A Love Like This (13 page)

“Aren’t you listening, motherfucker?” A
single shot rang out as the small man fired into the ceiling and
the women screamed, all of us flinching in unison. The menacing
laugh of both men echoed through the stark room. I glanced at Kari,
still next to the kid on the floor. His blood was seeping around
his lifeless body in a puddle. She shook her head. He was dead. I
moved my head toward the door, silently telling her to get out of
the room while the criminals were somewhat distracted. She stayed
low and quietly opened the door, slipping outside the room.

“We’re listening,” Jane said, more softly
now, working to keep the focus on us. Her eyes searched my face and
she let go of the bag and began moving around toward the man with
the knife. I shook my head at her, but she ignored me. She was so
brave, yet my mind was screaming for her to stop. What the fuck was
she doing?
It’s okay, Ryan
, her eyes pleaded with mine.

“Get out if you wanna keep breathing!” One
of them said behind the handkerchief that covered the lower half of
his face.

The other two nurses looked at me with wide
eyes and I nodded. “Go. You, too, Jane.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide and
frightened, but determined, as she continued to move around behind
me, while I kept my finger in the wound in the patient on the
table.

“Come on, let’s take it easy. You’re right.”
Jane tried to reason with the unreasonable. “Is he worth any of our
lives? What about you? Don’t throw your lives away. You can leave.
We won’t call the police.”

I kept my movements to a minimum, trying to
thwart any attention to myself so I could continue to work, but it
was difficult with no help.

The man laughed bitterly. “Jack, she says
she won’t call the cops. I think she wants to be our friend. Maybe
she wants to party.”

He grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled
her mask from her face, grabbing her chin roughly and tilting her
face. She winced in pain but didn’t make a sound. I paused for a
split second but didn’t turn around. “Leave her alone,” I commanded
softly.

The man named Jack shoved me roughly and I
stumbled and fell hard against the wall. “My boy said stop working,
Doctor Do-gooder! Are you fucking deaf?”

I stopped what I was doing and whipped
around, knocking the gun away from my neck. The rest of the
instruments fell with a clatter on the floor and the gun went off
when it clattered to the floor. My heart seized. I was unsure, at
first, if I’d been shot or not, as adrenaline raced through my
veins.

The young man staggered back and away from
me, and the air whooshed from my lungs as the other man put a fist
in my kidney, doubling me over. I grunted as intense pain shot
through my torso. I fell to my knees, shaking in agony.

“Ryan, stay down. He’s not worth it,” Jane
pleaded softly. “Please.” I could see her chest rising and falling
with the effort of her breathing, her arms at her side, palms face
up as her eyes begged me to do as she asked. I couldn’t. These men
were insane with hatred. They didn’t value the life of their friend
who bled to death in front of them. They sure as hell weren’t going
to listen to reason.

It was all a blur after that as I stumbled
to my feet and a flash of steel appeared before me. Jane yelled my
name and ran forward, shoving me away with all her might, making me
fall off balance and fall backward.

Jane’s scream pierced the air just as pain
sliced through my shoulder and right arm. I slammed heavily into
the wall with a loud bang.

My vision blurred as resentment and anger
welled up inside me. Who the fuck did these bastards think they
were? What gave them the right to decide whether any of us would
ever see anything outside of these walls? If Jane, now lying on the
cold tile floor, her lower abdomen ripped open and pouring out
blood, would survive more than this minute or the next? Who the
hell were they to decide if I would ever lay eyes on Julia again or
if she’d be made a widow on this night?

Sirens screamed outside in the ambulance bay
as I crawled over to Jane. Her body jerked and her eyes glassed
over, starring up into nothing, blood quickly saturating her
scrubs.

“Jane!” I moved over her and lifted the
material away. The shirt of her scrubs was slit open and a large
cut was made in her pants below her waist. “Jane, you’re gonna make
it. Look into my eyes. Stay focused on me, Jane!”

