Chapter 9 - The ER Midnight Arrival
The damp chill of the hospital basement clung to my skin, but Victor Vance’s words burned straight through it.
I looked from the polished brass key Vance had placed on the cherrywood box to the worn, identical one resting inside the velvet lining. Two keys. One from a dock master murdered in an arson fire, the other preserved by an archivist who spent her final years terrified of her own husband.
Before I could speak, the emergency pager clipped to my scrubs shrieked.
A high-pitched, warbling tone echoed off the concrete walls—Code Crimson. Level One Trauma. Multiple inbound casualties.
"Claire," Julian whispered, terrified by the sudden siren. "What is that?"
"My job," I said, reading the alphanumeric readout on the tiny screen: Three victims, high-speed rollover on Harbor Expressway, penetrating ballistic trauma, ETA four minutes.
Harbor Expressway. That was less than a mile from where Davis’s tactical team had confronted us.
"It seems our municipal friends ran into complications on their return to City Hall," Vance observed, checking his platinum watch with unhurried grace. "Inspector Davis was never known for his defensive driving under stress."
"I have to go up," I said, snatching my mother's cherrywood box off the desk and sliding it into the deep front pocket of my heavy winter coat hanging by the door.
"Claire, you can't walk up there!" Julian pleaded, clutching my sleeve. "Croft’s people know you work here! They’ll be crawling all over the building!"
I ripped my arm out of his grasp. "People are bleeding out on stretchers, Julian. Unlike you and Dad, I don't hide in basements while other people pay for my mistakes." I turned to Vance. "Keep him here. If he leaves this room, let Davis have him."
"He won't leave," Vance said smoothly, pulling a low-profile radio from his pocket. "Take the service lift to the second floor, Claire. The trauma bays are locked down on biometric clearance. They can't touch you while you're in scrubs."
I sprinted down the corridor, swiped my badge at the freight elevator, and took the slow, clanking ride up to the main floor. The moment the steel doors slid open, the controlled chaos of St. Catherine’s Emergency Department hit me like a wall of hot air and adrenaline.
"Bennett!" Charge Nurse Sarah yelled over the roar of telemetry alarms and running footsteps. "Where have you been? Your phone was dead! We’ve got two rigs rolling in right behind each other. Bay One and Bay Two!"
"I'm here," I said, snapping on nitrile gloves and tying a yellow isolation gown behind my neck. "What do we have?"
"Driver took two rounds through the windshield, rolled the SUV into an abutment. GCS is seven. Second victim has severe blunt force chest trauma and an open femur fracture. Police escorts are already at the ambulance bay."
The double doors banged open violently. Paramedics wheeled the first gurney down the center hall, their boots squeaking against the wet tile.
"Forty-five-year-old male," the lead medic shouted over the siren still winding down outside. "Tachycardic, hypotensive, pressure dropping to eighty over fifty. Massive hemothorax on the left side!"
I stepped up to the head of the gurney, grabbing the Ambu-bag to assist ventilation. As I looked down to check the patient's pupils, my breath locked in my throat.
Lying on the bloody sheet, his face covered in cuts and road grime, was Chief Inspector Davis.
His eyes flickered open, landing directly on me. Even through the fog of hemorrhagic shock and agony, recognition flared in his bloodshot pupils. His lips moved, sputtering pink, frothy blood against the plastic oxygen mask.
"Bennett..." he gurgled.
"Get him onto the trauma board on three," I ordered the team, my voice instantly snapping back into pure clinical authority. "One, two, three—slide!"
We shifted his heavy frame onto the trauma bed. Alarms began chiming erratic rhythms as his heart struggled against the pressure of blood collapsing his left lung.
"Trach is deviated right," Dr. Alvarez, the trauma surgeon, said, snapping on gloves. "He needs a chest tube right now. Claire, prep a thoracostomy tray. Get two units of O-negative from the cooler!"
I grabbed the sterile tray, unwrapping the scalpel, curved Kelly clamps, and chest drainage tube. As I reached across the bed to drape Davis's left side with sterile blue towels, his bloody hand shot out, locking onto my wrist like a vice.
The strength of a dying man is unnatural. His fingernails dug straight through my latex gloves, pinching into my flesh.
"Claire..." he wheezed, pulling my ear down toward his mouth while the monitors screamed. "Croft... didn't wait... for the ledger."
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"Hold still, Davis," I commanded, reaching for the antiseptic swab. "You're losing your airway."
"He sent... a second team..." Davis sputtered, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. "To Oakridge Drive. Your father... wouldn't keep his mouth shut. They're cleaning... the whole board."
