Sweet Surrender (Club Stratosphere Book 2) Read online

  Liz pulled the sheets back and revealed a large bandage covering Sergeant Lopez’s midsection from nipples to belly button. She adjusted the drainage tube protruding from his left side and checked the intravenous taped to his forearm on the same side. “His spleen ruptured, so they had to remove it, and his ribs on both sides are pretty busted up. Cracks mostly, breaks in the 8th and 9th on the right, and the 10th on the left. That one collapsed the left lung. He’s got contusions from the blast, and the impact afterward.”

  I adjusted the blankets over him to keep the Sergeant from getting cold and then picked up the tablet on the bedside table. A quick scroll through the chart confirmed the details Liz had given me. “Skull fracture?” She nodded and proceeded to detail the extent of Lopez’s head trauma—a deep laceration where a piece of shrapnel had penetrated the back of his helmet, swelling and the facial injuries. The doctors suspected a grade three concussion, but until the patient woke up it would be hard to know for certain how much damage the injury had caused. I tilted my head, acknowledging the information as I typed in a few quick notes on the tablet and then passed it to Liz. She pressed her thumb to the screen, signing off on the transfer. “Thanks,” I said. Liz nodded and exited the room, leaving me to start my patient assessment.

  Chapter Three

  Olivia

  I pulled my gaze from the television monitor hung across from the nurses’ station. Francis, Patty, Lisa and I had been keeping an eye on the local news feed between patient checks and medication rounds. The four of us waited to hear about any further details in the bomb case. What we did know? A major screw up had caused one of our local bomb techs to get blown up. The how’s and why’s were being kept tight under wraps though, and the entire community was on edge.

  Speculation around the attack ran the gamut from random to pre-meditated. No one could figure out what possible reason anyone could have to perpetrate such brutal violence against Sergeant Lopez. All those interviewed who knew him said the bomb technician was well liked throughout the community in his personal and professional lives.

  Footage of the previous day’s incident streamed across the screen as the desk phone began to ring. Francis picked it up, his eyes connecting with mine as he answered. The three other nurses on duty were halfway through their double shifts and had full patient loads. I’d just started my second shift in the ICU, and Sergeant Lopez was under my care once again. The injuries sustained from the blast, and the alleged defective armor he was wearing at the time, were severe and he was expected to be in our department for an undetermined length of time.

  “Liv.” Patty nudged me from behind and I turned as the ICU lounge doors opened to admit a fresh parade of Mission Valley PD’s finest. Uniformed and plain clothed officers had filled the small waiting room since the Sergeant was brought in, a mix of worried and grim expressions on their faces. “We’re going to need to do something about this,” she remarked. “Families for our other patients are having a hard time getting any space for themselves.”

  I glanced at Francis as I made my way around to the front of the desk, a brow quirked in silent question. He nodded, waved me on, and continued to take down details from the person on the other end of the line. My shoes squeaked softly across the linoleum between the nursing station and the entrance to the Intensive Care Unit. Dozens of eyes turned to watch my approach and I sucked in a deep breath.

  A flicker to the left caught my attention and I glanced at the patient monitoring screen. Sergeant Lopez’s vital and stats filled the display, his equipment streaming the data to the ICU’s network. I scanned the details, made note of the important factors and returned my attention to the hallway beyond. A clock hung above the doors ticked off the seconds as I approached the large crowd of MVPD officers and staff. All eyes turned toward me, watching and waiting for the doors to open.

  I made my way out into the hall, stopping mid-way to face the people gathered. Police Chief Decker stood outside the waiting room, his intense gaze boring into me. I ignored him, like I’d disregarded the paging device that buzzed against my left hip each time he pressed the button to summon me the day before. Whatever the Chief wanted, he’d have to wait. The eight patients I was tasked with caring for during staff switches, breaks and lunches took precedence over his demands for an update.

  I glanced over at Sergeant Lopez’s cubicle as I crossed the linoleum. There was nothing to report anyway. My patient remained under heavy sedation, his vitals steady and stable. The same as I’d reported to the Chief on his last visit three hours ago at four o’clock in the morning, and to every other MVPD member who’d come to the doors throughout the previous day and night.

