By Your Side (23 page)

“Sure.” Macy feigned an innocent smile. “My uncle Bob is a policeman. In Wyoming.”

“I
COULD PROBABLY DO IT.
” Andi maneuvered her wheelchair forward and back, leg extended, to prove her new expertise. The sling was gone, and her crutches had been propped against the corridor wall beside her. “Half shifts, run the department right from this chair.” She peered past Taylor toward the trauma rooms. “Doesn’t look too challenging in there. Grab me some scrubs.”

“No way.” Taylor shook her head, noticing that the plucky physician had paired her hospital robe with red-yellow-and-blue Wonder Woman slipper socks. “Physical therapy will be here in a flash to take you and the little elf back upstairs. They weren’t too thrilled that you conned the transporter into a detour over here.”

“I know.” Andi smiled, spread a palm across her pregnant tummy. “We’ll be good.” She glanced through the
department doors again and sighed. “I know it’s going to take time to heal and feel normal, but it’s . . . harder than I thought.”

“I’m sure,” Taylor empathized, remembering her conversation with Seth last night when they’d talked about healing from grief and she questioned him about his personal experience.

“Taylor?”

Seth Donovan was suddenly beside them. His face was grayish pale and his expression pained, anxious. He glanced between Andi and Taylor. “I’m sorry to interrupt . . .”

“What is it?” Taylor asked, concern growing as she noted the perspiration dotting his forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“I was upstairs with a patient and . . .” Seth pressed his palm against his lower sternum, closed his eyes, and groaned. “Half a roll of antacids hasn’t touched it this time.”

“Get him to an exam room,” Andi ordered, reaching for the crutches. “Take this wheelchair.”

“No,” Seth insisted despite his obviously increasing distress. “It’s just my stomach. And you’re hurt, Dr. Carlyle. I can’t let you
 
—”

“No arguments.” Andi set the brakes and hoisted herself onto one superhero slipper sock. She waved away Taylor’s attempt at assistance. “I see the transporter right down the hall; he’ll grab me another chair.” She stared at Seth, her expression a mix of steely resolve and compassion. “What we
can’t
have, Mr. Donovan, is one of the good guys risking a cardiac event in our hallway.”

“She’s right, Seth.” Like it or not, Taylor was thinking the same thing.

“But
 
—”

“Right in that chair,” Andi ordered, armpit over one crutch. She nodded with approval as Taylor made a quick call to give Macy a heads-up in the ER. “You’ll get your chance to prove it’s your stomach. After you meet MONA.”

“Mona?” Seth grimaced, settling with reluctance into the vacated chair. “Who’s Mona?”

“What, not who. It’s a mnemonic for chest pain protocols,” Taylor explained, seeing with relief that the transporter had already retrieved a second chair for Andi.
MONA: morphine, oxygen, nitroglycerin, aspirin.
It wasn’t etched in stone, but it was a great guideline to remember the cardiac treatment basics. “As in, ‘MONA greets all patients.’”

“I’ll have to trust you on that,” Seth told her, closing his eyes against the pain.

“Good.” Taylor put the wheelchair in motion, saying a quick prayer for her chaplain friend. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“Got all the blood for labs?” Macy asked as Taylor stepped away from Seth’s gurney, carrying several filled tubes.

“Chemistry, blood count, PT and PTT . . . Troponin’s already running.” Taylor glanced back toward their patient, the concern in her green eyes obvious. “He was popping antacids last night
 
—I didn’t even think about it.”

They’d been teamed on a death notification, Taylor had said. Gone out for a bite to eat afterward. Probably about the same time Macy and Fletcher were having their meal. She knew he’d be concerned about Seth. “The EKG didn’t
show any ST elevation,” Macy reminded Taylor. “Seth’s still under forty, with no previous cardiac history or big risk factors.”

“If you don’t count job stress. And life stress.”

“If you’re going to count that, then you’d better tell the chaplain to scooch over
 
—we’ll all have to climb up on that gurney.” She met Taylor’s gaze. “You okay? Want me to ask someone else to take over with him?”

“No. I’m okay.” Taylor found a smile. “It’s just that Andi was right. Out there in the hallway, when she was trying to muscle him into the wheelchair. She called him ‘one of the good guys.’”

“Yes.” Macy looked back at Seth, lying beneath a web of monitoring wires and oxygen tubing. He’d been at the hospital visiting the family of a child who’d suffered a near drowning; the mother was a 911 operator and had taken the unimaginable call. Seth Donovan was absolutely one of the good guys. The same way Fletcher was.

“I have to trust that he’ll be okay,” Taylor added softly. “He has to be.”

Macy wanted to say something reassuring. But that had always been Taylor’s role. It was the perfect moment to say something supportive about hope . . . or faith? When had she started to factor that into any equation? For the first time Macy could remember, she was tempted to try that. But climbing Half Dome seemed far less daunting. Better to stick to what she trusted most: facts.

“Look,” Macy said at last, “so far so good. Seth’s vital signs are stable. The EKG and chest X-ray are good. He’s not a smoker or a diabetic, no high blood pressure. Even with the
troponin pending, the docs are betting on gastric reflux.” She raised her brows. “The man admitted to chili cheese fries.”

“And a molten fudge brownie.”

“See?” Macy nodded, relieved to see Taylor’s lips tug toward a smile. “Plus, Andi’s up on crutches and wearing Wonder Woman socks. All signs that the Earth is shifting back to its normal axis.”

