“Medic, medic,” she whispered before the dark took her.

*

While Mari waited for Dr. Zapata, the young orthopedist on call, to come in from the suburbs a half an hour or so away, she checked over the pre-op numbers, made sure Antonelli got a consent signed, and explained to the patient and her spouse what they could expect for the rest of the evening.

“Dr. Zapata will go over the surgery in detail,” she said in response to their anxious questions, “but from the experience I’ve had with fractures like this—”

The curtain enclosing the cubicle rattled back with a loud clang, and she glanced over her shoulder, annoyed at being interrupted. Antonelli filled the space between the tiny cubicle and the hall. His face was white.

“We need you out here.”

Mari smiled at the woman with the fractured femur and her worried spouse. “The surgeon will answer the rest of your questions. I’ll be back as soon as I can to check on you.” She stepped aside and closed the curtain. “What’s going on?”

“We just got a STAT call from the sheriff. MVA, two victims en route, both unresponsive.”

“Did you page Abby?”

“Yes.” Antonelli blocked her path as she started toward the trauma bay.

Annoyed, Mari stopped short, already mentally cataloging what needed to be done. “Who’s on for surgery tonight?”

“That asshole Williams. Mari—”

Mari sighed. “I wonder if we could get Flann and Glenn back here from their—”

“Mari, it’s Glenn.”

“What? You already got her?” Mari looked down the hall, expecting to see Glenn stride around the corner with her battle-ready expression, directing everyone to their stations.

“No, no. Listen. The sheriff’s local. He recognized her. One of the victims is Glenn.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Icy fingers squeezed Mari’s throat. Time froze. The sound of her thundering heart drowned out all thought, leaving only primal fear.

“Where is she?”

Mari skirted around Antonelli, shouldered him aside when he tried again to stop her, and raced toward the admitting area. Antonelli, with his longer legs, caught her easily and grasped her arm.

“Don’t.” Mari jerked free, her voice a whip crack in the unnatural silence. Where was everyone? In receiving, waiting for the injured. Waiting for Glenn. No, that couldn’t be. She couldn’t even bring that picture into focus. The vision made no sense, and yet, beneath the denial, a terrible truth tried to bubble free. Nothing lasts—not life, not love, not dreams. “No. No, that it isn’t true. I will not accept that.”

“Mari,” Antonelli said, dropping his hand and keeping pace. “You don’t want to do this. Abby’s on her way down right now. We’ll take care of Glenn.”

Mari stared straight ahead. A crowd of hospital personnel and security guards formed a corridor from the double doors of the emergency room toward the treatment area, ready to escort the victims.

No. Glenn was not a victim, she was everything that a victim wasn’t—a warrior, a leader, a healer. Mari ran outside past the blur of faces, barely slowing enough to clear the half-opened glass doors as they slid back, into the bright glare of the floodlights illuminating the emergency zone in the lot outside receiving. The area was empty save for an emergency van and two parked police cars. The sky was ridiculously clear, moonlit and star-studded. Mockingly beautiful. She scanned the hillside below and the winding road down to the village she’d walked that first night with Glenn.

Antonelli followed her out, stood silent vigil with her.

“Where are they?” Mari asked.

“Two minutes out,” Abby said, coming up behind them. As she spoke, a faint siren wail grew louder, as if summoned. “Mari, take triage, Antonelli, take the trauma bay—”

“Mari can’t triage,” Antonelli said. “I’ll do it.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because they’re…” Antonelli stared helplessly from Mari to Abby.

Abby peered at Mari. “Oh God. All right—yes, Mari, back inside. Let us take care of this.”

“I’m all right.”

“Of course you’re not. As soon as I know what the situation is, I’ll brief you. Until then, you’re backup, non-patient care. I mean it.” Abby blew out a breath, squinted into the dark in the direction of the sirens. “If there was time, I’d get Carrie in here to wait with you…”

“Don’t send me away.” Mari drew in a long breath. “I want to see her. I won’t get in the way. I’ll wait, just please—”

Abby squeezed her shoulder. “The minute she’s stable, I promise.”

Mari turned to go inside, spun back to meet Abby’s gaze. Abby knew, they all knew, what might lie ahead. “I don’t want her to be alone if…”

“We are not going to let that happen. And Glenn will never quit. You know that, if you love her.”

“Yes.” Mari grasped onto Abby’s fierce strength, needing to believe.