  The chief puffed out his chest, peering down the ridge of his nose at me. “Any news?”

  “No, sir.” I gave him a tight lipped smiled and sucked in a breath. “He’s the same as last time, and the time before that. I came out here for another reason.” He lifted a bushy brow and cocked his head to the right. I had to remind myself to keep calm. Difficult, considering how his pompous attitude and condescending mannerisms over the last 24 hours had rubbed me like coarse grit sandpaper on a second degree sunburn. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask that you cut back on the number of people keeping vigil in the waiting room and hallway. There are other patients in the unit, and their families need a place to be near their loved ones as well. Our waiting room is equipped to handle a maximum of ten people. Please limit the number of staff visiting Sergeant Lopez to five at a time. MVPD is welcome, but we’d appreciate the department’s cooperation in keeping this room accessible to everyone who needs or wants to use it.”

  Before he could get a word out, I turned on my heel and walked away. A smirk tilted the corner of my lips as I headed back into the unit, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum with each step. Francis peered at me over the ledge of nurse’s station, brow cocked in question, and I shot him a discreet thumbs-up. We’d all reached the limits of our patience with the Chief of Police. He held out my tablet as I passed by the desk and I swiped it from his grasp. It was time for rounds and vitals checks.

  ***

  “Is everything okay?” The middle aged woman whose pulse I was checking tilted her head to indicate where my left hip wedged against her bedside. “You’re vibrating like crazy. I can feel it through the mattress.”

  A curse lay on the tip of my tongue but I bit it back and nodded. “Of course it is, Mrs. Whitlaw. Nothing to be concerned with.” I settled her hand back on top of the blankets and made a note of her pulse in the chart. She was being transferred to a regular room on the cardiac unit as soon as the porter arrived to take her up to the sixth floor.

  She studied me for a moment, lips pursed. “It’s about that young police officer in the other room, isn’t it? My daughter mentioned the accident during her visit last night. She said most of the MVPD is out in the lounge.”

  “It is,” I sighed and pressed my thumb to the screen, signing off on her chart. “Chief Decker isn’t thrilled with something I said to him earlier, and I haven’t got time for him. Besides,” I winked at her. “You’re more important than he is.”

  The buzzer went off again and I gave a brief thought to ignoring it, but looked up anyway. An orderly stood outside the doors, waving when I made eye contact with him. I lifted a finger to signal that I’d be there in a minute and turned back to Mrs. Whitlaw. “Your ride is here. I’ll be right back and we’ll get you on your way.”

  Decker glared at me from behind the orderly as I opened the ICU doors and smiled at the hospital staff member. The chief opened his mouth to speak but I silenced him with a glare. “Not now, Chief. It’s shift change in a few minutes and I haven’t got the time to give you a non-existent update, or to deal with whatever bug is up your butt. Like I said earlier, if there’s anything to report, I’ll come tell you. Now stop harassing me and let me focus on what I should be doing—caring for my patients.”

  I turned around, the end of my long auburn braid swinging over my right sho
ulder with the abrupt movement. The soundproof doors slid closed behind me, muffling the Chief’s tirade in the hallway. He had balls, I’d give him that. What he failed to realize was, so did I.

  The orderly followed me into Mrs. Whitlaw’s room, a wide grin on his face. I cocked a brow at him as we approached the glass partition. “What?”

  “You’ve got moxy.” He chuckled and passed me. “He was bitching about the lack of information you’ve been providing when I walked out onto the floor. Everyone in the waiting room and hall can hear him. Hell, I could hear him before the elevator even hit the floor and the doors opened.”

  I shrugged and stepped into the room. “Yeah, well. That’s a him problem. It’s not a me problem.” Mrs. Whitlaw chuckled, clearly aware of who we discussed. I winked at her and introduced the orderly. “Chuck’s going to take you down to your new room. He’ll take excellent care of you.”

  “Okay, dear.” She smiled and patted my hand where it rested on the bed rail. “You’ll come by and visit?”

