*
Luke’s pickup fishtailed into the hospital parking lot behind the ambulance carrying Peg Bellows. Two more emergency vehicles screamed into the lot, each carrying one of the Carerra brothers. Were they alive? Dead? Mortally wounded? He didn’t give a damn about them, but Peg was a different story. He remembered the blood on her bathrobe, the calm in her eyes, as if she’d already given up.
He skidded to a stop near a light pole and cut the engine.
Two EMTs pulled Peg’s stretcher from the back of the emergency vehicle and met with nurses and docs in the receiving area of the ER. Luke glanced at them, then sprinted across the lot, catching up with the ambulance in the covered ER receiving area. “Peg,” he called as the rescue workers wheeled her in.
“Don’t worry,” she said around the oxygen mask. “I’ll see you later.”
Her final tone got to him. “You’re going to be all right,” he said, as much to convince himself as her. “You hang in there.” He tried to reach for her hand where an IV was already pumping liquid into her body, but the EMT intervened.
“Get away, buddy,” the burly red-haired responder warned before barking Peg’s vital signs to a waiting nurse and doctor. He shouldered Luke out of the way.
“Wait.”
“Not now,” the arriving doctor said calmly. “We’re taking her directly into surgery. OR two,” he said to a waiting nurse. “We’ll keep you informed.”
“But . . .”
“You heard the doctor.” The EMT was all business.
Luke went inside and tried to gain access from a woman behind a wide information desk. Prim and proper, she brooked no argument, and he found himself stymied by a wall of privacy, HIPAA regulations and mountains of red tape. It didn’t matter that he’d phoned nine-one-one, he wasn’t kin of the patient, and the staunch receptionist at the information desk told him she could release no information on a patient. Not that he blamed her.
The wide glass doors of the emergency wing flew open and the Carrera brothers were brought inside. Luke hung close to the doors and listened to the exchanges between doctors and the emergency medical techs long enough to reason out that both Carerra brothers were probably DOA. The medical staff just had to make it official.
He was soon ordered out of the intake area and couldn’t get close to the information area again. He guessed any and all emergency personnel had been called to the scene because of the multiple victims, not to mention those waiting in chairs scattered around the waiting area. A twentysomething woman with stringy hair and a bad complexion was holding a crying baby while a pale two-year-old clung to her leg. Her husband or boyfriend leaned back in a chair too small for him and played some game on his phone. An older man and woman were seated near the windows; she was cradling one arm and staring vacantly into space. Now and again she winced, but she was trying hard not to show her pain. Her husband sat next to her, arms crossed over his expansive chest, lips tight in an unshaven jaw. Other various would-be patients and loved ones whose non-life-threatening injuries were forced to wait while the gunshot victims were either treated, operated on, or pronounced DOA.
Luke’s guts churned when he considered Peg, but knew there was nothing more he could do to help her. Like the others in this drab, cavernous room with its outdated magazines, well-worn chairs, and piped-in music, he would just have to wait.
He decided he had time to find Andi. She was supposed to be here, probably in Emma’s room or a nearby waiting area, so he texted her again. He hung out in the ER area for a couple of minutes and looked at his screen a dozen times. No answer. Had her phone died?
A bad feeling settled in his gut, but he told himself he was overreacting because of what he’d just been through. It looked like the Carrera brothers weren’t about to hurt anyone ever again, certainly not today.
But what about Bobby? Robert Fisher? Who the hell was he?
Ignoring the “No Cell Phones” signs, he tried phoning her, but the call went directly to voice mail. “Come on, come on,” he said before waiting for the recorded answer to finish and leaving a message. “Hey, I’m here at the hospital, too. Call me.”
He decided to leave Emergency and find her. To hell with the phone.
When he reached Emma’s room he found her alone, lying on the bed, an IV in one arm, monitors surrounding her, a few bruises visible on her face. No sign of Ben or Andi.
Emma stirred. “Ben?”
“It’s Luke Denton, Emma. Ben was here earlier, and Andi, but they’re not now . . .”
She faded out again and he waited half a minute before he was in motion again. Andi had said she would be here, or at his apartment, but she sure as hell wasn’t answering her phone.