LITMIR.BIZ

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the large bandage covering his bloody chest and saw eight puncture wounds, with the largest one near the heart showing frothy blood. Because air and blood were leaking into his thoracic cavity, his lungs couldn’t inflate properly. Her work was cut out for her.

      To her surprise, a similarly gowned and gloved Ruark appeared in the room. “I’ve got it under control,” she said as she, Tim, Lucy, another nurse and now Ruark prepared to move her patient from the ambulance gurney to a hospital bed.

      “Are you warning me away from your patient, Dr Sutton?” he asked coolly.

      She mentally noted that she didn’t need to take charge, but old habits were hard to break. While she’d have to defer to him for the time being, she’d maintain a watchful eye until she assured herself that the royal doctor truly knew what he was doing.

      “Not at all,” she answered. “One, two, three, lift!” On Gina’s command, their patient made the transition with minimal jostling. Seconds later, she began barking her orders to the nurses who were busy affixing a pulse oximeter, monitoring the IV and taking over ventilation duties. “Get me a chest tube on the double, a CBC and type and cross-match for four units. Where’s Horton?”

      Becky answered. “He’s not here yet.”

      “Page him again. If he doesn’t answer in the next sixty seconds, page Dr Ahmadi too.” Ahmadi was Frank Horton’s supervisor.

      Gina wiped blood away from the largest and most worrisome puncture and revealed heavily tattooed skin. A closer look at his torso showed her what she’d missed before—his entire body was tattooed with mythical creatures. The detailed dragon which was prominently featured on his left bicep was quite distinctive.

      “I see we’ve gotten another one of Picasso’s customers.”

      “Who?” Ruark asked.

      “Pablo Picasso. Pablo’s his real name and being a local tattoo artist, he calls his parlor Picasso’s,” she said as she began to palpate along the man’s rib cage to determine the chest tube placement site. “He thought the famous name would give his place some class. We see a lot of his work in here.”

      “Doesn’t say much for his choice of clientele,” Ruark remarked.

      “Pablo is interested in his art, not in people’s lifestyle choices,” she defended.

      “How did you meet him? I wouldn’t think a physician and a tattooist would have much in common.”

      “He came into the ER with pneumonia when I was an intern and we started to talk about all sorts of things. He invited me to his workplace—he dared me to visit, actually, and I did. His drawings are fantastic.”

      “Did you pick one for yourself?” Lucy asked.

      “Sure did. Lidocaine.”

      Lucy slapped the required syringe into Gina’s hand. “Oh, my gosh. You have a tattoo?”

      Conscious of Ruark listening intently, Gina wished she hadn’t said a word. Her tattoo was none of his business, even if she wasn’t ashamed of it. “Yeah.”

      “You’re kidding.”

      “Come on, Lucy, it isn’t that big a deal,” Gina defended.

      “Hey, any time you veer off the straight and narrow path of respectability to walk on the wild side, it’s interesting,” Lucy announced. “So what did you choose, and where is it? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

      “It’s a frog,” Gina snapped. “On my foot. Scalpel.”

      “I should have guessed. You collect them, don’t you?” Lucy slapped the instrument into her hand.

      “Yeah.” From the sheer volume of inked skin, Gina suspected her patient took as much pride in his body art as Pablo did, so she made the smallest incision possible to accomplish what had to be done. As she punctured the pleura with a Kelly clamp, blood spurted from the hole.

      Working frantically, she hardly noticed the appearance of another nurse, and two more paramedics as they wheeled in a second victim who, like the first, had an IV line established and wore an oxygen mask.

      “We’ve got problems here, Doc,” Andy Carter, one of the paramedics, announced.

      “Tell me about it,” she muttered.

      “What’s wrong?” Ruark abandoned Gina’s patient for the new arrival.

      “He’s got a pneumothorax and I couldn’t intubate him before we brought him in. I tried, but couldn’t get through and I didn’t want to waste more time trying in the field.”

      Gina inserted the tube into her John Doe’s chest. Immediately blood filled the line and ran into the attached drainage bag. “Hang on, buddy,” she told her patient. “We’re taking good care of you.”

      “Give me an endotrachael tube,” Ruark ordered as he moved to the head of his patient’s gurney.

      Andy glanced between her and Ruark. “Doc?”

      “Where’s Frank?” she asked no one in particular.

      “I asked for an endotrach tube,” Ruark ground out. “Must I get one myself?”

      Everyone froze, including Gina. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

      “Trying to save this man’s life, if someone will give me a damn tube!” he roared as he stood over the second man, who was audibly rasping for breath.

      Immediately, the nurses sprang into action.

      Gina exchanged a brief glance with Lucy. Ruark would be furious that no one had instantly obeyed his orders. Apparently her days as staff liaison hadn’t ended yet but, in all fairness, what could he expect? No one knew of the official leadership change—it all had happened so fast. If he’d called his staff meeting instead of springing international problems on her that were beyond her control, none of this would have happened, she thought uncharitably.

      “By the way,” Gina announced offhandedly as she tended her patient, “I’m afraid none of you have met our new emergency director, Dr Ruark Thomas. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s replaced Bill.”

      Under the wary greetings offered by the subdued staff, Gina muttered to Lucy, “Keep an eye on him and signal me if you notice he’s in over his head.”

      Lucy obeyed, quietly trading places with the other nurse.

      While Gina finished securing the chest tube with sutures and dressed the wound she’d created, she listened to the quiet conversation over the second gurney.

      “We can’t get through,” Ruark declared. “His larynx is fractured and the upper airway is blocked.”

      “Then he needs a cricothyroidotomy,” she interrupted from across the room. Having worked with her share of unseasoned physicians, she was accustomed to sharing her opinions during the trickier situations. “Can we get by with—?”

      Ruark must have read her mind. “Ventilating him with only a needle and catheter is a temporary measure. The surgical method will make it easier for placement of a tracheostomy tube later, which he will definitely need.”

      “OK. I’ll be there in a few seconds.” But as she watched the blood pour out of her patient’s chest into the drainage bag and heard only muffled heart sounds, she knew she couldn’t leave his side.

      She hated to ask, but she had no choice. “Can you do it on your own?”

      “I’m two steps ahead of you,” he answered. “Never fear. I’ve done this once or twice.”

      Once or twice? Gina mentally groaned. Yet, for a man with such limited experience, he didn’t seem flustered or act out of his depth. And while she was relieved by his calm, matter-of-fact manner, she couldn’t squelch the irrational notion that he might need the benefit of her expertise. After

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