Between Friends (21 page)

The SUV had barely slowed to a stop before Eddie hopped out and rushed to the incident command truck. Their captain’s face was beet red as he listened to the clusterfuck of a response happening inside the bank. Heads were going to roll after this one.

Just as quickly as the firefight started, it came to an abrupt stop.

Eddie heard O’Halloran’s team clearing the building and confirming
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the robbers were all either dead or wounded but secured. “We’ve got three civilians wounded. Need EMS ASAP.”

“Son of a bitch!” Captain Diaz looked to Eddie. “Get in there. Get the hostages out. Get EMS in.”

Eddie nodded and motioned to his guys. “Craig, Kevin, wait here for EMS. The rest of you with me.

They rushed to the front of the bank and entered the ruined interior. It looked like something out of a war zone. Acrid smoke irritated his lungs. The busted-out glass of the front doors and windows let in fresh air so the room was clearing fast. A pair of gunmen writhed on the ground. They’d suffered gunshot wounds to the chest and arms. Hostages sobbed as they skittered out of the lobby accompanied by SWAT. They slid on glass and tripped over chunks of roofing tile.

“Christ!” Eddie shook his head. This was exactly the kind of bullshit Rambo-wannabe response that put innocent lives at risk and got officers killed. His jaw clenched. O’Halloran had to go.

“Oh, fuck.” Danny’s distraught voice echoed in the lobby. “Here’s a fourth civilian. She’s hurt real bad.”

Eddie glanced over to his rookie team member and watched as he dragged a dead robber off another person. There was a wounded civilian pinned underneath, so he started over to help. His gaze drifted to the orange pumps on the victim’s feet. They seemed so familiar.

God, he really needed to quit reading over Whitney’s shoulder. All those fashion magazines were finally starting to take over his head.

And that dress, he thought, as the brown and pink and burnt-orange paisley print came into view. He’d seen that dress somewhere.

Danny crouched down next to the female victim and looked up at Eddie with pain in his eyes. “Oh hell, boss. It’s your girl.”

Eddie stumbled over his feet as Danny’s words registered. His gaze snapped to the woman’s face. Bloody and bruised, but there was no mistaking her. “Whitney!”

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Eddie fell to his knees beside her battered body and gathered her into his arms. She breathed raggedly and was only just conscious.

Blood seeped from the wounds in her belly, chest, and shoulder.

“Boss, lay her out flat.” Danny’s take-charge voice snapped Eddie out of his panic. Danny immediately put his hands on the shoulder and chest wound and pressed hard. “We need EMS.
Now
!”

Eddie put his hand on the gushing belly wound and added pressure. “Whitney, sugar, can you hear me?”

“Eddie,” she whispered, her eyes wide and lips ghostly pale.

“They sh-sh-shot me.”

“I know, sweetheart, but we’re going to get you all better, okay?

Just hang on, sugar.”

Craig skidded in next to them and dropped an emergency kit.

“EMS is a minute or two out.” He ripped open trauma dressing packages and tossed them onto Whitney’s body. Eddie grabbed one and pushed it against her belly. Danny did the same with two others.

“Old man,” Whitney said, her shaking hand trying to point somewhere over Eddie’s shoulder. “Tried to help me. Gun butt to the head.”

“Okay, sugar,” Eddie said. “We’ll make sure someone gets to him.” Eddie glanced over his shoulder and saw one of O’Halloran’s guys dealing with an elderly man. “He’s okay,” Eddie assured Whitney.

Her teeth chattered. “Co-co-cold.”

Eddie’s heart clenched. He knew shock when he saw it. There was just so much blood. It pooled around her body, soaking her silky blonde hair and turning her dress a shocking maroon color. “We’ll get you warm as soon as we get you in an ambulance.”

“Sleepy,” she murmured, her eyelids drifting together.

“No! No, Whitney.” Eddie stroked her face with his blood-stained fingers. “Stay awake, honey. I need to you to focus on me and stay awake, all right?”

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“Ca-ca-can’t,” Whitney replied so softly he barely heard her.

“Tired.”

The wail of ambulance sirens lowered Eddie’s skyrocketing blood pressure a few degrees. Help had arrived. A pair of medics rushed in with a jump bag and dropped down beside Eddie and Danny. Craig backed away to give them room. Eddie reluctantly turned over care of Whitney to the female medic and her male partner.

