her what was wrong. Offer her an ear for her troubles. Just suss out symptoms and determine whether her oddness was physical or emotional... No easy course of action.
If this was attached to the desire for another night, he couldn’t blame her, even if he would turn her down.
“How long?” he asked through the comm, since he already had one patient to focus on, righting his thoughts. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it.
Normally he wouldn’t have to ask how long. Normally his chattering partner freely gave information during flight.
She still didn’t look at him, but she did let go of the controls with one hand to point. “There. We’re landing on the roof next door.”
Taciturn. Definitely something wrong. If he didn’t expect to need her paramedic skills, he’d put her on light duty for this run. But the patient they were flying to was a steel worker who’d fallen from the beams of a new construction site. Since they’d called for an ambulance rather than a coroner, all he knew for sure was that he’d need her at her best.
“We’re bypassing the stretcher. I don’t know what the site looks like, the board is the only safe bet. Are you well enough to carry it?”
She did look at him then, her eyes narrowing to slits. “I can do my job. I’m fine.”
Gabriel didn’t argue with her, but he’d never heard the words “I’m fine” and had it be anything near fine. Even if she put up a fight to stay on the job anytime she was ill, she’d never looked so put out with him over asking.
With an easy touch, she put the chopper down atop the neighboring building, and he unstrapped and went to grab bags.
“Get the board,” he ordered, wrenching open the sliding door and hopping out to make a run for the roof access door.
It always took her a moment longer to disembark due to having to power down the chopper. Him running ahead to the patient was part of their usual routine as every second mattered and he did whatever he could as she brought up the rear.
He hit the stairs running, and took all eighteen stories down on foot. Waiting for the elevator always slowed them down.
Across the lobby with a nod to Security, he bustled out the door and rounded the building. Just as he reached the construction site, the manager met him, slapped a hard hat onto his head and led the way across the dirt and gravel lot, around piles of construction material, to the concrete pad beneath steel beams, and his patient.
No blood haloing his head, a good sign and something he’d seen enough on the job with jumpers and falls from great height. Heads didn’t stand up well to concrete, unless they didn’t hit first. The man had landed on his feet, at least briefly, and his head had probably hit last.
Gabriel fell to the man’s side.
Unconscious.
Breathing fast.
He felt for a pulse, found a rapid rate to go with the breathing.
“How long ago was it?” He began gathering information as he fished out a penlight to check pupils. One responsive, the other fixed.
“Less than ten minutes.”
“How far did he fall?” Gabriel looked up again at the open beams for one that would align with the man’s location.
“About thirty feet. That beam there.”
Onto concrete.
When he lowered his eyes again, he saw Penny running full tilt across the construction site—without a hard hat but with the backboard held over her head. That would help a little if someone dropped something on her.
“Get her a hat,” he said to the manager, then went back to his patient.
When she reached him, she put the board down alongside the patient and then began digging into his bag to help, extracting a neck brace first thing. A hat made it to her head, but didn’t slow her down.
“How’s he doing? What’s his name?”
He hadn’t asked.
“Frank,” someone answered, and Penny thanked him, then started talking to Unconscious Frank as she fitted the brace around his neck, explaining what she was doing, as was proper.
“He’s seen better days. There’s some kind of cranial hemorrhage or swelling, one pupil unresponsive. And I think internal bleeding, his heart is going hard. Get a line in him, saline.”
He ordered, she complied. That was the one thing unchanged since their unfortunate encounter—she always worked hard and fast. Competent, and something more. She may have been born to society, but she’d managed to become compassionate in a hands-on way, and it made a difference in the way she treated their patients. She might not be one hundred percent today, but she was still fighting for them.
A whole family of doctors, and she’d become a paramedic. He should ask her why sometime, but knowing her adrenaline junkie tendencies, paramedic fit. They were the first on the scene for the big emergencies.
Opening the man’s shirt, he looked his belly and chest over, noted bruising on his left rib cage, then began to feel his belly for telltale signs of bleeding.
Like the turgid area on the left upper quadrant. “How’s the line?”
She flushed the catheter she’d just inserted into the man’s arm, nodded, and then hooked up a saline line to it. “We’re good. I’m going to pin it to your suit. It’s wide open, do you want it slower?”
“No, his spleen is ruptured, I don’t know how badly. Run the drip wide open. We have to get him in the air.” He lifted his head out of the way and Penny produced a massive safety pin from somewhere, and clipped the saline line to the shoulder of his suit.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of protocol taught in medical training, but she’d done it before. Once they got to the chopper, she’d have to fly them to the hospital, and unclipping it from her own shoulder to free her to fly would slow them down. The first time she’d done it, he’d been surprised, but over their months, working together, her unusual methods had ceased to be strange. She always had a reason for the things she did, and he didn’t doubt she had a reason to be so pale and stiff-lipped now. Which was what worried him.
“Get his legs,” he ordered once the bag swung from his shoulder, and waited until she was there. On the count of three they lifted, moved, and lowered their patient, then secured straps.
“You and you, help me carry him,” he said to the manager and another strong-looking worker watching them. “Let my pilot run ahead and get the chopper running so we don’t lose any time.”
Penny waited until they’d started moving, then went to take his bag of supplies, swung it over her shoulder, and ran. She would push the button for the elevator and have Security hold it for them while she took the stairs. That was how she worked. She thought ahead, and he was grateful for that.
So, whatever was wrong, she was probably handling it. Maybe he should just let her handle it. The problem was, he had to be the one who forced her home when she did get ill, or would admit to being ill.
