Radclyffe - Oath of Honor

Wes stared at Evyn—she was still breathing, but for how long? Ignoring her instincts, ignoring all her training, she ran for the SUV with the president inside and jumped into the back. The doors slammed shut, tires screeched, and they jolted forward. The president was supine on the rear seat, and the duty nurse already had an oxygen mask on his face.

Bracing one arm against the side of the speeding vehicle, Wes dragged the FAT kit closer. “Status?”

“GSW to the leg,” Thompson, the nurse, replied.

“You,” Wes said to the closest agent, pulling gauze from the field trauma kit, “hold this over the wound, press hard.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Get us to the nearest trauma center.” She didn’t wait for an answer. After grabbing a stethoscope, she pushed closer and slid a hand behind the president’s back to check for any wounds she couldn’t see. Nothing else. The leg wound was the only injury, but in that area, if he didn’t bleed out, he could lose his leg. She found an intravenous pack in the kit and tossed it to another agent. “Hold this up.”

“Got it.”

She quickly connected intravenous tubing to the bag, opened the line and let the fluid run down, and clamped it off. With scissors, she cut the president’s coat and shirt sleeve up to the level of his shoulder and wrapped a tourniquet around his arm. As she unwrapped a large-bore intravenous catheter, an agent gripped her wrist.

“I think you can hold up there, Doc.” He grinned. “Dave here is afraid of needles and we wouldn’t want him to faint on us.”

Thompson removed the O2 mask, and the agent playing the president grinned at her. He could pass for Andrew Powell at a distance, but this close, she could see he was younger and a little heavier. “How are you feeling, Mr. President ?”

“I’m doing great, Doc. So are you.” The presidential double pushed up on the seat and swatted at the man holding the compression dressing on his groin. “Let up there, will you? My toes are falling asleep.”

The agent holding the gauze laughed, said something into his microphone, and the vehicle slowed. “Nice work, Doc. We’d be arriving at the trauma center about now with the president stabilized.”

“What about the two we left behind?” Wes asked, thinking of Evyn and the blood running down her throat. Everything in her rebelled against leaving a dying patient in the field.

His grin faded. “They’re not your concern.”

“Understood.” Methodically, Wes packed up her kit, the image of Evyn bleeding to death on the sidewalk burning in her mind. The next time she had to leave her behind might not be an exercise. She wasn’t sure how to square that with her conscience, or her ethics, or her heart.

*

“Nice job, Doc.” Vince, the agent who had assisted Wes during the resuscitation of the “president,” veered off toward the ready room, leaving Wes alone.

“Thanks,” Wes called after him. She headed for the locker room to store her gear. After the exercise had ended, their SUV had turned around and followed the limo back to DC. She hadn’t seen Evyn since she’d left her on the sidewalk, but if Evyn wanted her for anything else, she’d no doubt find her.

The locker room was empty, except for a navy blue polo shirt and khakis folded neatly on a bench in the center of the room. The shower ran in the adjoining room. Those clothes were most likely Evyn’s. She’d seen a few other female agents in the halls, and they’d all been dressed the way Evyn usually was—in jackets and pants. She wanted Evyn’s take on the morning’s scenario, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of the day with the mental image of Evyn bleeding out on the street. She knew it was all a fabrication, but on some instinctual, primitive level, she couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling she’d let her die.

Wes leaned against the lockers and reran the incident again. She’d been doing that all the way back in the SUV while the agents relaxed, cracked jokes, and gossiped. Someone had speculated on where Evyn had spent the night of the storm, noting she’d turned up for work wearing her emergency change of clothes and they hadn’t had an emergency. Wes tried to tune out the good-natured griping about some people having all the luck. If Evyn had spent the night with someone, it was no business of hers. She blocked the chatter the way she did the constant hum of voices during a trauma alert and concentrated on what she had done earlier, and why. She still wasn’t happy with the choice she’d made, despite knowing she’d made the only choice open to her. And would make it again.

“You planning on taking a shower?” Evyn walked in with a white towel wrapped around her torso, covering her to mid-thigh. She pointed to a closet. “In there.”

“No, I’m fine. I wasn’t out there long enough to work up a sweat.”

“I wish I had.” Evyn opened a locker across from the pile of clothes on the bench and stowed a bath kit on the top shelf. “I froze my ass off lying on that sidewalk, and it was wet.”

“And of course, there was the blood.”

“Since it wasn’t real, it wasn’t even warm.” Evyn glanced at Wes over her bare shoulder, loosened the towel, and let it drop to the floor. “You sound a little pissed.”

Wes jerked her gaze up to Evyn’s face, but not before she’d taken in the entire naked panorama of Evyn’s back and backside. Smooth skin, toned muscles, all blending into inviting tanned curves. “Not exactly pissed. Just not sure of the point.”

“I thought the point was obvious—GSW is still the most likely form of assault on POTUS.” Evyn slid black panties from an open nylon bag inside the locker and pulled them on. They were cut high on the sides, accentuating the expanse of honed thigh from hip to knee.

“And do you really think if I’d been briefed beforehand, I would have reacted any differently?” Wes shook her head. “I’m sure you practice that scenario regularly—knowing what is coming—and without the benefit of simulated blood.”

“You’re right—we do. Dozens of times, for months, before we ever ride in a vehicle on PPD.” Evyn grasped the khakis, pulled them on, and slipped the polo shirt over her naked chest. “You haven’t.”

Wes watched. Evyn didn’t seem to mind, and pretending she wasn’t watching would only make her interest even more apparent. Evyn was beautiful and looking at a beautiful woman came naturally. Pretending she didn’t want to would be unnatural, and she wasn’t any good at pretending. That’s what bothered her about the morning. She had done the right thing and her instincts screamed otherwise. “Had it been real, you would have died out there.”

“This is where I say something like, ‘That’s my job. You shouldn’t worry about it.’” Evyn regarded her across the small room. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes, and I respect your bravery.”

Evyn waved her off with a snort and tucked her shirt into her pants. She zipped and buttoned and sat down to fish socks and shoes out of her locker. “It’s not a matter of bravery, it’s a matter of training. When you’ve done it enough times, you don’t think about it. Isn’t that the way it is for you?”

Wes moved down the row of lockers, wanting to see Evyn’s face as they talked. “Yes, that’s exactly how it is for me. Only my training says I don’t leave a seriously injured patient in the field when my attention could make the difference between life and death.”

“You see,” Evyn said lightly, “that’s the whole point. Your training might get in the way, and we can’t let that happen, can we?”

“You’re purposely being obtuse.”

Evyn grinned. “Is that painful? It sounds painful.”

Wes smothered a laugh. Evyn was very, very good at deflecting the conversation from topics that touched on the personal. “Any emergency physician could have handled that situation this morning. And any ER doc—”