Thrown Out at Midnight, I Saved a General by Dawn novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: I Know What That Is

She stabilizes the general at dawn while a text calls her a fraud; he says he will hire the fraud and his hand closes on her wrist.

"You know what that is," the ER doctor said. "Then say it, because it's the fourth hospital this month that hasn't."

I knelt by the gurney and took the man's wrist.

His pulse was fast and thready, and his skin was cold to the elbow.

"It's a nerve toxin that wastes the myelin from the hands inward," I said. "The lungs go last. He's at the lungs."

"There's no named toxin that does that," the doctor said.

"There's an unnamed one. I need two drugs from your pharmacy and a nurse who doesn't ask me for ID."

The aide gripped the gurney rail until his knuckles went white.

"Who are you?"

"A neurologist." I pushed the word out, and it was almost true. "My mother died of this when I was nine. I've read every paper she published."

"Sir," the aide said to the man on the gurney, "I don't know her."

The general turned his head.

His eyes were gray and clear, and they landed on my face and held there.

"Let her," he said. His voice was a rasp. "Whatever she needs."

The doctor looked at him and then at me.

"If he codes on this, it's on you," he said.

"If he codes without it, it's on you."

He swore and went to the pharmacy window himself.

I wrote the orders on the back of my hospital ID sleeve because nobody had given me a pen.

The first drug went in through the line at 6:14, slow, with my hand on the pump.

The second drug went in twelve minutes after that, and I watched the monitor and not his face.

His oxygen saturation sat at 84 for a long time.

The aide stood beside me and counted every breath out loud under his own.

"Come on," I said, to nobody. "Come on."

At 6:41 it moved to 87.

At 6:52 it was 93, and his chest, which had been fluttering, rose all the way and fell all the way.

The color came back into his mouth.

The doctor stood at the foot of the bed with his arms folded and did not say a word.

I realized my legs were shaking.

I had walked all night and not eaten since noon the day before, and I sat down on the rolling stool because it was the nearest thing.

"Dr. Kincaid?" a nurse said from the curtain.

I stood up fast.

"Dr. Kincaid, there's an urgent message for the attending on this case. It's from Carver Memorial."

The doctor took the tablet from her and read it.

His face changed.

"It says you're under investigation for falsifying a patient record," he said. "It says you were removed from the hospital tonight and are not licensed to treat anyone in this state until a review. It says you're a danger."

The aide shifted his weight toward me.

I could not make myself speak.

I could hear my stepmother's voice saying you will not work in this state, and I understood that she had meant it and that she had been fast.

"It's a lie," I said. "I was kicked out of my house six hours ago for refusing to lie about something else. I can tell you where I was every minute of last night."

"You can tell me," the doctor said. "A review board will want paper."

"Then let me finish the infusion first," I said. "Another forty minutes, and then you can call whoever you like."

He looked at the monitor.

He looked at the numbers, which were steady for the first time all morning.

He did not say yes.

"Read it again," the man in the bed said.

We all turned.

He had pushed himself up on one elbow, and the aide jumped to help him and was waved off.

"The message," the general said. "Read me the part about the fraud."

The doctor read it out.

The general listened to the end.

"She's been up all night and walked in off the street with no ID," he said. "She told a room of strangers exactly what's killing me. Not one of the six specialists who billed me for this year did that."

"Sir, the board," the doctor said.

"The board can call my office."

He looked at me then, steadily, and I saw that he was much younger than his voice.

Forty-three, maybe, with dark hair going gray at the temples and a jaw held tight, as it had been all year.

"Then I'll hire the fraud," he said.

"You don't know my name."

"Tell me."

"Tessa Kincaid."

"General Ansel Rourke," he said. "Doctor Kincaid, how long until I can feel my hands?"

"I don't know that you will."

"Try."

I took his left hand in both of mine and pressed my thumbs into the base of the palm, where the nerve should answer first.

Nothing.

I pressed again, harder, and held my breath.

His fingers, which had been curled into the cold shape of a claw, moved.

Slowly they straightened, and closed around my wrist.

His grip was weak and it was warm, and it was the first thing he had held in months.

The aide made a sound I had never heard a soldier make.

"Stay with me," Ansel Rourke said.

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