  I nodded. She was a sweet lady and we’d become fast friends since the first time I’d done rounds the day before. “You betcha, but I won’t be able to stay long today. I’ve got my other job tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep.”

  The orderly motioned for me to take my position on the opposite side of the bed and I grasped the rail. We took great care to move the bed without jostling Mrs. Whitlaw as we exited the ICU and loaded her into the elevator. I stood outside the doors and gave her a small finger wave as they closed.

  A change in the air currents alerted me to the presence of someone behind me. I didn’t need to look to know who stood there. Chief Decker’s angry vibe rolled off him and swarmed over my skin like an angry swarm of bees. I wasn’t one to hate people, but he was nudging me closer to the emotion with each interaction.

  “Breathing down my neck won’t serve any other purpose than annoying me, Chief.” I took a steadying breath and turned to face him. The Chief of Police was a few inches taller than my height of five-foot-seven-inches. Add in the hundred pounds or so he had on me in weight, and the man outstripped me in the presence department. You couldn’t ignore a man that size. Not effectively anyway. “The ICU staff hasn’t changed its stance on waiting room occupancy, and there’s been no change in Sergeant Lopez’s condition in the,” I glanced at the watch strapped to my left wrist. “Last half hour. If anything happens, please trust that one of us will come out and inform you. Until then? Back. Off.”

  He jerked back, almost as if I’d slapped him in the face. Red mottled his cheek, and his chest expanded as the Chief drew in a breath to launch into what I knew was going to be a long winded tirade. I had zero intentions of listening to whatever nonsense he was about to spout and turned on my heel to return to the ICU. The end of my braid thwacked against him as it swung behind me.

  I marched back into the unit and over to the newly vacant bay that had been Mrs. Whitlaw’s home for the last two weeks. The porter would return the bed once the sweet elderly lady was transferred to her new room. I would have to sanitize it and put fresh linens on when that happened. Until then, I set about cleaning up and replenishing those supplies that needed it.

  A strident alarm sounded as I put the last piece of tubing into the supply rack beneath the overhead bedside light. I looked up at the monitor displaying all the ICU patient stats and broke into a run. Patty fell into step beside me as I entered Lopez’s cubicle. She cleared the alarm while I pulled the crash cart over to the bedside. The unconscious man convulsed on the bed, his back bowing up from the mattress as his body fought whatever was going on inside of it.

  Patty pulled the sheets back while I checked for a pulse and counted the patient’s breaths. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he struggled for air and fought the ventilator’s steady pace. The fluttering beneath my fingertips against his carotid artery confirmed what the monitors were blaring at us. Sergeant Lopez was in cardiac arrest.

  The rest of the team ran in as I made a mental note of pulse and heart rate. I traced my fingertips down the patient’s sternum, finding the midpoint, and began compressions while Patty disconnected the ventilator and proceeded to bag breathe for him.

  “Come on.” I kept my eyes glued to the monitor as I continued to rhythmically press on his chest. “Respond, damn it. I’m not giving Decker bad news today.” After a few more compressions, I stopped and ordered everyone to halt their lifesaving measures. All eyes focused on the monitor beside the bed as we waited to see if Lopez responded or if we needed to step up our efforts.

  The cardiac leads on the monitor traced across the screen in a steady beat--once, twice and then fell back into ventricular fibrillation. I cursed beneath my breath and glanced at Judy. She held up an ampoule of epinephrine and I nodded, too busy counting compressions under my breath to give her a verbal response. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she loaded a syringe, checked for bubbles, and injected the medication in Lopez’s central intravenous line.

  I counted—one-one thousand, two-two thousand—watching and waiting for the medication to take effect. Patty squeezed and released the ventilation bag across from me, her hand trembling slightly from the effort.

  “Hold,” Judy called out and I swiveled my gaze to look at the monitor again.

  In the brief seconds I’d taken to glance at Patty, the patient’s heartrate had begun to settle back into a normal rhythm. I pulled back, hands still clasped together in case I needed to resume CPR, and quietly counted each normalizing beat. The four of us stood around the bed, nerves on edge, and waited to see what he’d do next.

