Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Um,” I said around another burger bite. “Follow me.”
She did, hustling up to my side as I started to lead her into the main hallway that led between the ER and the minor ER.
Luckily, as if the heavens knew I needed a miracle STAT, the doors to the front of the ER opened and the worst possible scenario entered, facing backwards on a wheelchair.
And her vagina was facing right toward me.
So was her asshole.
Her asshole that was steadily leaking poop, and there was definitely a baby coming out of her vagina.
Awesome.
My worst nightmare.
There weren’t a lot of things as an ER doctor that really affected me, but there was just something about births that I really hated.
Maybe it was because of the awkwardness of delivering a baby. Maybe it was because I just didn’t like dealing with babies because they were so small and delicate.
Or it was possible because during our maternity rotation, I’d had some of the worst cases imaginable.
Regardless, I didn’t like them.
And the woman at my side knew it.
“That’s why you came and got me, isn’t it?” She laughed then. “Jesus Christ.”
So Val knew exactly why I hated births.
I’d had three people die on me during each of the births I’d been a part of.
One being the father, who’d fallen over and hit his head on the corner of a windowsill, stroked out after the baby was born, and died before any of us could figure out what had happened.
The second time I’d assisted in a birth, the mom had suffered a shoulder dystocia, the baby had gotten stuck, and the mother had died during the c-section.
The third time, the baby I’d had to deliver was a still birth.
All three had traumatized me, and I’d gone to great lengths never to have to deal with births again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as I stuffed the rest of my burger into the bag and threw it away.
Val went into action and helped the mother into a bed in the trauma room, cleaned the mom up, then helped deliver the baby.
All of it was done in a matter of minutes.
I’d just seen her place the baby on mom’s chest when the ambulance bay door popped open, and a couple of firefighters walked in trying to restrain a patient.
The patient was swinging, with one hand only because he was currently cuffed to the gurney, and a cop was walking back a bit trying to cover a busted-up eyebrow that was leaking blood everywhere.
All three—cop and two firefighters—were women.
And they looked harried, as if they hadn’t expected the dude to start swinging when he had.
I leapt into action, throwing myself onto the gurney and restraining the guy as he went for another swing at the closest firefighter.
He got a solid punch to my right pec when he did, and I tried not to curse as I slammed him back down to the gurney.
“I need some…” I trailed off as my arm muscles bulged as I tried to keep the dude on the gurney.
But fuck, he was strong.
As in, he was on drugs and didn’t know his own strength, strong.
“Hot damn,” I heard someone say. “That’s freakin’ hot.”
I half listened as the women gave us a rundown of what had gone down since they’d gotten the man into the back of the ambulance.
The man had been doing drugs. Speed they thought.
He’d been terrorizing a bunch of kids in a park—all teenagers who had done nothing but rile the man up and get him wound tighter and tighter—and had been swinging on them when the police and ambulance arrived.
Meds had been pushed to bring him down from his high, but it was as if he’d received nothing.
I ignored whomever it was saying that and continued to put all my strength in keeping the guy from swinging on me and the women who were now surrounding me.
And every last fuckin’ one of them were women.
Now I’m not saying that women can’t do what men can do, but I have found that when it comes to combative patients who don’t know their own strength, they can be rather destructive.
And the last thing I wanted to happen was for one of them to get hurt on my watch.
Sweat started to slide down the length of my spine, pooled at my forehead and dripped off my face.
A: it was hot as fuck in here thanks to the hospital thinking that we needed to keep it warmer because of the weird as fuck weather we experienced the last month. And B: because it was hard fucking work trying to restrain someone who didn’t care if you broke their arm or not in the process.
“Get the meds!” I called out, unable to form the words of the meds with my brain working overtime to keep everyone in the ER right now from getting murdered by this man. “Now!”