Chapter Twenty-Eight
Not again. Not again. Not a-fuckin’-gain.
The words repeated on a loop in Jesse’s head as he raced across the parking lot and out onto the beach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tucker Quentin and his men race toward the building where the shots originated. He wanted to call out to their medic, Rex, in case he needed a second set of hands, but it probably wasn’t a good plan to draw the shooter’s attention to the fact that a team of serious badasses were bearing down on him.
A stream of bullets came from somewhere and buried in the sand less than a foot from him. He hit the ground on instinct, then bounced back up before the sound of the shots even reached his ears.
His own team had formed a human wall around their fallen man, every one of them looking dangerous, pissed off, and spoiling to shoot someone. Even Jean-Luc, hunched and pale-faced, but with a gun in his hand all the same.
Jesse had to remember to give him an earful about that later.
He slid in between Jean-Luc and Ian and got his first look at his patient. Shit, this was bad.
Danny was conscious, his gaze ping-ponging anxiously all around as he breathed in rapid, shallow pants. His complexion was too white, and his skin was clammy to the touch.
“Where were you hit?” Jesse tore open his kit and got to work, looping a blood pressure cuff around his arm. Damn. BP was low and sinking fast.
“Back,” Danny said between gasps.
Jesse grabbed an ambu bag and placed the mask over Danny’s nose and mouth. “Marcus. Hey, I need your help, pal.”
Marcus looked up at the sound of his name, tears streaming from his too-wide eyes. He didn’t seem to be tracking the conversation. “Jess, you gotta help him.”
“I will.” Jesse guided his hand to the bag and squeezed. “Nice, easy rhythm. Squeeze, wait five seconds, squeeze again. Can you do that? Help him breathe.”
Marcus nodded and took over the bag, squeezing it with blood-stained hands.
Jesse set up IVs for fluids and pain meds. He cut through Danny’s shirt, then log-rolled him to check the entry wound—a tiny hole just to the left of his spine. Jesus, the bullet tore through his chest at an angle. There was no telling what all it damaged without opening him up. But that had to come later. Right now, it was all about getting him stabilized enough to transport to the nearest local hospital.
There wasn’t a lot of blood from the entry wound, but he covered it with a clotting agent-treated square of gauze anyway. Gently, he laid Danny flat again and internally winced at the ragged exit wound on his upper right chest. The bullet had tumbled as it passed through. Probably damaged the lungs, and maybe the heart. He couldn’t find his stethoscope in his bag, so he bent over and pressed his ear to Danny’s chest. Decreased breath sounds on the right side.
Shit. Tension Pneumothorax? Made the most sense. Air was leaking into his chest cavity, constricting the right lung, causing the breathing difficulty.
Jesse tore through his bag until he found a chest dart. He didn’t have time to second guess, or for the nerves that had been plaguing him for so long. All of that just disappeared. A familiar sense of detachment settled over him. He didn’t see Danny, his friend and teammate. All he saw was a list of medical conditions that needed immediate treatment or the patient would die.
He was glad for it. Once again, he felt calm, steady, in control of everything from the steady beat of his own pulse to the continuing beat of Danny’s.
A splash of Betadine turned Danny’s chest orange. Jesse walked steady fingers down from the clavicle until he found the right spot between the second and third ribs and inserted the dart. Blood arced from the tube and splashed across Jesse’s arms and chest.
Not tension pneumothorax then. Hemopneumothorax. Blood and air was filling the cavity and compressing the lung.
Danny started breathing better almost immediately as the blood evacuated the space and relief filled his eyes. “Thank you.”
“All right,” Jesse said and left the catheter to drain the blood while he rechecked vital signs. Still not good, but improving. Wouldn’t last, though. He’d sprung a leak somewhere in his chest and without exploratory surgery, there was no way of knowing where or how to stop the bleed. “You’re gonna be all right, Danny. We’ll get you to a hospital, and they’ll patch you up as good as new.”
“He’ll be okay?” Marcus asked.
He wished he could say Danny was out of the woods, but judging by the hemopneumo and the look of the exit wound, he doubted it. There was so much more damage they couldn’t see. “I bought him time. He needs surgery to repair the bleed or his chest cavity is goin’ to keep fillin’ up with blood until he runs out of it. We have to move. Now.”
“Can’t,” Gabe said over his shoulder. He and the rest of the guys still stood guard. “Tuc and his team haven’t found the sniper yet.”
“He’s not gonna start taking shots at us with Tuc’s guys after him,” Marcus snapped. “He’s long gone. You heard Jess. Danny needs a surgeon.”
