Desperate, she scanned the gathering of cops. “Do any of you have medical training?”
“First aid, CPR and the like,” Clint said.
“Judd,” Ethan rasped, groaning as they moved him.
Judd Hamilton was trained as an EMT.
“Where is he?” Miranda demanded, examining Ethan’s back. No exit wound. Which meant the bullet was still lodged somewhere inside him. Nothing any of them could do about it here, and it wasn’t the most pressing problem.
“Outside. I’ll get him.”
But Judd was already racing in, Delaney right behind him. Delaney? What the hell was she doing here? Miranda didn’t care because her medical bag was in the girl’s hands. Thank God something was going her way. But not enough. As she looked back at Ethan’s face, he’d gone dead white and his breathing was too fast.
“Chest hurts.”
“You’ve got a tension pneumathorax. Air is filling your chest and collapsing your lung.” And if she didn’t get the pressure relieved, it would go beyond collapsing the lung and begin to compress his heart. He wouldn’t survive long enough to make it to the hospital.
His gray eyes met hers with a grim understanding. He’d been through this once before. He knew exactly what that meant.
Miranda gripped his hand tight. “I love you. And you are not going to fucking die on me. Understand?”
Ethan squeezed her fingers. “Love y—” His words were cut off with a fit of coughing. The veins in the side of his neck bulged, and she could see the beginning of the displacement of his trachea.
Delaney dropped to her knees with the bag. “What do you need?”
Miranda began pawing through the bag, grabbing disinfectant and gauze pads and passing them to Judd where he knelt beside her. “You’re going to have to sterilize the wound.” As she continued to dig, Judd did as ordered. She yanked out the dressing for open chest wounds and handed it to Delaney. “Peel off the backing.”
Working fast, Judd followed her instructions, prepping the site and applying the occlusive dressing. But Ethan was still deteriorating. His eyes had drifted closed. Pressing her fingers against the pulse at his throat, she felt it stutter.
“Ambulance is five minutes out,” Clint reported.
He was going tachycardic. He didn’t have five minutes.
“His lung is collapsed. I need to perform a needle decompression, but my hands aren’t steady enough. Judd, you’re going to have to do it.”
“I can’t.” He held up a hand with swollen knuckles. It shook almost as much as her own.
Damn it.
Miranda looked at Delaney. “Let me see your hands.”
Her eyes went wide. “What?”
“Your hands. Now.”
The girl held them out. Not a tremor, despite her obvious nerves. Good.
“You’re going to perform this needle decompression.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s the only way to save his life.”
After only a second’s hesitation, Delaney reached for gloves.
Miranda handed her the package with the 14 gauge needle angiocatheter, then leaned over Ethan, thanking God she had enough feeling left in her fingers to identify the second intercostal space. She looked back to Delaney.
“Okay, you’re going to place the needle here, just above the rib, perpendicular to the skin.” Moving as quick as she dared, she guided Delaney to the correct position. Given the size of the needle, it was probably a good thing Ethan had passed out, otherwise he might fight and that would make things worse. “Keep hold of the hub and firmly press to pierce the pleura.”
Worried blue eyes flashed to hers.
“You’ve got this, Delaney. Steady hands.”
The girl nodded, and the group watched in total silence as she followed orders. Her face twisted into a grimace as the needle sank in. A rush of air burst out of the catheter and Ethan sucked in a shaky breath, his eyes flying open again. Miranda almost collapsed in relief.
“Okay. Okay, carefully pull the needle and leave the catheter in place. We’re going to secure it with tape. This should keep him stabilized long enough for the ambulance to get here.”
Delaney sat down hard on her ass. “I feel a little dizzy.”
“That’s exactly the way. Hold your shit together until you’ve done what needs doing. Good job.”
“Is he gonna be okay?”
I don’t know. There were a hundred other problems that might be going on internally, dozens of complications that could kill him en route or in surgery. But Miranda couldn’t think about any of that. Because there was no other alternative but that he survive. She took a firmer grip on his hand and looked into his unfocused eyes, infusing her voice with total command. “Yeah. He’s gonna be okay.”
The beeping woke him. Ethan recognized it as a heart monitor. God knew he was familiar enough with that sound. He felt like shit, which was par for the course after being shot. But he was fuzzy on the details. A faint sense of dread weighed him down, kept him from wanting to open his eyes. Not that they didn’t already weigh four hundred pounds on their own, but there was something…he wanted to avoid.
Becca. Becca was going to be pissed.
He didn’t want to see that look of disappointment and panic, didn’t want to have that argument about the dangers of his job. Again. He thought about just sinking back into sleep, but a hand was curled warm around his, so she at least deserved the effort from him, proving he was still among the land of the living.
Ethan forced his eyes open. The room was dim, the walls painted a neutral beige. Low-profile fluorescent lights lit the perimeter. As his vision cleared, he managed to turn his head.
A second hospital bed was butted up to his. The side rails between them were lowered and a woman lay stretched out beside him, her hand curled around his in sleep. Her wrists were bandaged and her face was a riot of bruises, with the telltale bandaging across her nose that indicated it had been broken. Not his wife—ex-wife. Miranda.
The beeping sped up as he remembered. Harley Forbes. The gun. Getting shot—again. Shit, he’d thought he was done with that. He’d managed to save her, but not before Harley had brutalized her. Every bruise, every scrape, made him hurt worse. He should’ve been faster. Should’ve figured it out sooner. Should’ve—
Vinyl creaked from the opposite side of the room. “You’re awake.”
Ethan tipped his head back toward the soft voice that rasped as if he’d been up all night.
Clay leaned forward in a chair, forearms braced on his knees. “You gave us a helluva scare, brother.”
“Miranda.” Ethan’s voice came out at a whisper, though he hadn’t been aiming for that. He couldn’t seem to take a deep breath.
Clay smiled over at her. “They wanted to put her in her own room, but this was the only way she’d consent to staying put.”
“Is she—” There’d been no time to take in the full extent of her injuries before all hell broke loose. What he could see now was bad enough.
“She’s okay.”
“She can speak for herself.”
By the time Ethan managed to look back toward Miranda, she was rolling toward him in her own bed, wincing. “I’ve got a concussion, bruised ribs, broken nose, countless abrasions, contusions, and scratches. I win the contest for most injuries. You win most severe.”