One

Emily Peterson was resting her eyes in the on-call room when the shrill alarm of the red phone pierced her reverie. Twenty-plus hours without sleep had sapped her motivation. Although she knew they would need a doctor to triage the call, she also knew the nurses out front would wake her. Sure enough, a soft knock at the door roused her. Emily blinked and rubbed her eyes.

"Yep," she grunted by way of acknowledgement. She headed for the door.
Sarah Smith, the emergency room's nurse supervisor, and Emily's best friend, filled her in on the way to the phone. "EMS is on the line, Emily. They have an auto versus pedestrian and they're saying all emergency rooms in the city are closed to trauma because of a sixteen-car pile-up on the Trans-Canada south of the city."

Emily swore under her breath. Forest Glen was a small bedroom community, a suburb of St. Rose. They were big enough for a ten-bed hospital, but the emergency room was not equipped for major traumas. And Emily had been counting the minutes until she could head home to her kids. And her bed.

"Doctor Peterson," she said into the phone. It still felt strange, even after ten years in the profession, to call herself a doctor.

"Hey, doc, it's Jake. We've got a nineteen year-old female pedestrian versus bus, alert and oriented, GCS 15, complaining of belly pain. She's also got a compound fracture of her right tib-fib. Hypotensive and tachycardic at one-twenty. She's getting shocky."

Emily's training kicked her into autopilot. "She needs the Grace, Jake," she said, although she knew from the way Sarah was bustling around the trauma room that the ambulance was coming here. No matter what she said.

"Sorry, doc. They're all closed to trauma. This one's yours." the medic replied through static.

"Fine, then,” she said with undisguised irritation. “You have orders for two large-bore IVs, spine precautions, and two of morphine. What's your ETA?"

"We're ten minutes out," Jake said.

"See you in eight," Emily slammed down the phone.

"How the hell can Grace be closed?" she stomped toward the automatic sliding doors which served as both the entrance to the department, and the ambulance bay. Traumas set Emily's teeth on edge, and turned her usually sunny personality sour. Everyone in the department knew to steer clear until they needed to be there.

Emily wound her unruly red curls into a knot and secured it with a rubber band, and donned a disposable gown, goggles, and gloves. She paced furiously, a tiny, fiery ball of nervous energy, and wished desperately for a cigarette.

In seven minutes, by Emily's watch, the ambulance screamed to a halt in front of the hospital. Jake jumped out and yanked open the rear doors. His partner, Roger, sitting beside the stretcher, grabbed the IV bags from their hook on the ceiling and followed the stretcher out. Emily led the way to the trauma room as Roger fired off a report on the patient’s status, and Jake, Roger, Sarah and Emily transferred the patient to the examining table. She was young, pale, and looking terrified, her head clamped between two yellow blocks to stabilize her neck. Blood soaked the sheet covering her legs.

“What’s your name, honey?” Emily asked, placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder as Sarah hung the IV bags from the pole.

“Jackie,” she replied through gritted teeth.

“Jackie, I’m Dr. Peterson,” Emily told her. She rubbed Jackie’s shoulder. “Do you know where you are?”

“I’m at a hospital,” Jackie said.

“What the hell happened here?” Emily looked over at Roger.

He shrugged. “She was waiting outside the arena for some rock band. A bunch of them started chasing a bus that they thought the band was on. Apparently it ran her over.”

Emily turned back to the patient. “Okay, Jackie, we’re going to take good care of you. Now can you tell me, what hurts?” she asked. She flashed a penlight in each of Jackie’s eyes and prodded her forehead and cheekbones gently, looking for broken bones.

“My leg hurts,” Jackie said, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“Yeah, honey, it looks like that’s broken. Can you wiggle your toes? Squeeze my hand? Good. Ok, folks, we’re gonna need CBC, crit, lytes, tox, some films of her head, c-spine, an ultrasound of her belly, and an ortho to look at that leg. And we’d better add another two of morphine.”

Emily’s orders kicked the team into gear and soon the patient was drowsy from the morphine. Monitors beeped and an atmosphere of cautious optimism descended on the trauma room. The leg looked bad, but salvageable, and her xrays showed there were no other broken bones.

“Ok, spine’s clear, let’s get her out of the blocks. Has anyone called her family?” Emily asked. The team rolled the patient, with Emily supporting her head, and Sarah slipped the blocks out.

Sarah said, “I think Jake’s out there on the phone with them now.”

“Good,” Emily glanced through the window in the trauma room door at Jake, who, by the look of his posture, was engaged in a very difficult conversation. Emily knew the feeling. It was a call no one ever wanted to make, no matter how many times you had done it.

As she glanced through the window, a stranger caught her eye. He was walking toward them. He stuck out, partly because he was a stranger, and it was a small hospital in a community where everyone knew everyone else, and partly because he carried himself with an air that instantly angered her. Maybe he looked vaguely familiar. He was tall, with longish hair that brushed the collar of the baggy leather jacket he wore atop faded jeans and black boots. She had the sense that she should know who he was, and that he expected that very thing of everyone he passed. Arrogance, she decided, and took an immediate dislike to him. Sarah saw her gazing out the window and looked to see what she was watching. She gasped.

