Goodness, what was wrong with her?
The answer hit like a slap in the face. His face had blocked out Janie’s. That was why she’d noticed, and why her cheeks tingled.
What she needed was for her patient’s face to replace Janie’s. He deserved all her attention. But DellaToro’s scruffy good looks would serve as a guilt shield until she could get that helmet off.
“The helmet is wedged under the bumper.” Breathlessness replaced her shrill tone. Was that better? “But it doesn’t look like there’s any crushed areas or snags. We have to get him out from under there.”
“But the helmet is wedged?” He bent to look, then felt around to where it was caught, apparently coming to the same conclusion she had: there was no foolproof way to get him out from under there. “We need to be careful of his spine.”
“I know, but a perfect spine never did anything for a dead man. I can’t even tell how he’s breathing like this. Or if his eyes are open.” Or show her inner demon that the motorcyclist wasn’t Janie, even though she logically knew that couldn’t be the case. “We might be looking at head trauma, too. We have to push the car off him.” She turned toward the sidewalk and the closest pedestrians and called, “Guys, we need some help pushing the car.”
DellaToro straightened to look at the group she’d called to. The group that wasn’t moving at all to help them. He then knocked on the hood and yelled to the driver, who had found cloth in his vehicle to put pressure on his bloody wounds. “Put it in Neutral.”
The man nodded, still mentally with it despite the blood on his face. Should she check on him? He could die from lack of attention while they worked on one man whose chances were much slimmer, by appearances.
She had to stop finding points of comparison. This wasn’t her wreck. That man wasn’t Janie, either.
Then, in a far more commanding voice, Enzo faced the rubbernecking pedestrians and pointed to two specific men. “You and you, help us roll the car.”
The authoritarian edge to his voice seemed to work. The men who had ignored her just moments before came down onto the street, shedding jackets and dropping whatever they carried to come to the front hood.
Figures. Also not worthy of examination right now.
Ignore the handsome doctor’s jaw, help the patient.
His attention turned to her and he continued giving orders. “Reach under and get your hands around the edge of the helmet. We’ll push it. You hold his head in place as well as you can.”
Kimberlyn maneuvered herself to the man’s head. With her cheek mashed against the front bumper, she strained under the car to get her hands around the edge of the helmet. “Got it.” A pause. “Don’t let it rock.”
If it rolled forward even an inch, it might also snap both their necks.
“We won’t.”
At least Dr. Granite Jaw had a plan for this. All she had was grime from the street, a lurking wave of panic and glass shards sticking to her scrubs.
With the three of them pushing the SUV, they managed to roll it smoothly back. Pressure was released from the helmet. She eased her hands loose and when his head held position she flipped the visor open.
Finally. Another face to quiet guilty echoes in her mind.
Young. Very young. Closed eyes. Fast breathing. Still no response.
Had that been how she’d looked? Blood loss sped up respiration and heart rate as tissues and organs became deprived of oxygen, so it stood to reason that it was. Except she’d been pinned inside a vehicle, and the blood loss had been mostly visible, not hidden inside the chest cavity.
As the SUV continued to roll, revealing the man’s body, she reached for her bag again and her kit.
DellaToro joined her, unzipping the man’s protective leather jacket. At least he’d had the protection of sturdy clothing.
“His breathing is labored,” DellaToro announced.
Of course it was. She’d take comfort in him still breathing if she didn’t know how quickly that could change, and give them all a really bad day. One heartbeat to the next, things could turn, and the person you thought was most stable…
Focus.
“I’ve got some…”
She stretched to where she’d dropped her backpack and then tore into it. “Here, Dr. DellaToro.” She produced a stethoscope and handed it to him.
“Thank you, Kimberlyn. Heard you were coming.” He used her first name while taking the instrument.
Was that some kind of dominance display?
Not the time. Correct later.
She dug into the engraved silver kit again. The fact that she could act now steadied her. Those images of her wreck were still there, always there, even a thousand miles away—but now they lurked on the periphery. The rabbit hole she never wanted time to go down.
Just a little longer.
She extracted the gauze scissors and began cutting down the front of her patient’s T-shirt, exposing an already forming bruise. Deep purple stippling slashed across pale flesh, right over the sternum. Bad bruise forming. No way would it be unbroken, and a broken sternum didn’t protect what was inside very well. Bruising organs at least. Heart. Lungs, maybe. Bashing damage could be more destructive than bullets.
She bent forward to listen to her patient’s breathing as Enzo listened to his heart.
Enzo. She could do it, too.
“Steady, but fast and faint…” he announced, pulling the stethoscope from his ears to hang from his neck, and bending to grab for the penlight she’d been using under the car.
“Faint?” She repeated the word—as if she didn’t already expect that exactly to be the case. As if it could be anything else.
Her fingers searched his wrist, and she could barely feel anything but her own thundering pulse. “You’re sure it’s beating?” She fumbled beneath the edge of the helmet to find the carotid, looking for a stronger throb. Her fingers tracked over corded vessels. The jugulars stood out as if he was straining.
Distended veins in the neck. Symptom number two that she’d both expected and dreaded.
The carotid didn’t stand out at all and she felt nothing pulsing in the general region. Blood backing up in the veins and not pumping through the arteries—reason for the distended veins.
“Pupils responsive,” Enzo announced, then listened again. “Faint, but still fast. Maybe speeding up.”
She should be doing that, announcing her findings as she went. Just one more second, one more symptom… Make sure…
He hadn’t picked up on the diagnosis yet. She’d share as soon as she confirmed the third. Even if she was already certain what her fingers and eyes told her, she needed something
