Page 132 of Love Me Brazen
“Stay with us, Morgan!” Burton calls. Footsteps in the hall signal the approach of help, but I’m locked on the vein I need to access.
“Little poke, sweetheart,” I say to Morgan, and go. Because her skin has lost so much perfusion, the needle just puckers for a tense instant before it breaks through. I aim for the vein beneath.Come on.There’s the slightest resistance, and then red blood oozes into the catheter.
“Hallelujah,” Burton says, handing me the tape. I connect the IV to the bag of saline and open the tubing all the way. She’ll need another IV as soon as the medics arrive, but this hopefully buys us the time we need.
The two firefighters from the engine enter the room with a gurney and we work as a team to transfer Morgan onto it. It’s then I get a better look at how thin she’s gotten. Her long dark hair is limp, like she hasn’t washed in a while. There’s a bruise on her thigh as big as a softball.
The medics arrive just as we’re carrying her down the stairs. They meet us at the door, and I’m relieved when I see one of them is Ryan Hutchins, a former air force pararescue and the absolutely best guy in a crisis. I give him the passdown as we rush Morgan to the back of the medic rig idling in the gravel turnaround. There’s a Finn River Sheriff’s SUV parked in front of Engine 5, and Troy Robinson and my brother Zach are walking toward us.
Zach and I lock eyes for an instant. He’s the only one here who knows about me and Charlotte and my inability to let her go. He also probably knows that I’m going to break every privacy law in place to call her with the news of what happened here tonight. Zach will offer to do it, but it’s me she needs to hear it from.
“Any idea what she took?” Hutch asks, snapping me back to the task of loading Morgan into the medic rig.
“Negative,” I say.
“We’ll have a look,” Burton says.
“Good,” Hutch says, climbing in with Morgan. He and I lock the gurney in place and he whips out a warmed blanket to lay over her. We tuck it in around her, then Hutch starts gathering supplies for another IV. Before I go, I find Morgan’s hand underneath the blanket. I tell her with my touch that she’s safe now. I will her to fight her way back from this.
“You did good,” Hutch says, shooting me a serious glance. “These wounds…”
I force down the lump clogging my throat. “Take good care of her.”
“You know it.”
I let go of Morgan’s hand, then jump down and shut the ambulance doors. The rig rumbles off, lights flashing in the darkness.