“Holy crap,” she whistled quietly. Emily looked over at her, eyebrows raised. “That’s Trent Buchanan. What’s he doing here?”

“Who the hell is Trent Buchanan?” Emily asked, looking utterly blank.

Sarah looked at her, open-mouthed. “Where the hell have you been, girl? Uptown? Ring any bells? They have been top forty for years!” Realization dawned on Sarah’s face. “Holy crap,” she said again. “Was it their tour bus that ran her over?”

The door to the trauma room opened and Trent strode in. Emily spun to look at him. That’s what it was, she decided suddenly. Although he was pale and obviously shaken, he looked like a rock star. Chiseled features, maybe a little older, or harder-lived than she, with picture-perfect hair that must have taken hours to make it look like it took no time at all. A button-down cotton shirt over jeans and a studded belt. Eyes that were shocking in their similarity to the colour of a Caribbean sea. Attractive, certainly, stunning in fact, but thoroughly offensive, just by virtue of his presence.

She glanced at Sarah, frozen with her hand on the IV bag, face flushed like a love-struck schoolgirl’s. Emily glared at Sarah and positively growled, “Vitals q ten minutes and two of morphine every hour as needed.” She stomped toward the man and dragged him by the sleeve out the door. The instant it shut behind them, she stopped and turned to face him, deliberately keeping his back to the trauma room so he couldn’t look through the window.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

Surprise and a little hurt flickered on his face for the briefest moment. “I’m Trent…” he started, but she cut him off.

“Let me rephrase that. Where the hell do you get off barging in like that? Are you a relative of that woman in there?” Emily dimly noted that her nose barely came up to his chest, but her disbelief at the man’s audacity had her feeling much bigger.

“N-n-no,” he said hesitantly, suddenly chastened.

“Then you need to get out of here, now.” She started to herd him toward the exit. “You have no business here.”

He stopped and touched Emily’s arm. Despite the tiniest thrill at his touch, she shook his hand off. “Are you responsible for that?” she asked, indicating the girl lying in the trauma room.

“Uhhh…” he stuttered inarticulately, dropping his hands to his sides. “Well, I guess it was our bus. But I wasn’t driving.” His tone was suddenly contrite, and, surprisingly, not defensive.

“I don’t care who was driving right now. What happened?” Her fury dampened somewhat by his obvious remorse, she softened her tone a fraction.

“There was a bunch of kids hanging around for autographs and we just wanted to get to the hotel. I told the driver to step on it. I guess he didn’t see her.” His hand shook as he rubbed his face.

“Well, you and your driver will be speaking to the police. I need to go back in to look after her. You have to leave now.”

She turned to go back into the trauma room, and caught a last glimpse of his slumped back as he headed for the exit, looking for all the world like a defeated man.

Emily surveyed her patient, studiously ignoring Sarah’s incredulous stare. The patient was stable, for the time being, but the leg had to be seen by an orthopedic surgeon, sooner than later. Vaguely aware that Sarah wanted to say something, she bustled about and barked orders. Finally Sarah piped up.

“I can’t believe you just gave Trent Buchanan hell! Heck, I can’t believe Trent Buchanan was here! In this little hospital!” she looked as if she might babble on, but a cold look from Emily cut her off. Sarah may be her best friend, but in the thick of a trauma, Emily was all business, and this was serious business.

“Let’s call Grace again, shall we? This young woman needs to be transferred to an ortho bed.” Emily said, hoping to bring Sarah back to reality.

No such luck. “I love that man!” said Sarah. “I’ve said for years, I’d leave my husband for that man! He is the hottest thing since the firefighter calendars! And a good musician, to boot…” she jabbered.

Emily sat heavily on a stool and rubbed her face wearily with both hands, tangling her fingers in her hair. “No, Sarah, you wouldn’t,” she said, tiredly. “First of all, you’re not married. And that man’s a jerk. His bus just ran this girl over.”

Fatigue hit Emily at that moment, and she left the trauma room, asking Sarah, who was still gushing about Trent Buchanan, to find her in the lounge if anything happened. Thankfully, this Trent had had the sense to leave the building, and she walked, unaccosted, to the break room and crashed on the couch. She closed her eyes.

In what seemed like seconds, but was more like an hour, she felt herself shaken awake. Doug Sheridan, her replacement doctor, had arrived and was looking for a report. She yawned as she walked over to the trauma room to give him a run-down. Jackie was stable, and they were just waiting for word from Grace to transfer her over. A concise blurb on each of the other three patients in the department - a little old lady with dizziness, a boy with infected chicken pox, and a motorcycle-gang type with a superficial knife wound for stitching were Doug’s only other leftovers from Emily’s shift. She grabbed her purse and headed out to her car.