“You’re sure you’re okay to do this?” Fletcher asked, opening the car door for his mother. He glanced at the doors to the Sacramento Hope ER, trying to shake the sense of déjà vu; last time they’d been here together, he was carrying her in his arms. “Seth tried to talk you out of coming.”

His mother snorted. “A snowball’s chance in Houston.”

Fletcher smiled. That about said it.

“He told Taylor it was okay to call me,” she continued as Fletcher tapped in the code for the ambulance entrance doors
 
—it had been cleared with security. “And you know how many times that good man has been there for me. And a thousand other folks.” His mother tossed him a knowing look. “Plus, I didn’t think you’d mind coming with me to the hospital.”

Macy was working. They’d texted well into the night and talked on the phone before breakfast. She was working days and Fletcher had taken a swing shift. They wouldn’t have seen each other. After learning Seth was out of immediate danger, he almost thanked his friend for the excuse to come over here. Even if it would take all his willpower not to haul the beautiful nurse into his arms.

She was in the corridor outside the emergency department when they got inside. Nobody should look that good in baggy scrubs.

“Seth is being watched in the CPAU. Our chest pain assessment unit,” Macy explained after greeting his mother. “It’s a precaution; he’s really very stable.” Her eyes met Fletcher’s at last, breath drawing softly inward. “He’ll be glad to see you both, I’m sure.”

Fletcher was only sure that his feet were cemented right where they were.

“I should go on ahead,” Charly insisted with uncanny mercy. “Seth may want to fill me in on that sad situation with the child in ICU.”

Fletcher waited until his mother was three strides away, then reached for Macy’s hand. “I missed you.”

“Same here.” She smiled at him but slid her fingers from his as a pair of lab technicians came around the corner. “Work,” she said with a small frown. “No getting around it.”

“Nope.” Fletcher glanced toward the overhead speaker as a stat page went out for the obstetrics resident. “Seth said he’s okay and that it’s not his heart. Maybe it’s stomach-related, from stress?”

“It looks that way. I can’t say officially . . .” Macy was guarding his friend’s privacy; Fletcher admired her for that. “I guess you know he was here visiting the family of the police dispatcher?”

“Yeah. And now my mother’s making a chaplain visit to the chaplain.” He shook his head. “A regular compassion pile-on.”

“You can add two more to that hero huddle: Taylor
was the one who coerced Seth from the corridor onto our gurney . . . after Andi climbed out of her wheelchair and offered it up.”

“Andi Carlyle?” Fletcher’s eyes widened. “The ER doctor from the hit-and-run?”

“Yep. Triaged Seth, leaning on her crutches. Everyone’s pitching in. Not so different from your team.” Macy’s eyes held Fletcher’s. “I appreciate the extra patrol in my neighborhood last night. And how the detectives worked around my schedule today.”

They’d questioned her, of course. “You okay with all of that?”

“Creepy coincidence, not a target. There’s no reason for that maniac to follow me.” Macy’s chin rose. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” Her forehead puckered as the OB resident was paged a second time. “I caught some of the news on the nurses’ lounge TV. They were showing those photos you took with your phone last night. They’re saying it’s the best lead they’ve had toward catching the shooter.”

“Maybe. But none of it is certain. Identifying that Buick
 
—even ruling it out
 
—would be a help. We’ll be going door-to-door in the communities again tonight.”

“And you have that partial license plate; you got a look at it.”

“Right.”

They were fairly certain they’d traced it to a vehicle with a nonoperational registration. An old Honda Civic
 
—not a Buick
 
—parked in a trash-heaped carport in Stockton, almost an hour’s drive from the shooting locations. The owner, an elderly gentleman housebound by deteriorating health, had
no clue the plates were missing. Detectives were circulating photos of the Buick and making inquiries regarding any strangers seen on or near the property. Rumor had it that one of the CSI officers required treatment for a spider bite after attempts to dust the Honda for prints.

“Oh no.” Macy grimaced as yet another physician page sounded overhead, this time including a room number. “That’s Andi.”

“What? But . . . she’s a patient.”

“That’s what I mean. Those pages for OB assistance are for Andi’s room up on the surgical floor. She must be having trouble with the baby.” Macy grabbed her phone from her scrubs pocket as it buzzed with a text. Her face paled as she scanned it. “It’s Taylor. Andi’s bleeding.” She winced, met his gaze. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I didn’t hear it.” Fletcher gave Macy’s hand a quick squeeze.

“I should get back to the ER. See if Taylor knows anything else.”

“Go. I’ll be up with Seth and
 
—”

She was gone before he could finish.

Fletcher remembered what Macy had said about Andi Carlyle. How she’d given up her wheelchair to help Seth. Probably one of hundreds of selfless acts she’d done without thinking. Maybe all her life. And then some guy deliberately mowed her down with his truck. Fletcher couldn’t forget the image of that doctor lying in the parking lot, broken and bloodied. Too much like his sister under the wheels of the drunk driver.

His jaw tightened. Where was the sense in any of it? His
sister, his mother, Dr. Carlyle . . . that dead bank manager, the paralyzed guard? And now what
 
—a dead baby too? All too often lately, it was getting harder to pray, to put things in God’s hands. Maybe there came a point when faith wasn’t enough, prayers went unanswered. He shifted his weight, felt the bulk of his holster on his belt. Maybe the only true mercy was justice.