Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (13 page)

“Artery's sewn up, bleeding's stopped,” says Matt. “Close him up.”

He turns to another nurse and points at the monitor. “Add 5 milligrams of Ativan and 150 of diltiazem. I don't like that sine wave.”

“Shit,” I hiss, my hands clenched into fists, and I turn away from the operating table. This is what happens in emergency situations—one thing gets fixed and then you have to worry about the damage from that issue snowballing into other problems.

I look out the window toward the nurses's station. Danny is there with Maria, filling out all of Cesar's paperwork for me.

And then the monitor lets out the dreaded tone I've been praying I wouldn't hear.

I spin around to see a straight line crawling across the monitor.

Cesar. No.

“V-tach,” says a nurse. Matt flashes a glance at me quickly and then gets back to work on Cesar.

I rush to the table and take my brother's hand. “Cesar! You can do this. Fight! Come back to me!”

“Paddles,” says Matt.

The nurses work fast around me, not saying a word. I know that normally they'd kick family members out for doing this, but Matt hasn't issued the order.

“200,” orders Matt. “Clear!”

I drop my brother's hand only because I have to, and Matt hits Cesar with the defibrillator paddles. If he's coding, then his heart has stopped, and they only have a few minutes before oxygen stops reaching his brain. If they don't get his heart going his organs will quickly shut down. I also know that Cesar has three chances with the paddles. After the third try, they'll put the paddles away, and the odds of him surviving are basically none.

We all watch and wait, holding our breath to see if the monitor will register Cesar's heartbeat, to see if the charged current has worked to get it going again. I count the seconds and Matt is counting too. At six, he says, “300.”

The nurse turns the machine to 300. Matt says, “Clear!” Everybody steps back. Matt pushes the paddles into Cesar's chest and I hold my breath again. A high-pitched frequency fills the room and Cesar's body jumps from the shock.

I cross my arms and put my hand over my mouth, more scared than I've ever been. Cesar's life is on the edge. He's seconds away from not existing anymore if Matt can't help him.

Six seconds go by and the paddles haven't worked. The line on the monitor stays flat, the single frequency tone as ominous as a newspaper obituary, final and resolute.

I feel the tears spilling out of my eyes, hot and angry. My brother is going to die. My kind-hearted, misguided brother for whom life has never been easy. He deserves another chance. He needs the chance to have a good life without pain and hardship and sorrow.

No. I won't let him go.

I grab his hand again and I get close to his ear. “Cesar. You fight this with all you've got. I want you to come back to me now!”

Matt picks up the paddles again and says to his nurse, “360.” She turns the knob.

I take a step back, but say loudly into his ear, “Open your eyes, Cesar!”

Matt says, “Clear!” and as he presses down on Cesar's chest and is about to deploy the last shocking bolt of energy, the monitor beeps. Matt stops. We all look at the monitor as Cesar's heart comes back online. The line is jagged for a minute, and then it evens out. He's back.

“Sinus rhythm,” reports a nurse.

A collective sigh ripples through the room. I bend over, lightheaded, hands on my thighs. Matt puts down the paddles and pushes away the defibrillator. He reads out Cesar's vitals to the room. “Pulse 45, BP 100 over 50, o-sats 95, sinus.”

I'm practically hyperventilating. I find Cesar's hand and squeeze it.

“Good job, mijo,” I say into his ear. “You did it. You did it.” I cover my face with my hands and cry because I know how close I was to losing him.

Most of the medical personnel leave the room, and Matt comes to me and puts his arm around me. He doesn't seem to care who's watching and I don't either. Life and death situations tend to make man-made rules seem ridiculous and insignificant.

I lean my head into his chest and sigh. “Thank you,” I say. “It's not enough, but thank you.”

We watch Cesar together. He looks like hell, laying there on the table hooked up to monitors and breathing apparatus, but he's alive.

“He has some serious recovery ahead of him,” warns Matt. “He lost a lot of blood. And it's a bloody miracle we had enough of his type on hand. Somebody not two days ago came in to donate A-neg. You should send her a thank you note.”

“I will,” I say. “And I'll make Cesar do her dishes for a year when he wakes up.”

