Nanny for the Army Rangers by Krista Wolf
Two
LIAM
“Quick, turn right!”
Duncan jerked the wheel so fast it felt like we might go up on two tires. Which, considering the way he drove, was not entirely impossible.
“Come on man, you’re losing sight of it!”
The ambulance had turned way ahead of us, a few blocks up. I wasn’t sure how far Southampton hospital was, but that’s definitely what the emergency vehicle had written all over the side.
“Will you shut up already?” Julius snapped from the back seat. “He knows where he’s going!”
“Yes, but—”
“Besides,” Julius interjected, “we shouldn’t go any faster. We’ve got kids in the car, remember?”
I glanced into the back seat, where Jace and Courtney were sitting quietly. They looked more disappointed than upset, especially since we’d left so quickly. Jace looked more rattled by missing the sea lion show than he did from his near-death experience.
Near-death. Holy fucking shit!
I couldn’t believe how lucky we were, or how careless we’d been! Jace could’ve been killed, or at least very seriously hurt. It had all happened so fast! The whole thing, occurring within the span of just seconds…
If that woman didn’t happen to be there…
I shuddered to even thinkabout completing the thought. And yet that woman had been there. That amazing, awesome, lightning-fast woman with just enough maternal instinct to prevent an unthinkable tragedy.
“Two seconds,” Duncan muttered to himself. “We looked away from him for two seconds.”
“Two seconds is all it takes,” Julius grunted.
“You weren’t even there,” I shot back. “You were getting hot dogs.”
My friend grunted again, unwilling or maybe even unable to defend himself as he sat between the kids. Courtney was just about asleep. Jace had gone on to entertain himself by fidgeting with the buckles of his childseat’s harness.
At least he’s okay,I thought to myself. He won’t even remember this.
But my God, I sure as hell would.
“He ran so fast,” I murmured. “I mean one second we were tickling Courtney, and the next…”
The next Jace was flying through the open part of the railing, spinning off into the emptiness on one side of the concrete bleachers.
And then she was flying there right alongside him.
Thank GOD.
The woman had fallen, twisting her body to protect Jace as they fell. She’d hit the concrete with a THUD I would never forget for as long as I lived, and then suddenly Duncan was pulling Jace from her protective grip. The crowd formed quickly, as we did everything we could to keep her conscious. But the landing had knocked the wind from her lungs. Unable to breathe, and still woozy from possibly hitting her head, she’d passed out in my arms.
From there it was five minutes of pure chaos, as Julius returned from the upstairs snack area. He’d dropped the tray of hot dogs and sprinted in, as I slipped my leather jacket beneath her head to keep it off the cold concrete. But before any of us could do CPR, the ambulance crew was already there. A full two sets of EMT’s materialized out of nowhere, working together to get her strapped to a gurney and taken away.
“There! It’s pulling in!”
We followed the ambulance straight down the emergency ramp, where we were quickly waved away. Two security officers pointed us in the direction of the civilian parking area, and within minutes we were at the emergency room desk, dragging the kids in tow.
“There’s this woman you just brought in,” breathed Duncan hurriedly. “She… she saved our son from—”
“Name?”
“What?”
“Do you know her name?” the receptionist asked again.
“Well… no, but—”
“Best to sit down and wait then,” she said. “We’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we can.”
Twenty minutes passed. An hour. After ninety minutes it was dark outside, and the emergency room only grew thicker with new arrivals. Not far to our left, a woman with grey hair and bloodshot eyes coughed for the sixteenth time.
“I don’t like this,” I growled.
“None of us do,” sighed Julius. He sat as far from the other patients as possible, his arms wrapped protectively around a very drowsy Jace. “But it is what it is.”
“Go ask at the desk again,” I pleaded. “Maybe they—”
“I’ve asked three times already,” he complained. “Duncan twice. They’re getting sick of us. Maybe it’s your turn.”
Duncan nodded his agreement, then put his arms out for Courtney. The little blonde angel had fallen asleep on my shoulder almost immediately after we got here.
I passed our daughter off and approached the desk. This time there was a different person behind it; a man about half the age of the other receptionist.
“Look, I know who you’re waiting for and we just got word. The woman from the aquarium is okay. She’s stable but the doctors aren’t through examining her yet. Right now she’s being moved to a room, so she’s staying the night.”
I frowned miserably. “Can we at least see her? Maybe just for a minute or—”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been told she’s resting.”
The man paused, looking me up and down. When he spoke again his voice was softer, more pitying.
“Look, there’s really nothing you can do tonight. Why don’t you come back in the morning when everyone’s rested? You can see her then.”
I turned around, and almost on cue the old woman coughed again. This time around the man sitting beside her coughed also... without covering his mouth.
Shit.
Duncan and Julius looked tired, and the kids were exhausted at best. At worst, we were all catching a bunch of gnarly new germs. The guy behind the counter was right, there was nothing more we could do tonight. As much as we wanted to see and thank our quick-acting heroine, staying here any longer would just make things worse.
“Alright, we’ll head home,” I agreed, reaching for one of the pens sticking out of a cup on his desk. “One more thing, though. Can you give me her name?”
The man behind the counter’s expression went abruptly awkward. “I’m… afraid we can’t do that either.”
I scowled. “Why not?”
“HIPAA regulations. Patient privacy rules, and—”
“Fine,” I snarled, more angry at the rules than at the receptionist himself. “What time are visiting hours tomorrow?”
“They start at eight O’clock.”
I shoved the writing implement back into the receptionist’s cup so hard it fell over, spilling pens everywhere.
“See ya then.”