Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

lacking the control necessary for a smooth gait. Thinking that food would help, but knowing there wasn’t likely to be a fruit basket waiting for him at the next landing, he just kept going.

 

Breathing heavier, he paused again at the level section, his ribs heaving, his harsh intakes and expulsions the only sound in the hollow stairwell. This time both hands rested on the window. His leg stretched out behind him in a mock calf stretch, as though a good warm-up would cure him.

 

When he got halfway down, the tent town came into clearer view. He could see down a few of the paths, not just skim across the tops. Now he could see the fallen doctors and nurses, in their white jackets and blue scrubs. Suits were down too, their black making them look sinister compared the angelic coloring of the medical staff.

 

“Holy shit!"

 

He heard his own voice before he absorbed the movement he had seen. A team of people had grabbed one of the doctors in the aisleway and was rolling him onto a board and a gurney.

 

He could only see one active person because the tents blocked his view but there appeared to be more than one. He could see better if he went down a few steps, all the way to the end of the row.

 

Taking it sideways and never peeling his eyes from the scene, he spent excruciating minutes gaining a few steps. And his view got clearer if not his brain.

 

There was only one doctor, and it was Jillian. Out there hauling some hapless med onto a metal bed. She popped it up and pushed it into the nearest tent disappearing from view.

 

David took a few more steps. Feeling his way, hands plastered to the windows that trailed the staircase. He was about to lose the sightline, the tents on the left would obscure the view. And he had to get Jillian’s attention.

 

He waited where he stood, contemplating the fact that it was possibly just the two of them awake. Maybe there really had been something to that immunity theory.

 

She reemerged, oblivious to him standing there in the staircase.

 

“Jillian!” His lungs burned from the effort and she didn’t glance up.

 

“Jillian!”

 

Again nothing.

 

He took two more steps down, to where a window was pushed an inch open to ventilate the place, keeping her in his sights the whole time. She was out there, rocking and strapping up another fallen doc, looking like one of the seven dwarves had gotten lost and decided to go it alone. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find her whistling.

 

But he put his mouth to the space and yelled her name again.

 

She started, as though she had heard something, but shook off the sound. No doubt having no idea what the Herculean effort was costing him.

 

But he yelled again.

 

This time she looked up before turning back.

 

And he yelled yet again.

 

His ribs ached. His throat burned. His legs were weak.

 

But she was looking around for the source of the noise she had heard. With no more voice to spare, he did the only thing he could think of. He made a fist and banged on the window.

 

He would have cursed out loud if he’d had the voice to do it. The damned plexiglass absorbed his tender fist and released only a gentle thud. The noise nowhere near worthy of the pain it had inflicted.

 

But he had nothing else to hit it with.

 

He was wearing borrowed scrubs or he would have had a belt buckle. He was soft, and he was weak, and it was a bad combination. But he banged again and screamed her name one last time.

 

“Jillian!”

 

This time he moved to the left, plopping down a step, and waved frantically, feeling like a lost child watching the search party go by.

 

Finally she saw him and waved.

 

From here it was hard to tell, but he thought she smiled.

 

Then she went back to her patient, finished hauling him onto the gurney, popped the bed up, and disappeared into the tent.

 

That bitch!

 

David took a few more steps. Still traveling sideways, watching the tent town for other signs of life. But there were none. None at all now that Jillian was out of view.

 

He hit the next landing, his line of sight down the tents gone, obscured by the first row, he was barely above them, and this last flight would bring his feet even with the ground outside.

 

His heart hitched, his breath released, when he saw her coming out at a near jog. Hell, she was in much better shape than he was. But he’d never been so happy to see her, to see anyone.

 

He faced the last steps. His energy renewed in a surge of hope, and he squared up to the flight, thinking to take it head on.

 

His eyes lifted as he saw the door swing open and heard her voice, breathless, “David!”

 

He felt the concrete corner of the first step bite into his arch, barely grabbing the treads on his expensive sneakers. The tenuous balance he registered in his fingers fled, and he tilted to the right, taking the hard metal rail in his lower ribs. His hands flailed, but the rapid bloom of adrenaline only made him think faster, not act faster, and in horrifying slow motion he watched his hands miss their grip, and the cold gray stairs come straight for his face.

Chapter 17

Jillian had no time to react, she had no more called his name and registered the rare smile that lit up his whole face, than he was at her feet in an inhuman crumple.

