Luca muttered, “What are you doing here?”
“How’s the kid in four?” Kira stopped at the counter behind which Nurse Rebecca and Nurse Martin sat. The two of them had rolled their stools toward each other and were no doubt discussing last night’s episode of some reality TV show Kira had never seen.
Rebecca shook the mouse and woke up the computer. “His blood work came back clear. And he managed to keep some juice down.”
“That’s good. If he can get some sleep and his numbers are good tomorrow, I’ll be comfortable letting him go home in the morning.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I’m about to hit the cafeteria.” Martin stood. “Did either of you need anything?”
“I’ll go when you get back,” Rebecca said.
Kira shook her head. “I had a big dinner.”
When she needed to stretch her legs later, she would hit the vending machine in the break room and grab herself a diet soda. At three in the morning, the need for caffeine with no sugar was always very real.
The side entrance door down the hall opened, and two EMTs entered, one pushing a wheelchair they used to transport patients. Kira smiled at seeing Mack Jenkins in front, carrying the clipboard, his partner Eric Valletta behind him.
The two men couldn’t be more different. According to Mack, he had some of his mother’s dark features, but it was those serious eyes that made you wonder what he’d seen. He had the kind of demeanor that gave you the impression he was a quiet guy who considered his words carefully. Meanwhile, Eric had three kids and an ex-wife and chattered almost incessantly.
She let them check in with Rebecca and do what they needed to do before she met them in the second bay, currently the only one that was open. So far tonight, they’d treated the victim of a car accident, who’d headed straight up to surgery for the removal of his spleen—something she had done in the back of a pickup truck before—an older man with a broken leg, and the kid in four, who had thrown up all over the table at the restaurant where his family was eating dinner.
Kira pulled back the curtain and waited for them to wheel the patient into the room before she slid it closed. The woman’s shirt had been removed, and the EMTs had a blanket around her shoulders. Her face and hands were a mess of small bruises and lacerations.
Mack looked at the clipboard. “Frankie Hesburgh. Twenty-seven, female. Domestic-violence situation. She’s fifty-seven kilograms. Heart rate, one twenty-seven. Blood pressure, one thirty over eighty-five, and respirations are rapid and shallow. Suspected broken ribs, but her chest is clear in all fields. She didn’t lose consciousness, and no suspected head injury. We gave her ketamine, fifteen milligrams, slowly over a minute. The pain returned before we arrived, but we were close enough we held off giving her any more.”
“Very good.” She nodded, watching Rebecca hook a pulse oximeter to the woman’s index finger. “And the person who did this to her?”
“We left him talking to the police.” She didn’t miss the tone in Eric’s voice, the sound of distaste.
She had to agree, considering that whoever he was, he had done this. Frankie might have fought back, but she was a slight woman who hadn’t been able to match the strength of her attacker.
Kira assisted the patient as she climbed onto the hospital bed, Mack and Eric standing close by. Mack ended up steadying her arm, and Kira caught the distraught look on his face. She wasn’t sure that boded well for the kid. He was new at this EMT thing and had to be able to separate his empathy from the plight of a patient, or every victim would weigh on his heart until it crumbled.
Not that Kira was immune. A child with malaria would always swell up in her a need to not quit until the patient was out of the woods. It was probably a trauma response, but she hadn’t stuck around therapy long enough to unpack the whole issue.
She’d just gone back to work.
Kira slid the stethoscope from around her neck. “Frankie, I’m Dr. Yassan. We’re going to take good care of you, okay?”
The patient nodded, gasping a little and wincing on the inhale.
Kira checked her chest, listening to her breathe, and confirmed that Mack’s read on the situation was likely correct. Possible broken ribs, but no risk of a pneumothorax, where the broken rib would have collapsed the lung.
Kira hooked the stethoscope back around her neck, tugging out her braids. “Rebecca, take all of her vitals again and order a chest X-ray. Let’s give her another fifteen milligrams of ketamine.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Rebecca continued hooking Frankie up to the machines that would enable the nurse to monitor her vitals from behind her desk.
Kira waited a beat, just to see. The patient glanced at her.
Kira said, “You’re safe here. You can get some rest, and we’ll take care of everything else.”
The woman’s eyes fluttered closed.
Kira headed back out to the hallway, where Eric and Mack were filling out paperwork. She didn’t wish on any unsuspecting member of the public the kind of night where she would be able to lose herself in back-to-back trauma cases. That would be wishing for someone else to get hurt and suffer immense pain just so that she could be distracted.
But this was a decent shift nonetheless—one where she hadn’t thought much about Destiny’s offer. Not that it was far from her mind. There might not even be anything to decide now. She really needed to attend the gala so she could see the whole thing for herself. Find out what this foundation was really about.