The ambulance screeched to a halt and the back doors were wrenched open by a woman and a man, both wearing blue medical scrubs. The woman was blonde and small in stature, her fair skin standing in deep contrast to her navy blue uniform. The man was tall and rail thin with dark skin, brown hair, and chocolate colored eyes.
"What have we got?" the man asked, gripping the stretcher and rolling it out of the ambulance.
I held the belt tight with my right hand, holding Ranger's hand tightly in my left. His hand was limp and cool to the touch. I shuffled out of the ambulance and alongside the stretcher.
"Male bombing victim, name Ricardo Carlos Manoso. 34 years of age," said the EMT, dropping the stretcher's wheels. "Significant blood loss from the femoral artery. Serious shrapnel injury to lower extremities and possible head injury. Pupils are unevenly dilated. This guy needs an immediate blood transfusion."
The man and woman quickly studied Ranger's lifeless body, noticing the oxygen mask over his mouth and the belt I was holding around his leg.
"Move!" the small woman shouted, gripping the bed and shoving it toward the door.
More medical professionals in blue scrubs appeared, and I realized the dock where we were unloading was flooded with people and equipment. They were preparing for more victims to arrive. Another ambulance pulled up, and several of the doctors and nurses ran to its rear doors.
The hospital was a red brick structure. The ambulance unloading dock was in a horseshoe shaped area, surrounded on three sides by brick building. Two automatic glass sliding doors led into the emergency area.
The ambulance we had arrived in raced back onto the street, presumably to go retrieve more victims.
The man and woman pushed Ranger at a run, and I scrambled to keep up and keep tension on the belt. We raced through the glass doors into a sterile, white hallway lined by medical equipment. As we ran, we picked up other medical personnel. The blonde woman barked information and orders, but I couldn't focus on any of it. Instead, I tried to focus on holding the belt. We ran flat out, pushing through a set of light colored wood double doors, then through another door marked "Trauma 3".
The room was also sterile white and filled with medical equipment. The room was brightly lit and filled with people.
A man took the belt in his hand, holding it tight. The blonde nurse had begun cutting off Ranger's clothing, and out of instinct, I ripped his cell phone off his belt and pocketed it. My phone, earbud, and all my equipment was laying on the ground at Centennial Park.
A woman with caramel skin, dark eyes, and dark hair took me by the arm and pulled me to the side.
"You're going to need to wait in the waiting room, ma'am," she announced.
I felt my eyes go wide with fear. "No, I can't leave him…" I explained frantically.
I saw a nurse starting an IV in Ranger's arm, and another holding bags of blood.
"Ma'am, you need to let us do our job. There's paperwork at the front desk you need to fill out. Make sure to grab the clipboard labeled 'Trauma 3'. We'll give you an update as quickly as we can, but we've got to get him stable enough to go into surgery" she said apologetically, shoving me towards and out the trauma room door.
I stood in the hall looking in through the glass in the door, watching them hook Ranger up to tubes and shove tubes down his throat. I hated to stand and watch, but I was frozen in this place. I couldn't move. My body felt as if it was made of lead.
People buzzed around me, and bombing victims were carted through the hallway and into other trauma rooms, their cries cutting through me like glass.
Something drew my attention away from Ranger, and I realized his phone was vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out to check the readout. Tank.
I answered the phone on the fourth ring, raising it to my ear.
"Tank?" I croaked in an almost whisper.
"Bomber, you alright?" Tank asked, not sounding like his calm and collected self.
I sat in silence on the line. Tears were threatening to fall from my eyes, and it felt like I had a softball lodged in my throat. My breathing was erratic, and it felt like someone was standing on my chest.
"Steph?" he asked. "Talk to me."
"I'm alive," I whispered. "Ranger…. He…"
I couldn't finish. I let out a choked sob, and I could hear Tank swear on the other end of the line.
"I'm on my way," he said, disconnecting.
I stood watching the nurses and doctors work. Eventually, a small, older woman took me by the elbow and addressed me. She was wearing a red sweater with blue jeans and brown loafers. She had steely grey hair cut into a sharp pixie cut, and her green eyes were assessing. She had a large name badge that read "Susan, Volunteer, Emery University Medical Center".
"My name is Susan," she announced with a thick Southern drawl. "Dear, I need you to come with me. You can't be out here."
I wanted to resist, but I felt like an observer outside my own body. She kept hold of my elbow, placing her other hand on the small of my back and guiding me through long hallways to a waiting room that was full of people. Some of the people's eyes drifted to me, staring.
To my surprise, she didn't stop in the waiting room. Instead, she shuffled me into another carpeted hallway and into a small room marked "Women".
The bathroom was sterile white with three stalls and two sink basins. The sink was tan granite, and the stall doors were tan. There was a small bench in the bathroom, which she directed me to sit on.
I closed my eyes, letting my chin fall to my chest. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it only grew. I tried to focus on taking slow, steady breaths. I tried to focus on happy thoughts of Ranger. His strong, warm arms. His velvet voice. His amused smirk. The way he put his hand at the small of my back. The way he brushed soft kisses across my lips and face.
As I sat, I realized the woman was washing my arms. I opened my eyes. The woman had put on medical gloves, and she was using warm, soapy paper towels to wipe down my blood-covered arms.