 

Stifling a scream, she compartmentalized that this was her friend, and let her brain go into ER mode. He was unconscious, so without moving him or speaking, she checked for a pulse, and found it, going strong if erratic. She pulled her stethoscope free of her neck and listened to his breath sounds. Again, no fluid, no hissing, just normal sounds sped up a little by the fall and the adrenaline.

 

Carefully she felt along several of his limbs. His right leg she didn’t touch, it was already swelling and bent at such an angle that she didn’t have to feel it to know that it was broken, a tib-fib for sure. His hip also wasn’t placed right, and his pelvic girdle was wrong, although what the problem was she couldn’t tell just by looking.

 

His right arm flayed out to his side where it had been thrown by the fall. But it was facing the wrong way.

 

Dislocated. A few touches and palpations confirmed her suspicion.

 

He was starting to come around, and she debated what to do. No one else had woken up in the time she had been awake. And it would figure that the one person who did would pitch down the steps to her feet the moment she discovered him. There was nothing she wanted to do less than spend her time setting a broken bone, by herself mind you, and taking care of the person who should have been helping her.

 

With a self-deriding shake of her head, Jillian put that thought away. She opened the compartment doors; this was David. And he was seriously hurt. But he was coming to.

 

“Jillian?” It was a harsh whisper, and he tried to turn his head from where she held it firm in her hands. She couldn’t risk him moving his neck, not until she knew he checked out.

 

“David, don’t move.”

 

He did just that, trying to lift his dislocated arm and letting out a hoarse scream in the process. He seemed to hear himself, and she could almost see the testosterone working its way through his system. David bucked up and, blinking at her, finally made contact “Good to see you.”

 

She ignored his attempt at humor and told him to stay still, she was going to get the gurney.

 

Her IV bag flopped inside the back of her jacket as she ran, although she could already tell it weighed less than before, a good half of it had dripped into her veins in the time she had worked today. But for all she had accomplished, there were plenty of people left to move and she could feel the temperature dropping in the late afternoon.

 

Her energy had improved as she worked, although she could find no scientific explanation for it. Now she wrapped her hands around the gurney bar and, with all the speed she could afford, she raced back into the hallway. Grateful when she could stop fighting the cart for a path over the grass and enjoy the slick feel and easy glide of the wheels moving on the polished floor they were intended for.

 

She was beside David in a moment, although in the short time she had been gone his eyes had changed from bewildered to wary. He knew he was in bad shape. But Jillian just started to work. She ran the IV with a newfound efficiency, leaving off the Raglan dose, but adding in some morphine sulfate to dull the pain.

 

She put a neck collar on him next, even though he protested and looked at her with wide eyes. She rocked him onto the rollboard with strong hands and the methods learned from thirty limp patients this afternoon. She had gotten better with every patient and was grateful now. David would be too, as she was uncertain if he had sustained any spinal injuries.

 

She had him up on the gurney and sprung the bed upward to a workable height before she made eye contact with him. His left hand shot out and grabbed her arm, startling her and keeping her from rolling him out to the lobby area in front of the cafeteria where the light was better.

 

“David?”

 

“Jillian, tell me.”

 

She knew what he wanted to hear. But everything wasn’t going to be all right. He’d gone headfirst down concrete steps. He was messed up. His right leg had swollen even more since her initial assessment and she was certain there was internal bleeding. Of course Jordan would have followed all the protocol and briefed David on his condition and options and let David make those decisions.

 

She wasn’t Jordan.

 

But she tried.

 

With an awkward motion she took his face in her hands, hindered by the thick plastic neck collar immobilizing him and looked him in the eyes. “You have at least a broken right leg and a dislocated right shoulder. I think something is wrong with your hip as well. I’m going to check you for spinal cord injuries first.

 

Then I’m going to take you out to the tent and fix you up. It’s going to hurt. Because I’m the only one awake. But ninety-nine percent says you’re going to be okay.”

 

She paused, added, “Later.”

 

With her penlight she checked his pupils. She was going to pray every night never to have to watch for ‘equal and reactive’ again. Then she prodded him repeatedly. It was a medical test, but Jillian admitted that it was just systematic poking to see if the patient could feel things. She undid the Velcro holding the collar in place before reaching both hands around his neck and feeling the vertebrae. Nothing felt damaged to her trained fingers. So she left the collar off and began what would be a bumpy and excruciating ride for