below her ear. Precisely along the line where a knife being held by someone from behind would have rested.

Immediately, KT pressed the fingers of her right hand over the wound, squeezing it closed with her fingers. “From the location, it’s probably the external jugular.”

“Flow is pretty brisk,” Tory murmured. The external jugular vein was a relatively low-pressure vein almost 5mm wide, a quarter the size of its deeper partner, the internal jugular vein. She didn’t say what they both knew that the external jugular vein alone wouldn’t produce this much bleeding.