She blinked and opened her mouth but nothing
came out. Her pupils were huge and dilated. I knew they’d be
unresponsive if I tested them. I pulled off my gloves and reached
for a box of gauze bandages from one of the counters and pulled out
handfuls of it to press to her wound. She was cut on her lower
torso, below her belly button; the huge, gaping slash full of blood
that seeped in again as soon as I could mop it up, gushing in time
with her heartbeat. Fuck, it was bad. It had to be the abdominal
aorta or the uterine or common iliac artery for that kind of
pulsing rhythm. There was no time for new gloves, but I didn’t
concern myself with the risks. She needed surgery and stat. Sweat
was starting to bead on my brow and drip down into my eyes. I wiped
at the sting with my sleeve but it did nothing to alleviate the
problem and only succeeded in smearing my own blood across my
face.

I struggled to keep my voice from shaking.
“C’mon, Jane, stay with me.” My heart stopped, her eyes that were
staring up at me were fading fast. She wouldn’t make it to the OR
at this rate. I had no access to instruments and even if I did,
blood was filling the cavity too quickly to see where the artery
was cut so I could get a clamp on it. She was bleeding out, her
blood seeping down her body and onto the floor, into the knees of
my scrubs.

If I wanted to save her, I had one choice. I
reached inside her, using my fingers to search for the flow of
blood and when I found it, I used my fingers to pinch it off. I
needed both hands to secure the artery on both sides of the wound.
It was a fumbling remedy. At best, blind and slippery, but it was
all I had.

“Jack, let’s go! The cops are coming. Kill
that fucker so we can get out of here!”

Somewhere in the back of my mind my
subconscious reminded me that the police were already on the scene
and that the boy on the table was close to death as well. Worse,
that I could be the ‘fucker’ they were planning on killing. In the
split second it took for the two men to move around me and plunge
the knife into the chest of the kid on the table, I prayed. Prayed
I’d be alive. Alive to try to save Jane and to make sure Julia knew
how much I loved her.

The kid jerked violently, and I did, too. My
first instinct was to jump up and try to stop them, but given my
current circumstance at Jane’s side, it was impossible. Jack pulled
the knife brutally from the boy’s chest and the air wheezed out of
my lungs like I’d been the one stuck. I was helpless. All I could
do was listen to them leave and then pray that someone would come
through the door. I couldn’t move. To do so would mean Jane would
die for sure. My own blood was soaking the sleeve on my right
shoulder and running in streams down my arm and mingling with hers.
I barely noticed.

“Kari! Kari, get in here! Bring a gurney and
get Caleb and Dr. Wagner! Stat! Jane is hurt badly!” I shouted.
Kari and Jared burst into the room, followed by three other nurses
and the attending.

“Holy shit, Ryan. Have you been stabbed?”
Caleb asked as he and a wide-eyed Kari ran forward.

“Forget about me. Jane is critical. Kari,
grab some clamps! Tell Dr. Wagner we’ll need Jameson. She needs
emergency surgery.” The madness of a scuffle and several gun shots
that popped just outside the doors reminded me that it was not over
as the police dealt with the gang. My heart felt like it would fly
from my chest. I wasn’t sure if the pulse in my hands was mine or
Jane’s. This wasn’t some stranger whose life I held, literally, in
my hands.

Caleb frantically pulled on some gloves and
moved to my side, ripping open the sterile package containing the
surgical tools which would contain the clamps, as another group of
nurses and doctors rushed in and Dr. Wagner got on his phone and
assembled Dr. Jameson and the surgical team. “Oh, my God!” he
said.

“Clamp just above the fingers on my left
hand and below them on the right.” I was breathless. “A little
higher.” He pushed the open clamp into Jane’s wound. “Higher! Got
it? Now the other.”

My colleague clamped off the other side and
the others lifted her to a gurney and began working on stabilizing
her.

I sighed heavily. I was covered in blood,
not sure if it was Jane’s, the kid’s, or my own. My knees felt weak
and Kari helped me to a chair, while the others scrambled around
Jane.

