Troubleshooter

Chapter 14

He didn't remember turning the car around or the drive to the hospital. He didn't remember parking or the walk across the ambulance bay. His first flash of cognizance came when Bear appeared in the emergency-room lobby, running toward him, gear jangling on his belt.

Bear halted, winded; his voice was high. "She called in a high-risk stop."

Tim felt his veins go to ice. "Who?" he asked, though he already knew.

"Den Laurey."

Tim's vision narrowed again. When he came out of it, a doctor was midsentence with Bear, thin hand on his chest to stop his advance through the swinging doors. A nurse at Tim's side was trying to comfort him with facts, but he couldn't quite keep up with the words. "-medevacked her. We're the closest trauma center with a helipad-"

He looked around blankly. "Where are we?"

The nurse's face registered concern. "UCLA Medical Center."

Bear lifted the doctor by both shoulders, moved him out of his way, and set him back down. The security guard took one look at Bear and stayed in his seat but kept his hand on the phone. Tim followed Bear through the doors, down the sterile corridor.

Bear froze up ahead, peering through the windowed doors to Procedure Room Two. Filled with dread, Tim drew to his side and looked through the glass.

Hurwitz, Gregg – Rackley 03

Troubleshooter (2005)

Surrounded by nurses and doctors, Dray lay naked, her pallid skin smeared with blood. The blue tint of the fluorescents and her position-supine, elevated, focal-gave the scene a religious aspect. A fat needle stuck out an inch below her left clavicle, and a web of blackening blood glittered on her side. Her brilliant green eyes were cloudy, or maybe it was just the lighting.

Tim heard the shuffle of boots walking in unison-the approach of the guards-but he couldn't tear his eyes off his wife. One of the doctors glanced up, then stepped away, moving toward them. He shot his gloves on the way through the doors and stepped between Bear and the guards. "I got it fellows." When he pulled down his mask, Tim recognized him as the doctor who'd treated him last year. As the guards backed off, the doctor shot Bear a stern look. "Behave yourself and you can stay back here. Don't go in that room."

He took Tim's arm and drew him into an empty exam room. He started with details and hard facts-a good read on what Tim required right now.

"She took a blast from a twelve-gauge, double-aught buck. The vest absorbed the brunt of it, but a pellet got through the armhole, penetrated beneath her breast at the fourth intercostal. It pierced the pleura, the sac surrounding the lung, and caused the lung to collapse." He moistened his lips. "When the paramedic got to her, she wasn't breathing. Unresponsive, no pulse, blood pressure was at fifty. He bagged her and did a needle decompression in the field, but she'd been down for a while. She didn't have oxygen to her brain for seven, maybe eight minutes. There might be brain insult."

Tim took it standing. The doctor gave him a moment to digest this, waiting for his eyes to pull back into focus.

"She may have had some hypoxic injury while she was down. The CAT looks okay, but it's a wait-and-see."

"She stable?"

"She is now. We put in a chest tube. And she started breathing on her own-clear airway, good breath sounds. But the chest tube put out some blood, and she's not waking up. Because she's pregnant, she has a lower resting blood pressure to begin with…" He wiped his forehead with the abbreviated sleeve of his scrub top. "We did an ultrasound, and the baby's heartbeat is regular. We want to keep the baby inside her, but we need to know… If an operation is required and we think we might lose your wife on the table, do you want us to perform an emergency C-section or devote our full resources to your wife first?"

Tim tried to think of what Dray would want but heard himself say, "Devote your full resources to my wife." He put his hand on the exam table just to make sure he had hold of something solid and unyielding. "If you lose her, can you still…?"

"Perform a postmortem C-section? Yes. But let's hope we don't wind up there." The doctor rested a hand on Tim's shoulder. "I heard about what happened. Your stopping the bikers."

"They put it out over the PA?"