He held Whitney’s disturbingly cold hand and looked into her eyes. Her lips started to move as if she was trying to tell him something. He couldn’t make out the words. Her eyes flashed with such seriousness. Whatever it was, she was desperate for him to understand.

The exertion took its toll. She coughed loudly a few times and then gurgled. Eddie’s heart skipped a few beats as he watched frothy blood bubbles dribble from the corners of her mouth. He sat back on his heels, paralyzed with horror as the medics suctioned bloody fluid from her mouth and intubated. A fireman appeared with a gurney, and Whitney was quickly tossed onto the stretcher.

Danny pulled Eddie to his feet and took Eddie’s rifle. “Go, boss.

Go with your girl.”

Nodding, Eddie cast a quick glance at Craig. The other man gave him a reassuring look. He’d deal with everything here.

Eddie trailed the stretcher and medics to the ambulance. The female paramedic stopped him as he tried to climb into the back of the ambulance. “Are you family?”

“Closest thing she has to it.”

“Fiancé?” The medic guessed.

“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t a lie, really. He loved her, wanted her as his wife, and would ask her as soon as possible.

“Get in, but stay out of my way.”

Eddie’s estimation of the paramedic rose even higher. A take-no-bullshit attitude like that? Usually a sign of competence. He’d take that over wishy-washy any day.

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He settled onto the bench seat at the end closest to the double doors to stay clear of the two medics working on Whitney. While the male medic compressed the blue bag attached to the intubation equipment and delivered breaths, the woman cut the front of Whitney’s dress enough to bare her chest. She cut through the bra and removed the pieces of lingerie before attaching leads to Whitney’s chest. She punched the keys on the heart monitor. Eddie’s gut clenched at the sight of the very weak heartbeat.

“Where we going, Tamara?” The fireman poked his head through the small window between the cab and the box.

“Take her to Mick,” Eddie instructed.

“Mick?” Tamara glanced at him and frowned. “You mean Dr.

O’Loughlin?”

“He’s our roommate and…friend,” Eddie answered. God, Whitney was right. It was sticky as hell trying to explain their relationship to others. “His hospital is closest, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Tamara said. “Best goddamn trauma surgeon in this city.”

She gave the fireman his driving orders, and they sped out of the parking lot. Eddie braced his foot against the gurney to keep from sliding around in the back of the box. He desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing for him to do. Tamara and her partner had things under control, and Whitney was holding on—for now.

Eddie slipped his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. His finger trembled as he punched in Mick’s speed dial key and tried to figure out how the hell he was going to tell the man he loved the woman they both wanted as their wife had been shot.

* * * *

Mick plastered a smile on his face as his colleagues bullshitted around the lunch table in the cafeteria. He poked at the salad on his plate. Lately everything seemed unappetizing. He missed dinner with
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Whitney and Eddie so much. He’d tried to have a simple bowl of cereal with Whitney the other morning, but it had been disastrous.

Something had to change. Whitney and Eddie were both so stubborn. He’d have to be the one to make the first move. Stage a Come-to-Jesus meeting or something similar. They needed to sit down and talk and figure out a way to move on—together.

Mick truly believed the three of them could make it work, but they were probably going to have to make some hard decisions. Whitney was correct. She couldn’t marry both of them, but she could marry one of them legally. Which one was up to her, of course. The non-legal spouse could be married to the other two in a private commitment ceremony of sorts.

But first, he had to get Eddie and Whitney in the same room again and keep them there long enough to say his piece.

“Well, hell,” Joe Edgemont said with a sigh as he stared at his phone. The Pediatric Emergency Medicine specialist shook his head.

“There’s another robbery in progress according to the news. Shots fired. Lots of police and ambulances on the scene.” Joe scrolled down on the screen and rolled his eyes. “Shit, we’re the closest trauma center to this one.”

Mick groaned and shoved back from the table. His colleagues grumbled and did the same. They’d been slammed the last week with a rash of gunshot victims from a gang turf war. It seemed that every summer the old feuds were reignited. One-hundred-plus-degree temps and bad tempers did not mix.

