Dear God, not Daisy!
“Daisy!” She sank on her knees next to the hole in the ice, oblivious to the cold, every catastrophic scenario she’d ever seen as a nurse flashing through her mind. Daisy drowning. Daisy’s heart stopping from cold shock. Daisy severely hypothermic.
And Jesse.
The human body could only last so long in 34-degree water.
His head came up again, teeth chattering. “The current took her.”
His words made her panic crest. “Not Daisy. Not my baby, too.”
He looked into her eyes, took a deep breath, and dove under again.
“The fire chief’s on his way!” someone shouted.
A thousand prayers raced through Ellie’s mind.
God, no. Please don’t let me lose her. Don’t take Jesse either.
She couldn’t take that. She couldn’t lose her baby girl. Not Daisy, too.
But where was Jesse? He’d been down there a long time now. He had to breathe. Daisy had to breathe, too.
“He’s been down there a long time. Maybe he drowned, too.”
Dear God, she was going to lose both of them.
No. No. No no no no!
Then Jesse broke the surface, gasped for breath, Daisy in his arms.
He held her up to Ellie, who grabbed her and pulled her onto the ice.
Daisy was blue. She wasn’t breathing.
Ellie tried to rein in her panic. She needed to start CPR.
And then Eric was beside her with Brandon Silver. “We’ve got this, Ellie.”
They took Daisy from her, forced her to scoot aside.
“Start chest compressions and don’t stop,” Eric told Brandon, then he turned to the crowd. “Is anyone from the Team here? Moretti’s still in the water.”
Ellie glanced over, saw Jesse struggle to climb out and then slide back in, his strength gone, his muscles no longer cooperating. “Help me! Someone, please!”
She reached for him, took hold of one wrist, and pulled, but Jesse’s weight dragged her toward the edge of the ice. If only she’d had a rope or something.
Eric caught Jesse’s other wrist. “Don’t you fucking dare go into shock and drown on me, Moretti!”
“We got the page, Hawke. What the hell…”
Megs?
Megs and Mitch Ahearn were there—and Creed Herrera.
“Ellie, let go before he pulls you in, too!” Megs barked, a rope in her hands.
Ellie did as she asked and backed out of the way, crawling over to where Brandon was still doing chest compressions and rescue breaths for Daisy.
It was all a blur after that.
Her father wrapping his coat around her shoulders. The sound of her mother crying. Two paramedics lifting Daisy onto a gurney, wrapping her in a warm blanket while continuing CPR. Someone wrapping a heated blanket around Ellie’s shoulders, helping her to her feet, telling her she was probably hypothermic.
“You’ve been out here for a while with no coat, lying down on the ice. Your scrubs are wet, and in this wind…”
Mind and body numb from shock and cold, she followed Daisy to the ambulance. “Jesse? Where’s Jesse?”
She looked back over her shoulder to see him lying motionless on the ice.
*
Every bone in Jesse’s body hurt. His muscles ached. He struggled to speak, to open his eyes, fear snaking through him. “D-daisy? Where…?”
“You got her out, buddy. She’s in the ER by now. Ellie is with her.”
“S-she’s a-a-live?”
They didn’t answer.
“Body temp is ninety degrees.”
Hypothermia.
“Let’s get a line going, get some warm fluids in him.”
They’d already put him on oxygen, and they’d wrapped him in a heated blanket, one of fancy ones that blew warm air against the skin. Jesse was so cold, so numb, that he could barely feel it.
“Hey, Moretti, how do you feel, buddy?”
But Jesse was drifting again.
It was dark, so dark, the cold sucking the breath from his lungs. Where was she? He couldn’t see her. The current pulled at him, carrying him away from the open water and beneath the ice. He reached but felt nothing.
Come on, little girl!
God, please!
“Jesse! Hey, Moretti, you got her. You found her.”
Hawke?
Jesse opened his eyes, found himself being wheeled into the emergency room. He was shivering now, his teeth chattering, his body shaking. “Is Daisy… Is she…?”
“You did everything you could for her, buddy. Now let us take care of you.”
You did everything you could.
Was she…? Jesus, was Daisy … dead?
His heart seemed to crack, pain lancing through him.
Jesus, no!
And then he was out again.
*
“We’ve got a pulse.”
Ellie could hardly breathe, her gaze shifting from the cardiac monitor to Daisy. She lay still and pale, her little body resting on a heating pad inside a forced-air warming blanket, warm oxygen going into her lungs through a ventilator, IVs in both of her arms and electrodes on her chest.