Matt laughs, then says, “I'm going to go make sure they're getting him a room in ICU.” He kisses me on the head and turns to leave the room, and as I watch him go I catch Danny out of the corner of my eye standing at the nurses' station watching us.

Oh, no.

Danny looks at me, then looks down, then turns back to the nurse to finish what he was doing. There's no way he doesn't know there's something going on between Matt and I now. The time has come to fess up. But not tonight. I'm just hoping he doesn't bring it up tonight.

I spend a few minutes alone with Cesar, sitting next to his ER gurney-bed, holding his hand, telling him he's going to be okay. He's pale and fragile-looking, and completely unconscious. It could be days before he wakes up.

Then I start to worry about his knife wound. Who did it? How did it happen? Why was he in a position to be stabbed in the first place?

I have to consciously make myself stop because I'm starting to fantasize about hunting down my brother's almost-killer, and that's crazy. There will be plenty of time for questions and justice when he opens his eyes. No point in spinning my wheels about it now.

When the orderlies come to take him to ICU he's still out cold, so I don't go upstairs with them. I watch them wheel him away, and then I go see Maria at the nurses' station. She leans over the counter and takes my hands in her hands.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I'm okay,” I say. “I was very close to almost never being okay again, but he's going to be fine, and so I'm okay.”

“Thank God he made it,” she says, and kisses the small gold cross around her neck and holds it heavenward. Then she takes a granola bar out of her desk and pushes it to me across the counter.

“Eat,” she says. “You've got to be starving.”

Suddenly I am. I unwrap it and devour it.

“You'll make a good mother someday,” I say, shaking the rest of the bar at her. “You're prepared. You care.”

“Are you making fun of me? Because I can take that granola bar back and you can eat something shitty from the vending machine,” she says, half-teasing.

“No,” I say. “Seriously.” I smile. She might not believe me that I'm serious about her being a good mother, but I know when the time comes she's going to be great. And right now this granola bar is the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.

“You're the one who should be the mother,” she says. “You've been a mother to Cesar his whole life. Always there for him, always protecting him. He wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, and I'm not just talking about today.”

She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. Then I pull away.

“I've got to find Danny,” I say. “Thank him for doing all the stuff out here when I was in with Cesar.”

Maria narrows her eyes at me. “Yeah. About that. At the end there,” she says.

I stop. Uh-oh. Does she know too?

“He saw you and the doc and I think he's off somewhere licking his wounds,” she says.

“What did he say about it?” I ask, cagey, not admitting anything.

“He didn't exactly say anything,” she says. “In fact it was more like the fact that there's something so obviously going on with the two of you that there wasn't anything left to say.”

I look at her, a little guilty. “You saw it, too?”

She nods. “And if this was a regular day I would never talk to you again! Mija! Keeping this from me! Aye!”

I feel bad. Maria lives for stuff like this and I totally deprived her.

“I couldn't tell you,” I say, pleading. “It's against the rules and we had to be secretive, and I'm really sorry. I really wanted to.”

Maria studies me, then waves me off, forgiving me. “It's okay. If I was you I would have done the same thing.”

“Really?” I ask, sheepish.

“No!” she says. “I can't keep secrets, I'd be texting you the second he pulled out. But I get it, I'm not mad. You better give me all the juicy details later, though. But Danny, I don't know. He might become a monk over this.”

* * *

In the parking lot I see Danny climbing into our ambulance, but I don't want to talk to him because I know what's coming. I'm suddenly drained. But technically I'm still on the clock, so it's not like I can avoid it.

I walk up to the driver's side window.

“Hey,” I say to him.

“Hey,” he says back, not looking at me.

“It's been a long night,” I say. “Any new calls come in?”

“No,” he says. He doesn't check his pager. He looks at his watch. “It's almost quitting time. I'll take care of the bus. You've had a long night.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” I step back from the ambulance as he pulls out the clipboard checklist.

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

He holds up one hand in a see-you-later gesture without looking at me. He definitely doesn't say “See you today” back to me.

As I turn to go he says, “I'm really glad your brother made it, Ellie.”