All at once, the pagers clipped on the waistbands and pockets of Mick and his other emergency-room colleagues beeped. He tossed his uneaten salad in the trash and checked his pager. Three gunshot victims, two critical, with an ETA of four to seven minutes.

As Mick fell into step behind Joe, his cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and saw Eddie’s name. A ripple of panic burned his belly. God, what if Eddie had been called to the scene? Was he one of
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the victims? They never separated perpetrators from victims in the pages or radio reports.

He slid his finger down over the screen to answer. “Eddie, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Eddie’s voice sounded unnaturally tight and thick.

“It’s Whitney.”

Mick’s stomach dropped. “What happened to Whitney?”

“They shot her, Mick.” Eddie’s voice cracked. “It’s bad.”

Mick placed his hand on the nearest wall to steady himself.

Whitney? Shot? What the hell was she doing at that bank? Not that the details mattered at the moment. “How bad?”

“A round to the chest, another to the belly, and one to the shoulder. She was conscious when I got there, but she faded fast and there was so much blood, Mick. It was even coming out of her mouth.”

Mick’s gut lurched at that last bit. Had the bullet punctured a lung or worse? The fear in Eddie’s voice only heightened his anxiety. “Are you in the ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Can the medic take the phone?”

“Uh, hang on.” There was a shuffling sound, and a few seconds later a female voice came across the line. “Yeah?”

Mick recognized the woman’s voice immediately. “Tamara?”

“Dr. O’Loughlin?”

“Oh, thank god it’s you.” Mick breathed a bit easier. Tamara was one of the best paramedics in the whole damn city. She’d served in Afghanistan and Iraq and had saved lives out on the mean streets of LA that shocked even Mick. Girl had mad skills, and he was grateful she was using them on Whitney. “Give me a rundown of my—the patient’s—injuries.”

Mick listened intently as he hurried to the emergency room. Phone squeezed between his ear and shoulder, he gowned up and grabbed some gloves. He snatched a pair of safety glasses from the bin, too.

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His stomach heaved as Tamara mentioned Whitney’s down-trending vitals. She didn’t have to say anything more. Whitney was circling the drain.

“We’ll be on your doorstep in less than a minute.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Mick replied, the wail of a nearing siren bouncing off the nearby buildings. He snapped his phone shut and stuffed it in his pocket. Turning to the charge nurse, he said, “Page Allison. I’m going to need my cardio goddess on this one.”

From Tamara’s description, Mick felt sure Whitney’s lungs were collapsing. They’d probably sustained some kind of damage from a ricocheting bullet. If Whitney’s chest had to be cracked, he wanted Allison to be the one to do it. She had the magic hands, after all.

Mick slipped on his safety glasses and tugged on the gloves as the ambulance pulled into the bay. He followed Sally and Desiree out the doors and met the stretcher on the sidewalk. Eddie’s ghostly white face was bad, but the sight of Whitney’s limp, bloody body struck him hard. For a few moments, all he could do was stare at the sight of the woman he loved so much.

Shaking himself from the stupor of surprise, Mick took charge. He issued commands to get an OR prepped while they stabilized and got the stretcher rushed into the nearest trauma room. As he did his initial assessment, Tamara gave her report again, and Sally cut off Whitney’s clothing. Mick ordered the necessary X-rays and other tests while Desiree established a second IV line.

“Lots of bleeding here, Doc.” Sally shook her head as she wiped at Whitney’s belly with gauze squares. “Should I page Dr. Cardenas?”

At Sally’s prompting, he glanced at Whitney’s abdomen. Paging an obstetrician-gynecologist suddenly sounded like an excellent idea.

“Yes.”

There was just so much blood. Mick worried about what he’d find once he got her belly open. With that amount of hemorrhaging, there had to be a major vessel involved or something very vascular…like the uterus.

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His gaze moved back to the monitors. Her blood pressure was tanking. She had decreased breath sounds on the right, and her oxygen saturation levels were uncomfortably low. He didn’t like it one bit.

“Not good,” Allison said as she strode into the trauma room, her focus on the monitors. She unlooped the stethoscope from around her neck and stuck the ear pieces in place. She listened to Whitney’s chest and made a face. “I don’t like this, Mick. What are the wound trajectories like?”