Page 96 of Undeniably Enemies

“Nex door I think.”

“Okay. Stay back then.”

Before I can so much as move, the doors burst open, and a gurney is wheeled in with an unconscious woman on it.

“Give me the bullet,” Callan demands as a nurse covers his face with a plastic shield and moves in to assess the patient.

The paramedic immediately starts. “Twenty-two-year-old female was jogging by the river when she was attacked from behind.”

My breath catches in my lungs, and my body automatically seizes up. The paramedic continues to talk, telling us about the status of the patient while all the doctors and nurses spring into action, working to save her life. Callan throws me a look, one I feel, but he doesn’t say anything. What can he say?

He’s too busy trying to save her life.

She’s intubated, and a central line is placed to give her fluids and medicine.

“Where’s ultrasound?” Jack barks. “Why isn’t it in here?”

“Two minutes out,” a nurse tells him.

I feel like I’m going to pass out. Blood thrums through my ears, and my vision sways.No. Not now.I focus on my breathing.Four, three, two, one, four, three, two, one.

“She got him good,” one of the nurses muses. “I hope she’s okay. She’s a fighter.”

My stomach roils.

“They’re wheeling him in next door now,” another states, but all chatter cuts off as the patient’s heart rate suddenly shifts from sinus tachycardia to flirting with ventricular fibrillation. I watch in horror, my gloved hands locked behind my back.

“Dammit,” Callan curses. “She’s bleeding somewhere. We need ultrasound two minutes ago, not in another two minutes.”

“Lung sounds are absent on the right,” Jack states. “She needs a chest tube. Get me set up. I want X-ray in here now for placement.”

“It’s more than that. Her abdomen is tense and rigid,” Callan declares. “Is trauma on the way down?”

“Yes, Doctor,” a nurse says. “They’ve been paged.”

It’s as if I’m watching from outside my body. Words echo around me, and I hear them, but they’re just words. Because I can’t take my eyes off her face. Her swollen and bludgeoned face.Four is the highest degree general polynomial equation for which there is a solution in radicals. There are four elementary arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

“Miss Fritz!” Callan practically yells, snapping me out of my panic as if he’d been trying to get my attention more than once. “You should go check on your other patients.”

I meet his eyes. I know what he’s trying to do. I bite into mylip and shake my head. I can’t leave. I have to see this. I have to know.

“Go next door and see how it’s going with the other trauma,” Jack orders, and I practically bark out a laugh. Right. The attacker.

“No, we can send someone else to do that,” Callan offers.

I shake my head again and on wobbly legs push through the swinging door to trauma two where they’re working on him, though not nearly as hard or fast as they are the victim.

“This is the attacker?” I question, and heads swivel in my direction.

“Yes,” Layla declares, her gaze nervous on mine. I didn’t even know she was on right now, but I’m so grateful she is.

“How’s the girl?” Margot asks.

“Jack’s inserting a chest tube. Right now, it doesn’t look great, but she’s a fighter.”

“She is,” Layla agrees. “Come here. Get closer. You can see better.”

“Layla.”

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