Midnight Heat (Black Phoenix Book 2) by Sarah Grimm Page B

surgeon down here!”
    Splashes of betadine and blood turned her gloves brown and red. Rebecca snapped them off, revealing a fresh pair beneath. “Atropine, point zero two milligram. Push that blood.” She placed the heel of her hand in position, glanced at the medic still manually feeding the child oxygen and began chest compressions. One hundred compressions a minute without stop.
    Focusing on her task, the rest of the world slipped away. There was nothing but her, the tiny body beneath her hands, and the monitors that – no matter how hard she wished otherwise – didn’t change. She heard a voice come to here as if from a great distance asking if she needed help. Still she concentrated on those monitors.
    Hoping.
    Praying with every compression that she could bring him back.
    His skin was cool beneath her hands. Each press, meant to deliver oxygenated blood to his brain, only amplified the boy’s dire state. His chest, unstable from the crush injury, gave more than normal. His ribs cracked.
    Bile rushed up the back of her throat.
    Rebecca didn’t stop. If she could just bring him back, he could pull through. Children were resilient – more so than adults. Sweat began to trickle down her back, her temples. Her hands cramped.
    She halted her compressions. “Check his pulse.”
    “Dr. Dahlman.” That distant voice spoke. Closer this time. Gentle and familiar.
    The nurse shook her head. “No pulse.”
    Rebecca wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet. “Epi, push another unit of blood.”
    “Dr. Dahlman.”
    All activity around the patient’s bed came to a halt.
    “What are you all standing around for?” They stared at her like she’d grown a third head. “I gave you an order.”
    “Rebecca,” Nathan said softly. “Call it.”
    When had he arrived? How much time had passed while she was lost to everything except the young life beneath her hands?
    The life she’d failed to save.
    Her shoulders drooped and she blew out a breath. “Time of death six fifty-four p.m.”
     
    * * *
     
    Rebecca leaned against the cool tile wall, swallowing back emotion, desperately trying to compartmentalize what she was feeling and get herself under control. Her knees trembled and not just from the crash as adrenaline left her body. Her breath caught. Her gut twisted. Forcing herself to ignore it, she pushed off the wall.
    Only to be stopped short when Karmen stepped in front of her. “Are you all right?”
    “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” she asked in a shaky voice.
    Karmen had brownish black hair that hung in curls just past her shoulder blades, perfect bow lips Rebecca would have sacrificed a few IQ points for, and large expressive brown eyes. She also had a blunt, in-your-face honesty to be admired. “I don’t know, maybe because you’re ghostly pale and trembling like a newly graduated medical student on the first day of their internship.” She stared at Rebecca for a long moment. “You’ve never taken control like that and done chest compressions. It’s unconventional.”
    She was right. As a doctor, Rebecca normally stepped to the end of the gurney where she could observe everything and shout out orders. Yet today, that hands’ off approach hadn’t felt like enough.
    “Bec? Talk to me, sweetie.”
    “I’m fine,” she replied in a tone designed to stop any argument to the contrary. “I have to go speak with the boy’s fath—”
    “Owen.”
    “What?”
    “His name was Owen. Owen Masters. I could go with you. To speak with the father.”
    “Now who’s being unconventional? No, I can handle it. ”
    Karmen nodded, her brown eyes filled with relief and sympathy.
    Rebecca wiped her palms on her scrub pants, then started down the hall, heading for the family waiting room and the toughest part of her job. She stepped into the room, thankful to discover it was empty except for a bald-headed man sitting in a chair and a uniform officer leaning against the wall ten feet to his right. The seated man had his head