"The deputies were talking." He regarded Tim heavily. "You can play the guilt game-" He opened his mouth, closed it, wiped his lips with his hand though there was nothing to wipe. "I lost my first wife. You can play that game until you've got nothing left to play with." When Tim didn't respond, the doctor took a little step back, angling toward the door. "I'm going to go check on her. Want me to leave you in the room?"

"For a moment."

"We're going to do everything we can."

"I know. Thank you, Doctor."

Only a few concrete images emerged from the haze of the next few hours. Tim's colleagues popping by in shifts. Quiet voices, shy eyes. Tim nodding and nodding to the repeated pronouncement, uttered like a verdict, "It wasn't your fault." Guerrera and Zimmer in the back, discussing leads in whispered tones as if the topic weren't appropriate. Dray's four brothers harassing doctors and flashing badges until the oldest collapsed into a chair, ham-size fists pressing into his sweaty face. Mac pacing in the waiting room, stuck in a loop-"I just saw her at the doughnut joint. Happy's? I just saw her." Mac's and Fowler's sheriff's deputy uniforms recalling Dray's, cut to tatters beneath her gurney.

Finally the doctor came out and brought Tim up to the ICU, hand on his back, a priest leading the condemned. Tim sat in the bedside chair and stared dumbly at his wife. Beneath her gown her belly thrust up, round and firm. A tube ran from the hole in her chest into a bubbling machine that sounded like a bong. Vaseline-impregnated gauze hid the sutures, but a few peeked out, shiny and black like the antennae of some hidden insect. Her legs were sticky and smelled faintly of urine. Her knees were pressed together and laid to the side in a way she never would have held them. It seemed grotesque-someone else positioning her knees, her limbs. What was a person other than how she held herself?

All of a sudden, steaming at the joints and burning through the shock, it came. Rage.

Rising, making his way past his colleagues, down the hall, into the bathroom. Leaving his badge behind on a closed toilet tank, stepping onto the lid, pulling himself up and through the window. Purpose quickening his step through the parking lot, the night sharp at the back of his throat.

Dray leans against his car, arms crossed, a knowing smile touching her lips. "I'm a sheriff's deputy, Timothy. It comes with the job. You don't get to be stupid about this."

Poleaxed, gun hand hanging limp at his side.

She studies him, reading his answer in his eyes. Then she laughs. "You're not gonna get those fuckers for me. No way. That's a prescription for incompetence. You're gonna get them because they need to be got."

Tim's eyes narrowed at the sound. Tannino's voice.

"-anonymous tip saved her life. Otherwise she would've lain there for God knows how long." Tannino checked Dray's pulse as if he knew what he was doing, his olive fingers nestled paternally alongside her throat. Working his lower lip between his teeth, Bear crouched at Tim's side.

Think, Tim. Where were they going?

"Moorpark's a long way from the Rock Store," Tim said. "They ran the canyons and back roads, probably. Mulholland, Topanga, Box. Too many holes to plug in those hills. You only need a few brief spurts on freeways. You can pop out high on the 118, gets you on your way north keeping you out of L.A. County."

"What's north?" Tannino asked.

Tim and Bear said in unison, "The mother chapter."

"You think they went there?"

"Nah, they wouldn't take heat to the club," Bear said. "Safe houses up around there, most likely. We've put all local units on high alert."

Tim realized he'd been clenching his jaw; he released it, felt the ache deep in his teeth. Tannino watched him, releasing a sigh that said his insides hurt. "There's no way you could've known. I'm sure you're telling yourself otherwise, but you did the right thing on that stop." He ran a hand up his face, over his head, his gold wedding band glittering in his dense hair. "We need live heroes. Dead ones only work for public relations." He bit his lip, possibly regretful of his choice of maxim.

Tim felt the pull of sorrow, but again Dray's voice cut through it like a blade. What's the next step?

"Get the video," Tim said. "From Dray's car."

"Right," Tannino said. "We'll have a copy ASAP."

He and Bear withdrew, leaving Tim alone with his wife.