Page 39 of What We Brave
"Pressure's dropping. They've got two large-bore IVs running wide open."
I nod, mentally running through protocols. Ejection means spinal precautions. Dropping pressure means internal bleeding until proven otherwise. We'll need blood typed and crossed, CT standing by, probably surgery on deck.
The ambulance bay doors burst open.
I see the stretcher first. Then the blood—so much blood, soaking through the sheet, dripping onto the floor. The patient is a young man, maybe twenty-five, face obscured by an oxygen mask and cervical collar.
Then I see who's pushing the stretcher.
Reid.
Our eyes meet across the chaos of the trauma bay. For one heartbeat, everything else falls away—the noise, the blood, the urgency.
Then he smiles.
Not the desperate look from the fire station parking lot, or the sad smile from the hardware store. This is the Reid smile I remember from our first night together, when he was cracking jokes and making me laugh despite fourteen overdoses in six hours. That smile isn't about anything but me. I know that like I know my Mom loves me.
For a second, we connect, and it's real and warm.
Then he's back. All of him, right where he needs to be—on the kid, on the monitors, on whatever comes next.
If someone walked in right then and caught the tail end of that smile, they'd think he was heartless. Or just a colossal jerk. He's neither. He just let himself have one small moment of something human before turning back to the boy on the gurney.
"What do we have?" Dr. Martinez's voice snaps me back to the present.
Reid's partner—not Tony, someone I don't recognize—rattles off the report while Reid helps transfer the patient to our table. "Male, twenty-six, unrestrained driver, ejected approximately thirty feet. GCS was eight in the field, dropped to six en route. BP ninety over sixty, heart rate one-twenty, two liters of saline on board."
I'm already cutting away clothing, exposing the chest for assessment. My hands know what to do even when my brain is still catching up.
"Decreased breath sounds on the left," I report, pressing my stethoscope to the patient's ribs. "Could be a hemothorax." I'm not a doctor, but I know my stuff. And the doctor knows that thankfully, giving a quick listen and confirming it.
"Get me a chest tube tray," Dr. Martinez orders. "And call CT, tell them we're coming in five minutes whether they're ready or not."
Reid steps back from the table, giving our team room to work. That's protocol—once the handoff is complete, the paramedics clear out. But I catch him watching for just a moment longer than necessary before he turns to help his partner collect their equipment.
The stretcher wheels squeak against the floor as they pull it away. I keep my hands on the patient, keep my focus where it belongs.
"Tube's in," the RT announces. "Good color change, equal breath sounds—wait, still decreased on the left."
"Chest tube going in now." Dr. Martinez positions the scalpel. "Mitchell, keep pressure on that abdominal wound."
I press both hands against the gauze covering a deep laceration on the patient's lower abdomen. Blood wells up between my fingers, warm and insistent.
The work swallows me whole. CT scan. Splenic laceration. Surgery.
By the time the patient disappears into the elevator, heading for an operating room and a team of surgeons who will, God willing, spend the next several hours putting him back together, I've almost forgotten about Reid.
Almost.
Mrs. Delgado, seventy-three, fell in her kitchen and needs sutures in her forearm. But it needs to be cleaned first. Simple work. Necessary work. The kind of work that keeps the noise in my head quiet.
I'm gently wiping the blood when I glance through the bay's open curtain and see him.
Reid.
My hands still. The gauze hovers over Mrs. Delgado's wound, suspended in that space between one heartbeat and the next.
He's at the nurses' station, talking to Joyce. Laughing at something she said, that full-body laugh I remember too well—the one where his whole face transforms and his shoulders shake and you can't help but smile just watching him. His hair is doing that thing where it sticks up in three different directions, like he's been running his hands through it all shift.