Caleb ordered fluids and blood, the nurses
were rushing around hooking up the equipment and doing CPR. They
were in overdrive, and if Jane had a chance, I was confident our
team would make the most of it.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Guilt crashed over me.
Was it my fault that kid was dead? Or that Jane was barely alive?
My head tried to wrap around what happened. She moved in front of
me just after my shoulder was sliced. No doubt, without her
intervention, it would be me fighting for my life.

“Call time of death.” I flushed, thanking
God it had come from the other side of the room. It was a hollow,
wooden echo that got lost behind the din of the discussion over
Jane. Jane would be prepped as soon as they had her stable and
rushed in for emergency surgery.

I glanced to my left. The boy didn’t make
it; they were pulling a sheet up over his body. Somewhere he had a
mother who had just lost her sixteen year-old son to a senseless
tragedy.

“Caleb, how bad is she?” I asked hoarsely,
but loud enough for him to hear me. I winced. My shoulder was on
fire as I gingerly tried to move it. It felt sticky, the blood
beginning to clot and crust in the streams down my arm. It was a
sign it wasn’t too deep. I’d need stitches, but no major arteries
or veins were struck and the muscle, though protesting, worked. I
grunted in pain.

“Not good, Ryan. She’ll probably need a
hysterectomy. Her insides are like hamburger.”

I had no words. In light of my own weekend
quest to make a baby with Julia, and the miscarriage we suffered, I
felt Jane’s loss and felt it hard.

“Come with me, Ryan,” Kari said. “Let’s head
into another room so I can get this cleaned and stitched up.”

“I’m fine,” I protested. I’d gotten the
least of it.

“Stop being stubborn. There’s nothing more
you can do. She’s still alive because of you.”

“It should be me on that table.”

“Hush. You’re being silly. You were amazing.
You knew what to do to help her and you did it without hesitation.
All that blood is a dangerous situation. Some people wouldn’t have
been so selfless, Ryan. If I ever get hurt, I hope you’ll be the
one working on me.” Her eyes filled with understanding and
compassion. “Come on. We’ll only be in the way and they’ll be
transporting her soon.”

“Okay.” I nodded as she helped me up and
nodded to the wheelchair she had waiting. “But I don’t need that
damn thing.”

I glanced at my watch and sighed, impatient
and anxious to get home to Ryan. Even though I’d been annoyed as
hell with his insensitivity to Ellie’s broken heart, I couldn’t
stay mad at him. He was tired, working his ass off and all he
wanted was to see me. How could I hold that against him? It only
reminded me how perfect he was and I found myself aching to put my
arms around him.

This weekend had been something we’d both
been looking forward to, and if I was honest, I was annoyed with my
friend, too. Why couldn’t she see how she alienated Harris? Every
time she questioned and mistrusted, he closed off more and more,
which only fed her suspicions.

I sighed in resignation. I was tired of
listening to the same thing over and over when she clearly wasn’t
hearing my advice and she wasn’t listening to the man she loved. I
reminded myself how I used to feel when Ryan went out on dates; I
was devastated, even though we weren’t even dating. Ellie had to be
feeling even worse, except it was all in her head. That was the
infuriating part and it made it all a huge waste.

Somehow I managed to get on a plane, but it
was much later than I’d originally planned. Witnessing the state of
Ellie’s relationship with Harris, made me sick at how I’d left
things with Ryan. I hated any sort of distance between us, and more
than the 3000 miles that had separated us, the emotional chasm,
however temporary, left me bereft and itching to fix it.

I called Ellie’s mother, who’d always
coddled her daughter as long as I’d known her and was only too
happy to come be with her only child. Ellie cringed at her mother’s
meddling, sometimes feeling smothered, but in this case, she ran
into her arms like a small child. After the older woman arrived, I
made a hasty exit, inviting my friend to come to New York as soon
as she could manage it. A change of scenery was just what she
needed to get her head and heart around her own situation and the
New York Fashion District was just the distraction to help.