  Chapter Four

  Olivia

  My days became a blur over the next few weeks. A solid night’s sleep was a thing of the past as I shuttled between my work at the physiotherapy clinic and the ICU. I’d been officially pulled out of the floater rotation and slotted into Margery’s position when she ended up on bedrest for the remainder of her pregnancy. My bank account was thankful for the extra influx of cash, but my body was having a hard time paying the toll I was demanding of it.

  Two weeks after my first day there, I shuffled into the ICU staff room and dropped my bag into the locker assigned to me. I closed the door and leaned my forehead against the cool metal as a yawn wracked through me.

  “Looks like someone partied hard last night.” Lisa snickered from behind me and I jumped, blinking owlishly at her. “Want me to grab you a Red Bull before you head in for report?”

  I shook my head and scrubbed a hand over my face as I turned to leave the locker room. “I’m good. Worked a double between here and the clinic yesterday, and working a double here today. Sleep is a foreign entity right now.”

  She pulled a face and shook her head. “You need to do something about that, sweets.” Joining me as I exited the room, she wrapped her right arm through my left. “Good news though.”

  “Yeah?” I cocked my left brow and glanced at her. “What’s that?”

  Lisa grinned at me. “He’s awake.”

  There was no need to ask her who “he” was. I knew. “How? When?” She chuckled and I glared. The other nurses refused to deal with Chief Decker in any way. As such, Sergeant John James Lopez had become my responsibility whenever I was on shift, or Lisa’s when I wasn’t there for the chief to pester. We’d begun allowing visitors into his cubicle a few days after his cardiac event, and having listened to the other officers speaking to him, I felt like I knew the man. The warm memories they shared spoke of a man who was sweet, intelligent, funny and incredibly loyal. Everyone, it seemed, loved him. “The doctors weren’t going to wean him off sedation until tomorrow. What changed?”

  “They ran some tests throughout the day yesterday, and decided to wean him off overnight.” She pulled open the door to the report room and motioned for me to precede her inside. “He woke up around four this morning and has been in and out since then. Come on. I’ll give you the full scoop during report.”

  I nodded and moved inside to take my seat in
the group of women I’d grown to call friends over the last two weeks. Lisa handed me a cup of steaming coffee as she took her place beside me. I took a sip, closing my eyes as the properly sweetened and creamed liquid slid down my throat. “You’re an angel,” I whispered.

  She chuckled. “I know.”

  Francis called the room to order and I settled in for the next half hour of vitals, patient progress and setbacks. As the meeting drew to a close, Francis approached me and requested a word in private before I headed out onto the floor. I narrowed my eyes at him and he chuckled softly. “It’s a good thing. I think.”

  “You think?” I smirked and returned to my seat, curious about what he might have to say. “That’s reassuring. Not.”

  He chuckled and plopped down into the chair beside mine. Francis was a pretty big guy, but handled himself with the ease of someone much, much smaller. “Well, depends on how you look at it, I guess.” He pulled an envelope from his left pant leg pocket and offered it to me. Private and Confidential were stamped across it in large red lettering with my name printed in a precise scrawl beneath the crimson ink.

  I tore open the envelope and scanned the letter, my eyes growing wider as I read over each sentence. Finally, I looked up at the charge nurse. “This is for real?” He shrugged, clearly unaware of the letter’s contents, and my gaze dropped to the letter again. “Someone wants to hire me as his private nurse and physiotherapist.” Francis nodded and I took a deep breath. “But... why? I’m pretty sure Decker has the biggest hate-on for me in the history of humankind.”

  “Probably, but the offer doesn’t come from him. That letterhead isn’t MVPDs.” He grinned and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. “But you’re very well spoken of by the officers who’ve been under your care at the clinic. And,” he nudged my left foot with his right one. “Rumor has it, when his estate reps were asking around at the station about who to hire, there wasn’t one cop there who didn’t offer up your name first thing. With the exception of Decker, the vast majority of the MVPD are huge fans of yours, Liv.”