Damn, that was on the other side of the ER.
“Well, there is no way in hell I am running down the hall in my Danskos,” I muttered under my breath. The last thing I needed to do was the Dansko roll on the way to the only really good trauma of the night. They are great shoes if you’re on your feet for twelve hours at a time, but definitely not for running. I picked up the pace, careful not to fall, but enough to beat Barb there. That’ll teach her to stop to pee.
I reached trauma three with time to spare and went about setting up the room just so. Then I gowned up, got on my gloves and ear loop mask, then put on a pair of glasses. Ten hours into my last twelve-hour shift for a week and this case was probably going to take me right to the end of shift.
The overhead speaker called out again, “Leila Matthews please call three-four-seven-six.”
UGH. Who the hell wanted me right now?
I was on my way to the nurse’s station to answer the page, when I heard the paramedics calling out vitals and running down the hall with the trauma. As I rounded the corner back into the trauma corridor, I saw way too many cops for a single GSW.
My heart started pounding as it always did when I saw that many cops in the ER clumped together; it meant the GSW was an officer.
Silently, I said a prayer for the fallen officer. As I approached the room and pushed my way through the army of men, I could hear Dr. Miller hollering out orders.
“Page the trauma surgeon on call STAT. And call the OR and get a room ready now!”
Chapter Two: Leila
I made my way into trauma three to see Mary and Derrick rushing around working on the patient. I ran straight to the phone on the wall and paged Dr. Drake Thomas to the ER. I called up to the OR and had them start prepping a room the way Drake required for GSWs. As I turned back around, my whole world stopped and the bottom dropped out.
No way. This couldn’t be happening. I rushed to the side of the stretcher and gasped in horror. “Drew, oh my God, Drew. Talk to me Drew, can you hear me?”
Mary looked up at me. “Leila, what the hell? Do you know this officer?”
Tears were streaking down my face. “This is my brother. Drew.” Turning my attention back to him, I grabbed his hand. “Drew, can you hear me? Please open your eyes.”
Derrick came around the stretcher, grabbed me and tried to pull me back, but I fought out of his grasp.
“Leila, you can’t stay in here, you know this. He’s your brother. You’ve gotta step aside. Let us help him. We’ve got this. You know we’ll do everything we can to save him, but you gotta go.”
Turning around, Derrick got the attention of one of the SWAT officers that came in with Drew. “Hey man, can ya please get her out of here, she doesn’t need to see this.”
Jasper Smith, sergeant of the narcotics unit, stepped forward and scooped me up in a hug, and guided me to the glass front door that was swung wide-open. “Leila, I tried to reach you in route before we got here. I didn’t want you finding out like this.”
Jasper was a fifteen-year veteran of the North Charleston Police Department and had kept an eye out for Drew over the last ten years. Jasper had been Drew’s sergeant when he started with NCPD, at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Drew eventually moved out of Narcotics to the K-9 unit and now onto the SWAT team, but they stayed close. Jasper and his wife, Donna, had Drew and I over for many Sunday dinners. They didn’t have any children of their own. So after Mom died, they sort of became our surrogate parents.
I took a deep breath to try to regain my composure, but failed miserably and ended up rattling off questions like an interrogator. “Jasper, what the hell happened? How did this happen? I talked to Drew before my shift and he said it was gonna be a quiet night. Y’all only had one warrant to serve and it would be a piece of cake.” Fisting Jasper’s shirt, I cried, “How’d he get shot?”
Standing back, Jasper scrubbed his hand down his face. “We got shitty intel and…I don’t know. It’s like they knew we were comin’ or somethin’. We always hit these houses at crazy hours, when most people are sleeping, so we’ve got the element of surprise. But these fuckers were waitin’ in the house for us.”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t process what he was saying. “I have to find out what’s going on with Drew.” I turned and stalked back toward trauma three and was met just outside of the door by Barb.
“Oh no, don’t tell me I missed all of the fun. The patient didn’t come in DOA did he?” Barb joked, and then stopped. “Wait. Leila, what the hell is going on? Why are you out here?”
“Barb, you have to get in there. You have to help him,” I demanded.
“Leila, you aren’t makin’ any sense. What’re you talkin’ about? Help who? Why aren’t you in there?” Barb started to rush down the hall, getting closer to the room.