“Good. Now I need you inside. Make sure the staff is ready and we’ve got the support teams standing by. Can you do that?”

Mari nodded, stony calm sweeping over her, blunting panic and doubt. The battle had begun. “Yes. Trauma admitting and room two?”

“That sounds good. We don’t know the status of either one.”

A nurse came out to join them. “EMT radioed—they’re coding one of them en route.”

“That one goes to trauma admitting.” Abby pointed at Mari as the night filled with the wail of warring sirens and explosions of red flickering lights cutting through the trees just below them. “Go.”

Mari hesitated, every instinct driving her to stay. Glenn was hurt, alone, and she didn’t know…if you love her. Only her training convinced her she’d be in the way for the first few critical moments. She trusted Abby and the others she’d come to think of as family, and turned on wooden legs to hurry back inside.

Bruce met her halfway down the hall. “Is it true? Is it Glenn?”

“I think so.”

“Flann just called, she and Harper are on their way. Five minutes max.”

“Thank God,” Mari murmured. “Are you ready? You have respiratory here, X-ray?”

“Setting up now.”

“What about the blood bank and the OR?”

“Just about to call.”

“I’ll take the OR, you notify the blood bank.”

Bruce jogged away and Mari saw in her mind’s eye what she knew was happening outside. The emergency vans careening to a stop, doors already swinging open, paramedics jumping out and dragging the gurneys free—the injured strapped down, helpless, panicked, and in pain. All she wanted was to be by Glenn’s side, fighting whatever battle needed to be fought, denying death this one critical time. She shivered, forced the image away, willed herself to think. Do. Do what needed to be done. She punched in the extension to the OR, told them to get anesthesia and OR techs on standby.

She hung up the phone, and the cacophony of voices filled the hallway, shouting over one another in a chaotic chorus she’d heard hundreds of times. As her training kicked in, each note in the madness rang out crystal clear. A male medic shouting out vital signs, Abby calling for blood, Antonelli yelling for a trach tray.

Steeling herself, Mari whirled, focused on the first stretcher rocketing toward her, the patient with a cervical collar obscuring their lower face and blood covering the upper portion. Short sandy hair, and a medic astride the stretcher, rhythmically compressing the chest. Full arrest.

Mari’s stomach twisted. Please, please, not her.

As the team hurtled by, she saw the glint of a gold ring on the left hand. Not Glenn. Not Glenn.

“Trauma one,” Abby shouted and was gone.

Right behind them, Antonelli guided another stretcher pushed by a female EMT reading out blood pressure, pulse rate, pulse ox from the mountain of monitors piled beside the patient.

The patient.

Pale, so pale, a large gash running from the hairline at her right temple across her forehead, and blood, so much blood. Cervical collar, IV lines, EKG leads on exposed flesh. Mari pushed to the side of the stretcher, ran to keep up, gasped, “Glenn.”

Glenn’s eyes were open, staring and unfocused, her pupils wide and dilated. Mari registered somewhere in the midst of the kaleidoscope of images the flicker of movement in the storm-gray pupils, reactive and equal, normal.

“I’ve got her,” Antonelli said.

And Mari had to step aside to make room and they were past her and Glenn was gone. Galvanized, she sped down the hall after them. The EMT pushed the stretcher into treatment room two and everyone converged around Glenn, blocking Mari’s view. Suddenly helpless, she stood in the opening of the cubicle and wondered at the value of all her training when the only thing that mattered at that moment was saving Glenn, and she could not help. Nothing mattered, nothing at all, except Glenn.

Reality receded to the tableau beneath the blinding spotlight and she just stood there, waiting for the unknown. Just as she had been doing since the moment the doctors had informed her she had a potentially terminal illness, and life as she had known it had ended.

Hands grasped her shoulders and Mari shuddered. Flann bent down, peered into her eyes. “You okay?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded hollow, empty. Dead.

“Stay here. Let me get a look at her and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Mari nodded.

“Stay right there,” Flann said firmly. “She’ll want to see you. All right?”

Mari dragged in a breath. She was done being dead inside. “Yes, yes. I’m here.”

Flann strode into the treatment room and the crowd around Glenn’s bed gave way as if the sea were parting before an inexorable force. Mari followed close in her wake. No one was keeping her away from Glenn any longer. Flann leaned over the side of the stretcher, and Mari hovered by her right side.