The entire room had gone into overdrive.
Not one to usually participate in trauma’s due to my lack of credentials, I stayed out of the way, helping where I was needed.
Handing off the IV for Paxton to tape and finish up, I patted the man’s hand and hurried around the foot of the bed.
My first indication that something was seriously wrong was when I walked into the room and saw a man’s black booted feet at the end of the exam table bending over the foot of the end of the gurney.
Then I followed it up to see the cargo pants that KPD wore.
But what really gave me pause was the fact that the man wore long sleeves.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, wore long sleeves in the middle of a Texas summer.
Unless your name was Michael ‘Saint’ Perez.
“What do you need?” I managed to ask Lennox, looking away.
I’d yet to see what was on the gurney, but I knew it was bad.
Michael’s entire body was shielding whatever it was, and I knew it would be bad before I rounded the end of the gurney.
“I need you to get an IV in him,” she said softly.
That’s when Michael moved, and I nearly lost my legs out from under me.
“Sweet Mary mother of God,” I whispered in devastation.
Michael’s eyes were blank.
No emotion in them whatsoever.
But I could tell he wasn’t doing it because of me.
He was doing it because he knew that if he showed even the least bit of emotion, he’d lose it. Just like I was about to do.
Taking a page from his book, I steeled up my defenses and said, “22 gauge.”
Then I went to work on getting an IV in a baby less than ten months old, with quite a bit of blood loss, and a gunshot wound to his head.
All the while Michael, the man I’d been in love with for over two years, watched me, holding a kid in his arms and talking to him like he was his father.
Heart panging, I found a vein, and started an IV.
I’d done it many times, and it was rare that I missed.
Once the access was started, I backed away, watching as the trauma team descended in mass.
Michael, though, didn’t leave.
Even when his ex-wife showed up and pressed her entire body against his to get a fucking gauze pad when she could’ve gotten one out of her pocket.
Bitch.
God, she made my life a living hell.
Literally, day after day she made it a point to torture me, and I didn’t know why.
She didn’t know that I liked Michael.
Hell, only a few people knew that I even knew him.
What Joslin didn’t like about me was the fact that everyone liked me.
I was, by nature, a nice person.
I got along with everyone. I was a team player, and I could work with damn near anyone.
Her, though, I couldn’t work with.
Not only because she refused to, but because she hated me and I refused to torture myself.
So when she started to push in close to Michael, I wanted to smack the hell out of her.
But, as the professional that I was, I backed out of the room, and turned to see where I was needed.
I was the newest ER Tech.
I was a licensed paramedic.
But a paramedic that couldn’t be in an ambulance because I got motion sickness.
Something I’d not figured out until I’d taken my first job.
Lucky for me, I was starting with another licensed paramedic to watch over me, because I spent my entire time puking, effectively ending my career before it’d even started.
I’d completely disregarded the medical field after that, going back to my father’s office where I’d been a secretary, with my tail tucked between my legs.
But when my best friend, Georgia, came back into town, she convinced me to give it another chance, and here I was, on the IV team and being a helpful person in any way I could.
“What happened?” I heard asked from behind me.
I saw Paxton, a PA that worked with us, looking at the room that I’d just managed to get the hell out of.
“Gunshot wound to the head,” I whispered, trying really hard to forget, yet not managing to accomplish that very well.
“Fuck me,” Paxton breathed.