I hadn't even realized I was bloody. I did a quick self-assessment. My pants were covered in dried, caked blood. Ranger's blood. My windbreaker sleeves had been pushed above my elbows, and my arms and windbreaker were covered in the blood. One of my pants legs had been ripped in several places.
I heard someone sob and realized too late that it was me.
"Shhhh…." Susan cooed. "You're going to be alright, honey. I want to clean you up to make sure you don't have any injuries that need tendin' to," she explained.
"You don't have to…." I tried to protest, but she cut me off.
"Honey, I was a nurse for forty-one years before I retired two years ago. I may not be workin' in the trauma rooms anymore, but I've still got some skills left," she said, giving me a small smile. "Volunteer, my foot."
Susan finished washing my hands and arms before addressing my face. She got a clean paper towel and began working. I felt a stinging pain, and I winced. I chanced a look at the mirror, then hesitated. I had a cut running through my left eyebrow, and blood had trickled down onto my face and neck. In the chaos following the bomb, I hadn't even realized I had been injured.
"I think this will be okay," Susan said softly, "but some stitches would help the wound heal more cleanly with less scarring."
I shook my head no, and she proceeded with her work.
"You're a tough one," she said with a small smile. She helped me out of my bloody windbreaker and held it towards the trash can. I nodded approval, and she tossed it.
"Do you mind taking out your hair elastic?" she asked, her fingers at my scalp.
I latched my finger in the elastic and pulled it out. Susan tipped my head forward and separated my hair in several places, examining my scalp.
"Oh honey, you must have hit your head real hard," she said with concern. "You've got some pretty serious abrasions on the back of your head, but it's hard to tell much with all the dried blood. Do you have a headache? Do you feel dizzy?"
My head was throbbing, but I didn't want to fool with medical treatment. There were lots of people who needed help worse than I did, so I shook my head "no". I needed to get back to Ranger. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and sat quietly on the bench, feeling her assessing eyes on my body.
"Unfortunately we can't do much about your pants, but at least we cleaned you up a little," she said, smoothing a stray curl behind my ear. "Can I get you some water?"
I shook my head no again, and she sighed audibly.
"Well, please let me know if there's anything else I can do for you, hun. Again, my name is Susan. I'll be around all day. Let's get you back out to the waiting room so you can fill out paperwork for your friend."
She took my hand and hoisted me to my feet, leading me out the door and back into the waiting room. She sat me in a navy plastic chair by a window, then crossed to the patient registration desk. She returned moments later with a clipboard filled with paperwork.
"Fill out the top sheet first and return it to the desk. It's got the most important information on it. The other pieces may take more time to complete," she said, handing me the clipboard with a pen dangling from an attached string. "If you don't know some of the answers, leave them blank. We can deal with those later if necessary."
My eyes met hers and held.
"Thank you," I said on a whisper, the words catching painfully in my throat.
"Of course, dear," she responded, cupping my face in her hand and rubbing her thumb across my cheek. "If I can do anything else for you, let me know. The hospital is working to get grief counselors set up in the conference rooms down the hall. If you need to talk, you can stop in later. There's no charge for the service."
And with that, she was gone.
I sat in the plastic chair near the window trying to fill out the paperwork, but my hands were trembling so badly, I couldn't hold the pen. My adrenaline had burned off, and my body was struggling to adapt. I was shivering, and it felt like ice was running through my veins. I struggled to two-hand the pen and fill out the information requested on the front sheet.
I wrote in Ranger's given name, his address on Haywood, and his birthdate. I completed a brief section about his medical history and family history, but most of the boxes I had to mark "unknown". The form asked for two emergency contacts, and I was unsure who to write. On the first line, I decided to write "Pierre King, a.k.a. Tank". I pulled out Ranger's cell phone and looked up Tank's phone number, writing it on the line. On the second line, I wrote "Stephanie Plum", scrawling my phone number on the line before crossing it out to write Ranger's number.
I returned the form to the woman working at the desk. She was middle aged with light brown hair, wearing a white v-neck nurses uniform with white tights and white clog-style shoes. She marked something on the paper and thanked me.
I chanced a look at the clock. It read 8:16 AM. It had been just over an hour since the bomb had gone off at Centennial Park. It felt like a lifetime had passed.
I stepped into a corner and searched through the contacts on Ranger's phone until I found "Rangeman Atlanta Control Room". I hit dial and waited.
A stern voice answered. "Report."
"This is Stephanie," I said, trying to sound collected and calm. "I'm with Ranger at Emory University Medical Center. He's in a trauma room, they were going to try to get him into surgery."
Silence. The person at the end of the line said nothing.
"I just thought you should know," I said, my voice cracking before disconnecting unceremoniously.
There still weren't any Rangemen at the hospital. I assumed all available personnel were needed at the park. I was alone in a strange hospital in a strange town, and all I felt was terror.
I turned to cross back to my chair and ran directly into a mountain of a man. I began to fall backwards, and he grabbed me, pulling me close.
The man was tall and broad with messy blonde hair that cried 'surfer'. His grey t-shirt advertising Corona beer was painted onto his toned body, and his loose fit jeans were worn and soft. He was wearing brown biker boots and a soft, worn brown leather jacket. He had a brown leather messenger bag slung across his body. He held me at arm's length, doing a quick once-over of my body before pulling me in close again.
I exhaled the breath I had been holding and drooped in his arms, letting the tears fall that I'd been holding back.
It was Diesel.