Page 26 of Pulse

“Come on,” she whispered. A few more miles and they’d hit a small town. She’d pull into the first open business she could find. Maybe a well-lit gas station or convenience store. Anything that contained another human being she could use as a witness.

A screech of metal on metal assaulted her ears at the same time her car lurched forward. Talia shrieked and stared in the mirror, mouth agape. He’d hit her.

“Oh my God.” A loud sob flew from deep in her gut. She blinked to clear her vision as tears flooded her eyes. She pressed hard with her foot until the gas pedal hit the floor. “Go faster!” she shouted at the car as though it would do a damn thing.

When the car bumped her again, she flew forward with a shout. The seat belt stopped her from smacking the steering wheel as it locked in place with a painful snap across her chest.

The next hit came so fast and violently that her hands slipped off the steering wheel. The seat belt cracked across her chest with another agonizing jolt. Her neck snapped back then forward, rattling her brain, and her hair fell into her field of vision.

She screamed as the loud screech of crushing metal reverberated into the night. She felt like a ragdoll being tossed around by a careless child.

Something hit her cheek with a biting sting. She tried to grab it, but the momentum of the crashing car kept her from reaching for her face.

The last thing Talia saw before the world went black was the steering wheel rushing toward her face, followed by a massive cloud of white before impact.

At least my airbags work.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“HEY, GABE, ROOM twelve is asking for pain medication.”

He glanced at his smart watch before looking at the nursing assistant assigned to his room. “Thanks, Sharon. He’s due for some. I’ll grab it now.”

When he left the DEA, he started using his middle name, Gabriel, as his first name. No one called him Max anymore. At work, they called him Gabe, but everyone else called him Pulse, the nickname given to him by the club due to his profession. Hearing the cops call him Max the other night had fucked with his head.

He logged off the computer where he’d taken a minute to catch up on some of his charting. It’d been a busy shift so far. This was the first time he’d sat down in the past four hours, and it had lasted a whopping six minutes.

After taking care of the pain medication request, he started an IV in room eleven and answered a call from surgery, who had a room prepared for the patient in ER room ten. They were sending transport down to have the patient wheeled up for an emergency appendectomy.

Never a dull moment in the emergency room.

As he attached room ten’s IV pole to the transport gurney, the pager clipped to his name badge beeped.

“Trauma coming in?” Sharon asked.

He nodded as he read from the pager. “MVA with one victim. You’ll let Amy know?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks,” he called as he jogged toward the ambulance bay. As the primary nurse on trauma call for this shit, he was expected to respond to every incoming trauma. That meant he had fewer ER patients to care for during his shift so that others could cover for him during traumas, but it still made for a hectic, sometimes highly chaotic shift.

He fucking loved it.

The adrenaline rush, the life-or-death spur-of-the-moment decision-making. Pulse thrived on his work. Long before he’d gone the federal agent route, he’d wanted to be a trauma surgeon. Unfortunately, he’d let other’s opinions sway him, and by the time he’d come to his senses and left the DEA, he felt he was too old to take on the time commitment and debt of becoming a surgeon. Critical care nursing was the next best bet, and he loved every second of his job.

The rest of the trauma team had assembled at the ambulance bay by the time the ambulance rolled in. Connor and Leslie, a paramedic team he knew well by now, lowered a gurney from the back of their rig and jogged toward the waiting team.

“What do we have?” Pulse asked as they reached him.

“Thirty-two-year-old female involved in a single car MVA, though she claims she was hit and the driver of the other car took off. Unconscious at the scene but has since come around. She’s alert and oriented times four. No agitation. Positive for headache and nausea. No vomiting. Significant bruising on the sternum from the seat belt. She has about a three-inch laceration on her forehead. Bleeding is under control. She said no allergies or major medical conditions.”

“Thanks, Connor.”

The woman on the gurney had her head secured to a backboard as per spinal injury protocol. Once they were confident she didn’t have spinal involvement, that could beremoved. The paramedics taped a bulky wad of gauze to her forehead to help control the bleeding and keep the wound clean.

Pulse moved to the head of the gurney to talk to the patient and get some more information while they wheeled her toward a trauma room for evaluation. “Hey there, ma’am. I’m Gabe, one of the nurses here at the hospital. We’re going to take good care of you, okay? Can you tell me your name?”

He glanced down for the first time and almost swallowed his tongue.

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