“Good. That’s good.” Nick tugged his hands through his hair. “Wish I could be in there with you and Becca. Hate sitting on the sidelines.”
Shane would’ve felt the same way. “I get it, man. Best thing you can do is just chill out. Becca’s gonna need you—bad—when we’re done. No matter how this shakes out, the woman’s staring down a major release of stress and emotion when it’s over.”
Not that Shane really had to explain this to Nick. They’d both been in enough snafus to be well acquainted with the adrenaline letdown that almost always followed. Experience it enough, you learned how to manage the flow. But hell if it didn’t mow your ass down those first few times, no matter how much you thought you’d prepared for it.
“Yeah,” Nick said.
Worried as the guy was—for Charlie, for Becca, for the whole team given their situation—Shane knew there was something he could do to take a little of the load off Nick’s mind. The apology Shane hadn’t quite been able to pull together the previous night. “Look, man, I wanted to—”
A rattle sounded at the front door, and Marz walked in with Murphy—and another man. Both in full EMT uniform. What the hell? Had Nick and Becca changed their mind about her friend’s partner taking part in this?
“Goddamnit,” Nick bit out, his scowl answering Shane’s question. Nick leaned in Charlie’s room. “Becca? Murphy’s here. Brought company, too.”
“Oh,” she said, rising. She led them up the hallway, and Nick flipped on lights as they went.
Murphy raised his hands in a gesture of mea culpa. “I know what you said. But we’re a package deal. No way to make this happen without Eric,” he said.
Becca turned to Nick and laid a hand on his chest. “It’s okay. I can vouch for him, for both of them. You know I wouldn’t do anything to put Charlie at risk, or any of us.”
Nick’s intense gaze cut from Becca to Eric to Murphy.
Murphy shrugged. “Some lies I’m willing to tell, some I’m not.”
Tense as Shane was over the unexpected newcomer, he totally got the sentiment. No doubt, falling off the grid midshift was going to require some creative storytelling on their part. But lies were the last thing you wanted standing between you and a partner you had to count on day in and day out. Which brought Shane back to the words he owed Nick Rixey. Soon.
For a long moment, Shane looked over the new player in their little drama. Last name Rodriguez, according to the name tag on his shirt. Dark hair and eyes, stocky build, loose stance, made easy eye contact. Despite Murphy’s immediate defensiveness, the guy appeared relatively relaxed, like he had nothing to hide, and like he understood enough about the situation to accept the tension saturating the air around them. Shane’s gut came down on the side of trustworthy.
“Fair enough,” Nick finally said, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Besides, guy was here now. No choice other than to accept it and move forward.
“Jones filled me in,” Eric said. “I have his back in this, and I’m happy to help.” The guy looked from Nick to Becca. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother and what you’re going through.”
“Thank you, Eric. Thanks for being here. No doubt we’ll need you,” she said.
Nick squeezed Becca’s shoulders, and she leaned back against him. “How do you want to start?” he asked.
For the next forty-five minutes, Murphy walked them through the procedure, using a PowerPoint presentation he’d prepared on his laptop, and the four with medical training talked through approaches and responsibilities. They weren’t going to have a lot of time or a lot of space, so going in as prepared as possible was critical to the outcome they all wanted.
Charlie. Back among the living.
But even though their discussion left him feeling like they had a better than average chance of this working, talking could only take them so far.
After changing into scrubs, they loaded Charlie onto a stretcher. Guy was so out of it he didn’t stir a bit as they transferred him, nor as they carried him through the apartment and down the steps to the ambulance parked just outside the back door of Hard Ink.
Together, they got Charlie hooked up to a variety of monitors inside the rig, started him on another course of IV antibiotics, and strapped him down at the chest and thighs to keep him from thrashing about should he unexpectedly wake up mid-procedure. At each step in the process, Shane kept an eye on Becca. But she had her head squarely in the game, and her determination served to reinforce his own.
They all gowned up, scrubbed in, and gloved up, then Murph administered a nerve block intended to preempt pain from the elbow down to the fingertips.
Shane nodded to Nick, standing outside the rig’s back door. Behind him stood Jeremy, Marz, and Beckett, all of their expressions as grim and serious as Shane felt. “All right. Close us in and let’s do this,” Shane said.
The doors clunked shut, enclosing them in the makeshift OR with a patient whose life they’d just saved from the clutches of the Church Gang. No way they were losing Charlie now that they had him back.
It would kill Becca. And it would go a long way toward destroying the team, too. Because something special had happened these past few days. They were becoming a family born of choice rather than blood.
Murphy slid his mask over his mouth and nose. “Okay, lady and gents, we’ve got a guaranteed window of two hours where no one will miss us or the vehicle.”
Shane met the guy’s gaze and nodded. “Lead the way, Doc.”
As Shane and Eric assisted and Becca monitored Charlie’s vitals, Murphy made quick work of prepping the wound. Removing the exposed bone was a slow process accomplished in small millimeter chips using a pair of plierlike bone cutters. Then Shane and Murphy worked together on the delicate skin-grafting procedure. Since they had so little elbow room and wanted to keep the need for anesthetic localized, they’d transplanted the skin they needed for the flap from Charlie’s forearm.
When the whole procedure was done, Shane stared at the repair with more than a little wonder. What they’d done had been clearly illegal, likely unethical, and absolutely necessary—and it had worked.
Now they just had to hope Charlie was strong enough to bounce back from the infection.
They opened up the back of the rig and shared the good news with Nick and Beckett, who didn’t appear to have moved since they’d closed themselves in a good ninety minutes before.
Nick reached up and pulled Becca into his arms. “You did it,” he said against her hair, and she clutched her arms around his neck.
“We all did,” she rasped.
Shane patted her back and smiled, and she turned and hugged him next. “Thank you,” she said.
The gratitude washing off her made Shane feel ten feet tall. “No thanks necessary, Becca.”
While Nick, Beckett, and Becca carefully got Charlie to his room upstairs, Shane hung back and helped Murphy and Eric do a thorough cleanup job on the ambulance. Then they all headed up to the apartment to make sure Charlie was still okay.
As they shared a quiet round of congratulations—Becca’s eyes never leaving her sleeping brother’s face—a call came through on both of the EMTs’ radios. “Perfect timing,” Murphy said with a smile.
Stepping out of Charlie’s room, Nick held out a hand. “We won’t forget what you did for us. Thank you,” he said, shaking both men’s hands. Thanks and good-byes went around, then Murph and Eric left. Not only had the pair proven themselves good friends, but they could be damn important allies as this situation unfolded. And with the authorities and the hospitals off the table, they needed all the help they could get.