The hospital looked like a warzone.
It wasn’t the first hospital Carl had seen almost destroyed. Just like overseas, the people who worked the hospital were rushing around everywhere. They looked like ants from a distance.
Carl’s curse slipped out before he could stop it.
The new ER, built just in the last ten years, was almost leveled. Only the back third of the emergency department annex still stood. He hoped to high heaven no one had been in the front part of the emergency department when the storm had hit. But that was probably a foolish wish.
There had to have been people in there. Patients, staff, someone.
People had no doubt died there today.
Jimmy had woken twice on the long drive to the hospital, screaming for his daddy. His mother had died three years ago from complications from MS. It was just Jimmy, a teenaged sister, a younger sister, and their father.
Dayton Martin was a good man. Carl had long admired how hard the man worked as the principal of Jason’s school.
He prayed the other man and his daughters were safe. Somewhere.
No doubt Dayton was out there somewhere, looking for his son. Carl would take the boys to the hospital, and then he’d have someone find Jimmy’s father.
The boy needed his father with him right now.
He yanked the car into the parking lot—what remained of it.
There were men and women setting up canvas tents in the parking lot already.
Wearing camouflage. No doubt the armory had sent over who they could spare.
Those tents were going to become makeshift exam bays.
Carl was first out of the car, yanking the backdoor open.
There was a man, a soldier, running nearby.
Carl stepped into his path. “Please! I need help! I can’t carry him by myself.”
The man stopped.
Together, they got Jimmy and Jason to the line. People with blood and injuries were everywhere.
The soldier next to him called to another, a woman, nearby. “Petra! I got a pre-teen, impalement. Move him to the front of the line. Now!”
The man moved mountains for Jimmy in the next few moments, until Jimmy and Jason were being ushered into a tent with the COM of the hospital and his little redheaded wife.
Carl had never been so happy to see someone he recognized in his life. He and Rafe Holden-Deane had butted heads more times than they had agreed. But the man was a damned fine physician, trained in both trauma care and pediatrics. He’d earned himself a fine reputation in worldwide venues, even Djibouti, Africa, where the man had almost died in a bombing of a hospital.
Rafe had been dug out of the rubble, then gone on to run the hospital for the next two weeks, until UN help could arrive to relieve him.
Rafe Holden-Deane knew what he was doing. Of that, Carl had no doubts.
He had hired the man, after all.
He’d also been instrumental in hiring Rafe Holden-Deane’s identical twin brother. That brother had earned his stripes in an army hospital halfway across the globe and was just as good a physician as his brother.
Those two could get their hospitals through anything.
Dr. Holden-Deane was already leaning over Jimmy, as his wife started cutting off the mud-soaked clothing. She looked at Carl. “Deputy Mayor Buchanan, Dr. Henedy, and Cherise, our nursing supervisor, are waiting in the tent next door to take a look at this young man. Or Lacy Deane and Courtney are, to the other side of us.”
No nonsense, that one. Thank heaven.
“We’ll be with Dr. Deane.” She might only be a resident or a fellow—he never kept up with the young ones—but she had a reputation already. One that was a thousand times more promising than Wallace Henedy’s. Carl would never willingly let that man look at his grandson. He’d not even let Wallace look at Brutus, Jason’s hamster. Carl put one hand on Jason’s shoulder and led him to the next tent over.
Jason balked, not wanting to leave Jimmy. Dr. Holden-Deane’s wife solved the problem with a promise. She’d keep Jason updated every chance she could. But for now, his friend needed him to get taken care of, too. Because Jimmy was going to need him later.