Love Me True (Love Me Book 2)

Chapter 29

Faye enjoyed dinner but she eventually had to leave Silas and the twins to get ready for work. It was unusual for her to work the night shift at the hospital, but one of the nurses had wanted to sneak away for a romantic weekend and had begged Faye to take her shift.

When she arrived at the ER it was busy, and she dove right in, running all night as patient after patient arrived. There was no major emergency to cause the heavy patient list, it was only a busy Saturday night in the ER. Faye was laughing at something one of the new residents had said when the doors to the ambulance bay opened and a man waving a gun entered. He was filthy and was supporting a much younger man who could barely stand. Unfortunately, Faye was standing closest and he trained his gun on her, waving it about. When one of the paramedics out in the bay decided he was going to try to be a hero, the man fired the gun and everybody ducked as screams filled the ER.

"He needs help!" He turned to look at Faye, "You help him, now!" His accent was heavy, and Faye couldn't place it, but she could see that the man he was holding up did need help.

Faye walked towards them and the man screamed at her to stop. "You show me where to take him."

Faye nodded and forced herself to turn her back on the man as she led the way to one of the exam rooms that hadn't been cleaned yet while the man followed her with jerky movements as he awkwardly carried his friend and waved the gun at everyone around him.

She quickly stripped the dirty linens off the bed as the man entered behind her and placed his friend on it. Then he shut the door and jammed the handle before turning to Faye and waving the gun at her. "Take care of him!" he demanded.

Faye nodded, holding back her fear. Fear would do nothing to help the situation. She looked at the man on the bed; he was covered in blood and in evident pain. She reached for her pair of shears to get his clothing off and the man with the gun charged her to try and take them.

"Stop!" she yelled stepping back against the counter behind her and holding the scissors out of his reach. Faye's loud voice caught him off guard causing him to stop.

"I need these to help him, I am a nurse, if you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you!" She waited for him to decide how he wanted to proceed and when he nodded, she walked towards his friend on the bed who was moaning loudly.

She began to work quickly, and her trembling hands stopped shaking as she started to work.

"What's your name?" she asked the patient, but he only moaned. "Where are you?" she tried again. She pulled out her flashlight and looked at his eyes. "What year is it?" He didn't answer any of her questions, but she couldn't be sure it wasn't because he didn't speak English.

As she started to cut away his clothes, she didn't like what she saw, he had been shot in the lower abdomen and there were what appeared to be knife wounds on his arms and hands as if he had been in a fight and had to defend himself.

"He needs a CATscan and most likely a surgeon!" Faye insisted to the man with a gun. "He has internal injuries, but I can't tell you what they are." Faye put all her effort into rolling the man but she still didn't see an exit wound which meant that the bullet was still in him.

"No!" You fix him!" the man insisted again.

"I can't" Faye yelled back, and the man didn't like her answer so he backhanded her across the face. "You will fix him!"

Faye wasn't going to give an inch. "No, he needs a surgeon!" She put her hand up to her face as she tasted blood.

Again, he didn't like what she said so he grabbed her ponytail and twisted.

"You can hurt me all you want, but I can't fix him!" She tried to fight back but the man was too strong, and as he pushed her away from him she went flying into a metal cart, scattering everything across the floor with a loud clanging noise. Faye's head clipped the bottom of the monitor arm that hung from the ceiling and she could feel blood start to trickle down her neck.

She reached for a paper towel to hold against the blood coming from the gash in her head, wincing as she made contact with the open wound.

She and the man sat in silence, at an impasse, until Faye's area phone started to ring, but she didn't reach for it as the man eyed her.

"Answer it!" he demanded when it continued to ring.

"Hello?" she answered in a shaky voice.

"Faye! I've just heard the news, where are you?" Silas's brisk voice asked, and Faye closed her eyes at the welcome sound.

"I'm with a patient," she said hesitantly, unsure of what she could say without angering the man.

Silas must have picked up on her fear. "Are you in the middle of it?"

"Yes, he needs a surgeon," she said, watching as the man with the gun charged her again. "Stop!" she yelled holding the phone away from the man, "This is the surgeon, he can help!"

The man backed off a step but watched her closely as he started to pace. "The patient has multiple defensive stab wounds on his hands and arms and some or deep, he also had a GSW to the abdomen, and there is no exit wound that I can find."

"But you're safe?" Silas asked.

"No, I'm not," she said honestly, watching the man watch her.

Silas was silent for a moment and when he spoke again, he had a different tone to his voice, he didn't sound like Silas at all. "Keep the phone near you if at all possible, I'm on my way." Then the line went dead, and Faye squeezed her eyes shut at the loss of connection.

The man started to yell at her in his own language as the man on the bed started to moan once more. Faye forced herself to stand and walk toward the man, she had no meds to give him, there was nothing she could do for him except clean his wounds, which she started to do. At least it made the man with the gun stop yelling at her.

Faye did her best to ignore the silence that had descended on the ER. It was always a busy and noisy place but now it was too quiet, and Faye could only pray that Silas got there sooner rather than later, not that she knew what he would do once he arrived.

Faye forced back the sob that rose in her throat, knowing that it wouldn't do any good because there was no one there to help her. The afternoon that she had spent with Silas and twins seemed like a lifetime ago.