Read Online The Darkest Hour by Katherine Howell - Free Book Online

eyes wide open and fixed on hers. She checked the oxygen flowmeter. It was as high as it could go. ‘How’re you feeling, James?’
    He shook his head wordlessly.
    Joe barrelled through the crowd with the stretcher and pulled the release handles to drop it to half-height. He slapped the carry sheet out on the footpath next to Kennedy and they gently rolled him onto it, then with help mustered from the onlookers they lifted the sheet onto the stretcher.
    Once inside the ambulance Lauren jammed her stethoscope into her ears and listened to Kennedy’s chest. Breath sounds were down on the left side. She felt her way over the goose-pimpled, pale flesh of his chest and back and found no telltale crackling indicating air under the skin. She checked the position of his larynx. Pneumothorax, probable haemothorax, but not tensioning. Not at this stage.
    ‘Am I dying?’ he gasped.
    ‘Not if I can help it.’
    She felt Kennedy’s eyes follow her every move as she took a quick blood pressure, ran off a strip from the cardiac monitor, and checked his oxygen saturation. She propped his arm against her thigh and searched the cold flesh again for veins. His fingers trembled against her elbow.
    ‘I know I am,’ he said.
    ‘You think I’m going to sit here and let that happen?’
    In the bright light she found a small vein on the back of his right forearm and as Joe accelerated away from the scene she slid the cannula under Kennedy’s skin. She connected up a bag of Hartmann’s and started squeezing the pump chamber, getting the fluid in as fast as she could. She could hear Joe asking Control to tell St Vincent’s they were on their way. She looked into Kennedy’s eyes. ‘Do you know what happened?’
    ‘I was walking.’ He coughed. ‘A man bumped into me. I felt this.’ He waved a hand towards his chest. ‘A burning pain, not too bad. Then warm, from the blood. Somebody tried to give me mouth-to-mouth while I was lying there.’
    ‘You were just walking and a man stabbed you for no reason?’
    Kennedy closed his eyes. ‘I need you to tell my wife something.’
    ‘You’ll be able to tell her yourself at the hospital.’
    He shook his head and coughed. A fine spray of blood appeared on the inside of the oxygen mask. Lauren saw his heart rate increasing on the monitor screen. She squeezed the pump chamber with one hand and smoothed the other over the cold skin of his free arm, feeling for any hint of a vein. He grasped her hand in his. ‘I need you to tell her,’ he puffed. ‘I need you to write it down.’
    At the look in his eyes she nodded. An empty dressing packet lay on the stretcher and she rested it on her knee, pulling her pen from her pocket. ‘Go.’
    She was ready to write
I love you
, but instead he said, ‘When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat.’
    Lauren scribbled the words. ‘When we have run our . . .?’
    ‘Passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat,’ he finished. He was starting to gasp for air.
    Lauren stared at his throat, checking the location of his trachea. A tension pneumothorax would push it to one side as the pressure in his chest built up. It looked central, but the way he was breathing didn’t make her happy. She dropped the paper and pen and reached for her stethoscope.
    It was hard to hear his breath sounds when he was grunting and moaning and Joe still had the siren fired up. Lauren pressed the earpieces deeper into her head and shut her eyes to concentrate. She thought the breath sounds were still present on the left side, but only just. She took a quick BP and found it down to seventy systolic. She caught Joe’s eye in the rear-vision mirror and twirled a finger above her head.
    Kennedy watched her through half-open eyes. ‘What’s that mean?’
    ‘Just asking him to turn the aircon on,’ Lauren lied. She felt the lurch as Joe accelerated harder.
    Kennedy started to cry. ‘I don’t want to die.’
    Lauren smoothed her hand