“I’m okay,” Danny whispered, voice soft and reedy. “I feel okay. I’m warm. I was so cold, but…I’m okay now.”
No, he wasn’t. Not even close. And just then, gunshots ripped through the air. Everyone tensed, but Jesse ignored the noise.
“Goddammit.” He had to find the source of the blood and clamp it off or Danny wasn’t going to make it to a hospital. Jesse grabbed a scalpel and scissors. “Someone hold him down.” Even with the morphine pumping into his system, this was going to hurt like a bitch.
Ian, of all people, knelt to grip Danny’s shoulders. He met Ian’s gaze in surprise.
“Do it,” Ian said. “I got him.”
All right. Here goes nothing. Jesse pushed out a breath, then sliced open the side of Danny’s chest, used the scissors to cut through layers of muscle and fat. Danny screamed and tried to thrash, but Ian held him still.
Jesse stayed focused on his task, looking for the bleed. It was here somewhere. Had to be here…
He ignored the sweat dripping into his eyes, ignored the gunshots thundering around him. Finally, Danny passed out, and the screaming stopped. “Marcus, keep with the bag.” He didn’t have time to intubate if Danny stopped breathing.
Danny’s heart beat sluggishly. Blood had filled the sac around it, compressing the heart with each beat. Jesse used a needle to evacuate as much of the blood as he could…
And it filled up again.
He had to find the damn bleed.
And there it was. Yes. He clamped it off, drained the sac again, and watched the heart resume a normal beat…
For a minute.
The sac filled again. The heart itself was bleeding. He took a closer look and…yeah. The percussion of the bullet had turned Danny’s internal organs to mush. The heart was damaged beyond repair.
Sick to his stomach, Jesse stopped what he was doing. He didn’t need to recheck vitals to know Danny was deteriorating. Too much blood loss and still bleeding. Too much internal damage.
He covered the incision with a bandage, more out of a sense of decency than medical necessity. He stripped off his gloves, and found a space blanket in his bag to cover Danny’s shivering frame. He could see Danny’s body shutting down one process at a time, all of it by-the-book. Bluing lips and nail beds. Purple splotches appearing on his hands, and a check of his feet showed the same. Each breath he exhaled rattled in his throat.
Danny was dying. And, goddamn it all to hell, there was nothing more he could do to stop it. It was Gabe getting shot all over again, except this time, he really had failed. Danny wouldn’t live to see his wife and kids again.
“What are you doing?” Marcus demanded. “Why are you stopping?”
His expression must have betrayed him because Marcus shook his head in denial. “No. Don’t say it.”
He didn’t have to. Marcus knew what was about to happen as well as he did.
Danny was already coming back around to consciousness. Man, he was strong. If Jesse hadn’t seen for himself the incredible damage done by the bullet, he’d almost think Danny could beat this. But he couldn’t. Nobody could live with a destroyed heart.
Danny groped blindly at the air. “Marcus…”
“Hey, buddy. Relax.” Marcus clasped his hand and leaned down. “You’re going to be fine. Hang on a bit longer, okay? You’ll be just…” His voice cracked. “Fine.”
“I don’t think—” Danny wheezed in a labored breath, let it out with a soft rattle. “We’re going surfing today.”
“We’ll go tomorrow, yeah? Once we get you to the hospital, you’ll be back out on a board in no time.”
“You’ll…take care of Leah?”
“You know I will, man, but don’t talk like that. Don’t talk like—like that.”
Danny’s gaze drifted over to Jesse. “Lanie…okay?”
Lanie.
He froze, for the first time realizing she wasn’t among the group. He’d been so focused on his patient, it hadn’t left room for any other worries. And then he remembered the blood. There had seemed to be a lot of it, but very little of it had come from Danny until after the needle entered his chest.
Because it had come from Lanie.
He scanned the area, spotted her staggering across the grass in front of the convention center. She collapsed before reaching the beach. He grabbed his med kit and bolted toward her.
“Jess!” someone shouted and gunfire popped behind him, but he ignored it all. He didn’t care about the sniper, didn’t care about his own safety. He had to get to her.
She was unconscious, bleeding, her shirt soaked through. Her injuries mirrored Danny’s, except there was no exit wound—the bullet must have entered his left back, exited his right chest, and hit her left chest. Even without his stethoscope he could hear her uneven breath sounds. Her pulse weakened by the second, and her blood pressure was dropping.
God. Was she bleeding into her chest? Was he going to lose her, too?
His hands shook as he fumbled through his bag for another chest dart. His heart hammered, and he couldn’t find the damn thing.