“Thanks, Danny,” I say. But he still won't look at me.

As I walk away I wonder if I've done anything wrong, if I led him on, or if it's just something he has to work through. I know that I'll have to talk to him about it tomorrow if we're going to keep working together, so I'll cross my fingers that he'll sleep off his pain and anger by then.

Chapter Twenty-One

I go back into the hospital and head for the bank of elevators. I push the up button and wait. The bell dings and the door opens, and someone steps in next to me. It's Matt. Another doctor comes in behind him and presses 2, and I step to the side. The doors close and the three of us ride up in silence, except for the soft elevator music coming from over our heads.

When the elevator stops at the second floor and the doors open, the doctor steps out with a nod to Matt. We stand separated from each other chastely until the doors close, but as soon as it does we collide like magnets in a blur of hands and lips.

It's like the nearness of death has made us need to do something that makes us feel alive.

Matt reaches back to push the highest floor button and with his other hand starts undoing my pants. Before I can undo his he drops to his knees in front of me and pushes my legs apart. Then he buries his face between my legs. I feel his warm tongue on me and I gasp. I grab his shoulders so I don't collapse.

He reaches back again and pulls the elevator car stop knob. Thankfully no alarm sounds, but even if it does I don't care right now.

As his tongue works me over my mind goes blank and I give in, moaning in this hospital elevator, not even caring who hears me. I lean back against the handrails, wide open, my nails digging into the metal. He grabs my ass and kneads it, stretching me, his tongue darting over my clit in between quick sucking pulls, and that's it for me, I cry out and come with tornado force. Matt looks up, face still half-buried, and I smile, panting, weak.

“I really hope this thing doesn't have a camera in it,” I laugh.

He says, “Or a microphone, you yeller!”

As I pull up my pants he hits the car stop knob to get it moving again.

I lean back and let out a big sigh. “I feel like I've been on a rollercoaster.”

Matt stands in front of me and brushes my hair back. He kisses me gently. “Smooth sailing is just around the rocks. You'll see.”

“Do you have an Aussie-to-English dictionary I can borrow?” I laugh.

“What, rocks? What do you call them, jetty? Just plain rocks makes much more sense. You Yanks make things so complicated.” He's laughing, too.

“Ugh, I'm delirious.” I rub my eyes. “All I want to do is sleep.”

“A good plan. My place or yours?”

I'm about to answer him when the elevator doors open. The first thing I see is a policeman standing in the hall, and a doctor talking to another policeman outside a patient's room.

I walk quickly toward them, Matt next to me. The young policeman in the hall stops us.

“Authorized medical personnel only,” he says.

“I think that's my brother's room,” I say. “I need to see him.”

“No one's allowed near that patient,” he says.

“Dr. Scanlon,” calls Matt, leaning around the officer.

The doctor speaking with the policeman in the hallway turns to Matt.

“This woman is the patient's brother. She'd like to see him.”

Scanlon has words with the policeman and then waves me over. I smile gratefully at Matt. The policeman nearest us motions us forward.

“Just doing what they tell me,” he says.

Matt and I walk towards Cesar's room. Dr. Scanlon is a small, stout man with wire-rimmed glasses and a white beard, straight out of central casting for a nineteenth-century English physician.

“Your brother is Cesar Bacerra?” asks Dr. Scanlon.

I nod. “Yes.”

“He's inside, and he's stable. The police have a warrant for his arrest and are here to ask him some questions when he regains consciousness.”

“Warrant!” I nearly yell. Matt holds my shoulders to ground me. Dr. Scanlon notices. “He staggered into the ER with a knife wound! How about you find the person who did that?”

“We did,” says the detective. “And he's dead.”

I can't speak as what they're saying sinks in. They think Cesar got in a fight, and that he killed the person who knifed him.

“He couldn't.” I say quietly. “Kill someone.”

“Your brother has violent priors, plus a history with this man. And we have an eyewitness. I'm sure we'll learn more when we question him.”

I peek in through the window at Cesar, still soundly unconscious. He looks peaceful, and his color is better. I still can't believe how close he came to dying. It's a miracle he's here.