Page 9 of Night Shift

Minutes after I’d stashed my keys and wallet in my locker, a call came in via radio about a teenage gunshot victim. A jolt of adrenaline went through me. I washed my hands, slipped on a face mask, and grabbed a pair of gloves as I headed to the trauma bay.

Just as I reached the trauma bay doors, they burst open. The boy on the stretcher couldn’t have been older than seventeen. His face was contorted with fear and pain, and his eyes darted around while he clutched at the edges of the gurney. The entry wound was just below his clavicle, a chilling sight.

One of the paramedics, a tall, muscular man with a relaxed ease about him, started bringing me up to speed. “Accidental shooting,” he explained, his voice steady despite the gravity of the situation. “Handgun.”

I blinked, taking in the paramedic’s features—dark brown hair with golden highlights and deep-set dark brown eyes with a few worry lines around them. He looked strikingly familiar. Then it hit me. He was like a slightly younger version of Dr. Thorin. Only, this man’s eyes were dark.

“Are you related to Dr. Thorin, by any chance?” I asked, trying to mask my surprise.

“Guilty as charged. Atticus is my big brother,” he said, giving me a mischievous look. “I’m Braxton, but for heaven’s sake, don’t ever call me Brixxie, his ridiculous nickname for me. And you must be the new nurse, Samantha?”

It surprised me that he’d already heard of me. His easygoing manner was so different from Dr. Thorin’s more intense demeanor.

“Yep, that’s me. You can call me Sam. Nice to meet you, Braxton. And don’t worry, I’ll steer clear of the nickname. I’m all too familiar with his idiotic nicknames.”

Just then, Dr. Thorin himself strode over, his presence commanding as always. He caught my eye for a brief second—a silent acknowledgment—before he turned to the boy on the stretcher. “What’s his BP?” he asked without missing a beat.

“Ninety over sixty and dropping,” I reported, checking the monitor. My eyes flicked back to Braxton, who was unloading equipment with practiced efficiency. The numbers were worrisome, and the patient was losing blood fast.

Braxton stepped toward Dr. Thorin. “We’ve got a bullet lodged just below the clavicle,” he reported. “He’s experiencing difficulty breathing, likely due to fluid accumulation in the lung. His respiration is labored, and there’s reduced breath sound on the left side. Oxygen saturation was fluctuating around eighty-nine percent en route.”

Dr. Thorin nodded briefly, absorbing the information with a practiced calm. “Prepare for chest X-rays,” he instructed. “Notify the OR. He may need immediate surgical intervention.”

I glanced back and forth between them, still taken aback by how similar they looked and sounded, yet how different they were at the same time. Braxton took one of my hands and placed it on the gauze pack the other paramedic was holding over the boy’s wound.

“Nice to meet you, Sam. I’ll have to make sure you meet our youngest brother, Conan, soon,” Braxton said as he walked back to the ambulance. Turning to look over his shoulder, he lit me up with a winning grin, and even though he was wearing a mask, it was one of the sexiest smiles I’d ever seen.

My cheeks heated, and I let out an embarrassingly audible gasp.

Dr. Thorin noticed my reaction and raised an eyebrow but said nothing, his focus quickly returning to the patient. But in that instant, I caught a flicker of something—curiosity, perhaps—in his eyes.

“We need to stabilize him. Possible lung and vascular injury,” Dr. Thorin assessed. “Get chest X-rays, type and cross for blood, and prepare for a possible thoracotomy.”

While the team hustled around, I continued applying pressure on the wound to mitigate blood loss, being mindful to be gentle so as not to exacerbate the injury. Radiology techs rolled in the portable X-ray machine, and within moments, we had a clearer picture of the damage.

“He’s got a hemothorax,” Dr. Thorin noted, his voice steady but urgent.

The X-ray showed a collapsed lung. The bullet was perilously close to a major blood vessel.

“Chest tube insertion, now,” Dr. Thorin directed, and I snapped to attention in an instant.

Handing over my hold on the gauze pack to another nurse, I quickly discarded the gloves I’d been wearing, scrubbed my hands, and suited up in my sterile gear, donning new gloves before turning back to the patient, who had been moved to one of the beds in the trauma bay.

His breathing was shallow and labored, and his fear-filled eyes flickered from me to Dr. Thorin, seeking reassurance amidst his pain.

“Hi, I’m Samantha. What’s your name?” I asked him in an effort to distract him a little from the seriousness of the situation.

“Brandon,” he replied softly.

“Well, Brandon, Dr. Thorin here and his team are the best. We’re going to take good care of you. Soon, we’ll have you feeling better. Try to take slow, deep breaths for me, okay?”

He tried to smile, but winced as pain tore through him.

Bethany swiftly entered the room with the necessary supplies—a chest tube kit, a sterile drape, and a local anesthetic. Everyone prepared for the procedure in a practiced, macabre dance. The sterile scent of the drape mingled with the sharp, antiseptic odor of the cleaning solution as we prepared the area around Brandon’s wound. As we began to undertake this critical procedure, the atmosphere became somber, the quiet punctuated by the beeping of monitors and the muted shuffling of the team.

“Administering local anesthesia,” Dr. Thorin announced, his voice a steady beacon in the tense atmosphere. As he injected the anesthetic around the site of the wound, Brandon winced, his muscles tensing under the sharp prick of the needle.

With precise movements, Dr. Thorin made a small incision just below Brandon’s pectoral muscle. The soft, wet parting of skin was a sound I had become familiar with but never got used to hearing. “Scalpel down. Clamps,” he requested calmly. I handed him the clamps, and then he carefully dissected the subcutaneous tissue, creating a pathway for the chest tube.

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