Where was it? Where was it? Where the hell—
He finally found the dart right in the pocket where he always kept them. Christ. He needed to focus, but his hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the sterile packaging open.
He was losing his cool, the calm detachment he worked so hard to cultivate cracking around him like huge sheets of glacial ice in the summer sun. He was too frantic. Too scattered. Too goddamn scared. He’d lost all objectivity and that was why Danny was dying. That was why Lanie would die.
A sob ripped free from his throat as he struggled with the dart.
“Dad.”
Okay, now he was hearing things because Connor couldn’t be here. He was safely tucked behind the van, out of the line of fire, away from the blood and carnage. Exactly where Jesse always wanted him to be.
“Dad!” His son’s hands wrapped around his, stopping his struggle with the packaging.
Panicked, he gazed up into eyes so very much like his own. “What are you doin’? You were supposed to stay behind the van! Connor, Jesus. I can’t lose you.”
“Dad,” Connor said with a grave kind of wisdom no kid his age should ever possess. There were tears in his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. “Dad, breathe. You got this.”
“I-I can’t—what if I fail again? I saved Gabe with pure luck. Now Danny’s dying. What if I lose her?”
“Dad, I’ve seen you work,” Connor said firmly and squeezed his hands. “You got this.”
“I love her,” he said softly. He didn’t know why, but it suddenly seemed important to say out loud.
“That doesn’t mean you’re going to fail her. You think it does, but it doesn’t.”
“I love you. I failed you.”
Connor shook his head. “No. I get you now, Dad. I know why you tried so hard to keep your distance. You thought you were helping me, keeping me away from all this.” He waved a hand at their surroundings as gunfire continued in the distance. “But keeping me away, it hurt me. It’ll hurt Lanie too if you stay all bottled up. Use what you’re feeling. If you love her, use that to help save her. You can do this.”
The certainty in his son’s voice settled something inside him. Like a switch flipped, the panic drained away and he went into the zone again. It had always been a cold, objective place, a place he’d strived to maintain even in his day-to-day life. That detachment. That clinical observation. But Connor was right. Staying there, locked up inside himself, wasn’t working for him anymore. It caused nothing but distress and panic when he slipped up and lost his cool, and his distance only hurt the people he loved.
So he opened the doors on that cold, clinical place, and let the love and fear and all of the messy emotions flow in. Amazingly, they didn’t detract from what he knew he had to do. He was still in the zone. Only now, there was a driving sense of urgency, a sense of importance he’d never felt before.
He clasped his boy’s cheek in one hand. “How did you get to be so brilliant?”
Connor’s lips twisted. “I’m told I have a smart dad.”
Jesse got to work. He cut open Lanie’s shirt and handed Connor the bottle of Betadine. “Sterilize the ribs on her left side.”
When Connor was done, he ripped open the dart and trailed his fingers down Lanie’s chest, counting the ribs, looking for the slight depression between the second and third. There. He pushed the needle in and felt it pop as it broke through to where it needed to be. Air rushed through the catheter. Not blood. Her chest expanded fully and her eyelids fluttered.
Connor released a relieved huff of air, followed by a laugh. “She’s okay!”
Jesse checked her vitals. The bullet was still inside her and would need to be removed, but everything was stabilizing. Blood pressure, pulse, lung sounds—all good. The bullet had lost so much velocity by the time it tore through Danny and hit her it hadn’t caused the same kind of damage.
Thank God.
Her eyes opened, focused. “Jesse?”
He leaned over so she didn’t try to sit up, and pushed her wild hair back from her face. “Welcome back.”
“Where…did I go?” she asked on a breath of sound.
“Nowhere. You’re not goin’ anywhere.”
“Okay. Good.” She groaned. “I have a bone to pick with you.”
He grinned. Here she was with a bullet wound and a recently re-inflated lung, raring to tell him off. Yup, he was completely head over heels, crazy in love with her. Hell, maybe he always had been. “I can’t wait to hear about it.”
“Dad stuck a huuuge needle in your chest!” Connor exclaimed, the wise old soul suddenly a kid again. “Like this long!” He held up two fingers to demonstrate. “It was kinda cool, and I’m pretty sure he saved your life. He loves you. He won’t tell you himself, but you should probably kiss him anyway.”
Lanie’s lips curved. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Or he could kiss me.”
Heart in his throat, Jesse leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. Soft. Gentle. He wanted to kiss the hell out of her, scoop her up in his arms and hold her tight, but he was wary of hurting her.
Later.
Yes, later, when they were safe and she was healed, he was going to hold her. And he might not ever let her go.