The Sapphire Brooch by Katherine Logan (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

Charlotte hurried back over to the bed, sat in the chair, and put her hand on McCabe’s chest. “Shallow breathing. He said his name is Major McCabe, and now he seems to have lost consciousness.” She pulled off her beard and wiped her face with a towel she’d brought from the car, then removed the wig and shook out her hair.

“Please remain on the line with me until help arrives,” the operator said.

The shrill of an ambulance soon cut through the night. She grabbed the ticket off the hook at the end of the bed and shoved it into her jacket. Very little personal information was written on the ticket, but it would only confuse the police, especially the 1864 date. It was illegal to tamper with evidence, but right now she didn’t care. If she got arrested, she knew where she could find a good lawyer.

“I hear the ambulance,” she told the emergency operator. “The driver should be able to see my headlights.” The ambulance pulled into the parking lot and stopped a short distance from her vehicle. “They’re here. I’m hanging up.”

She disconnected the call as two EMTs rushed over. “Gunshot to the abdomen. Looks like the wound is a couple of days old.”

One of the EMTs checked McCabe’s vital signs, and then looked at his wound. “You’re right. This isn’t recent.” He glanced up at Charlotte. “You found him here? Bed and all.”

She nodded, slowly. “And the chair.”

The EMT shook his head. “Never seen anything like this.” He turned to his buddy. “Tachypneic, tachycardic, and hypotensive. Let’s get this guy into the ambulance. He’ll need a miracle to survive the night.”

They wheeled a gurney next to McCabe then lowered it to the height of the metal bed. As one EMT tossed off the blanket and lifted an edge of the sheet, another slid a trauma transfer board between the sheet and the bed. The first EMT said to the other. “Slide him over on three. One, two, three.”

McCabe groaned but never opened his eyes. The EMTs rolled him to the ambulance and guided the gurney in. While they called into the hospital and started oxygen and an IV, Charlotte sat in her car and called Ken.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“It’s a long story. I’m in the battlefield parking lot right now. I found a gunshot victim and an ambulance is here now. We’ll be leaving for the medical center as soon as they get him hooked up. Will you meet us there?”

“I’m not on call tonight,” Ken said.

Charlotte used a face cleansing cloth and washed her face while they talked. “I need you to do this for me. If he’s going to survive, you’re his best hope.”

“I’m just pulling into my garage. I’ll turn around and meet you there. Where’s he shot?”

“Abdomen.”

“And he’s still alive?”

She threw the cleansing cloth onto the floor and opened another one. “I wouldn’t be calling you if he was dead.”

“Are you going to tell me where you’ve been? You’ve been missing for over thirty-six hours. I found your haversack with a strange-looking box. You met someone, didn’t you?”

“Sure did. A major in the Union Army with a bullet in his abdomen. See you at the hospital.” She hung up in the middle of Ken’s next question.

She hustled over to the ambulance. “How is he?”

One of the EMTs climbed out and closed the rear door. “Not good. We’re taking him to Winchester Medical Center.”

“I’ll follow you,” she said.

Twelve minutes later, she whipped her car into a reserved space in the parking lot at the Winchester Medical Center’s ER entrance and tossed her doctor tag onto the dashboard. If a parking attendant looked close enough, he’d discover the tag was only valid at her hospital in Richmond and would have her car towed. But that was another thing she didn’t care about right now.

Ken pulled into a spot next to her and jumped out. “What the h—”

She pushed him toward the ER entrance. “Patient now. Explanations later.”

He followed the EMTs into the ER, barking orders. “Get him to the trauma bay.”

The EMTs rolled McCabe down the hall and into the first available cubicle. They transferred him quickly to the hospital bed, then the trauma nurses went to work cutting off his shirt and trousers.

One of the nurses held up the bloody shirt. “These look like old-timey clothes. He must have been at the reenactment.”

The other nurse, hooking McCabe to the monitors, said, “I thought safety marshals checked all the weapons. How’d he get shot?”

Ken snapped on a pair of gloves and inspected the wound. “Change his oxygen mask to a one hundred percent non-rebreather and start a second IV. Hang LR and run both wide open. What are his vitals?”

If this had been Charlotte’s hospital she would be working on McCabe, but it wasn’t and she had no privileges here. She resigned herself to standing in the back against the wall. Ken didn’t need her watching over his shoulder.

The adrenaline that had been her constant companion throughout her ordeal was dissipating, leaving her lightheaded and exhausted. Or maybe it was the diet of coffee and hardtack combined with little sleep. She considered a shower, a decent meal, and downtime, but as long as the major fought for his life, she would stay close by.

The ER doc stuck her head in. Ken told her he was attending and he’d call her if he needed help. Nodding, she watched for a minute then left. Technicians hurried in to assist Ken, draw blood and cultures, and take X-rays.

Charlotte’s eyes strayed from the monitors to the shredded, bloody clothes someone was shoving into a bag, to the naked man, modestly draped. He had a V-shaped, ripped, lean torso from his broad shoulders down to a distended abdomen covered with dried blood and reddened with cellulitis. Perfect symmetry and proportion till you got to his belly. Nurse this guy back to health and he might be a classic hunk. Great physique and, based on his friends, he