“Shit!” Ryker cursed as he grabbed his cell phone and ran.
The berth, which was the area where a ship is moored for loading or discharging cargo, was in flames that were quickly spreading to the area behind the cranes. Soon the whole terminal would be ablaze if this wasn’t put out immediately.
“This is Ryker Faulkner. I have a fire in the third berth of the Shadows Container Terminal and it’s spreading fast,” Ryker yelled into the phone as he ran down the flights of stairs and burst outside.
Ryker didn’t wait for fire trucks as he raced the half-mile toward the fire. He heard the panicked scream and the screams of those losing their lives. Nothing was going to stop him from saving lives this time as he ran past the men working to pump water from the harbor to spray on the blaze.
Ryker ran straight for the flames. The heat licked at his skin as he used his memory to navigate around the equipment. Containers and cargo were on fire. Men and women who had been unloading the ship were screaming. Some were burned. Some were lost in the thick smoke. And some weren’t screaming anymore.
2
“Twenty year old male, gunshot wound to the right thigh,” the EMT rattled off as Kenzie Carys grabbed the board to help move the young man to the gurney. She listened to the report of all his vitals and what had been done so far as she began her exam.
“You bitch!” the man suddenly yelled as he shot up from the hospital bed.
Kenzie jumped back. It wouldn’t be the first time she had been hit in the emergency room and it wouldn’t be the last. People in pain or doped out of their minds on drugs didn’t care who they lashed out at. Most of the time it was verbal, but she’d taken some pretty strong hits before, too. This time, though, it wasn’t aimed at her.
Kenzie saw another young man at the foot of the bed. Her patient reached behind his back and suddenly held a gun in his hand.
Kenzie reacted without thinking. She grabbed the gun, yanking it from her patient’s hand as the EMTs tackled the man at the foot of the bed. The gun skidded across the beige tile floor as a nurse chased after it.
Kenzie’s heart was pounding as security rushed to the scene. Handcuffs were slapped on the man on the ground and on her patient. Guns were confiscated. Cops were called. And it was just another night in the ER.
“That was crazy. Are you okay?” Jen, her best friend and fellow night-shift nurse, asked.
“Yeah,” Kenzie answered even as she felt the tremors of adrenaline shaking her hands.
“It’s three in the morning. Our shift is over. Time to go home, take a bath, and have a drink,” Jen said as they both looked at the clock. Thank goodness! It had been a hellish night. It was summer and a full moon. People did stupid stuff on a regular basis that ended them in the ER over the regular patients. The regulars consisted of heart attacks, pneumonia, basic stitches, broken bones, and so forth. But summer and the full moon got you the traumas. Day drinking on boats and crashing them into other boats. Bar fights. Car accidents. Tons of ATV and motorcycle accidents. Then the strange things like parachuting and landing on a war monument, breaking your leg. And, she’d never get over how many ways people hurt themselves fishing.
“We got a six month old not breathing!” a police officer yelled as he rushed in with an unresponsive baby clutched in his arms.
It didn’t matter that Kenzie and Jen’s shift was over. An emergency was an emergency.
“I’ll get the manual defibrillator,” Jen yelled out as she dropped her purse, calling in code blue.
“What happened?” Kenzie asked as she grabbed the infant a second before a screaming mother and a terrified father rushed in.
The police officer gave her the rundown of what he knew. Kenzie started life-saving treatment as doctors and nurses rushed forward. The officer and the parents seemed to disappear as the medical team worked together.
It seemed like an eternity, but it was only a minute before they heard the first quiet cry. Everyone breathed in relief as the cries grew louder. The little one had choked on spit-up after experiencing severe acid reflux.
“I don’t want to jinx it, but maybe we should sneak out the back door,” Jen said. They both looked like hell. A gang-related gunshot was nothing compared to the emotional punch that a sick or injured infant provided.
Kenzie nodded and grabbed her things from her locker. They always walked to their cars together to be safe, and then Kenzie headed toward North Charleston and Jen headed to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend.
The drive was fast at a quarter to four in the morning. She rolled down her windows, enjoying the warm night air. Kenzie let the audiobook she was listening to pull her into the story as she left downtown Charleston and drove past the shipping ports just north of the city.
There was a bright light in the sky and it took a moment for her to process what she was seeing off in the distance. The shipping ports were so large that most of the time she couldn’t see the coastline, but fire was leaping on the horizon.
The same instinct that had her rushing toward the sick and wounded coming into the ER had her turning her car sharply, busting through the wood arm of the security gate to Faulkner Shipping and flooring her little Honda as she sped straight toward the fire and toward the people she knew had to be injured.
Thick smoke had Kenzie grabbing a water bottle and pouring it over the workout shirt that was in the trunk of her car. She tied it around her nose and mouth and then got to work. She had medical supplies in the car along with water she’d just bought at the store that afternoon before her shift. She grabbed them all and ran toward the fire.
There were people lying on the concrete and others propped up against large metal containers. “I’m a nurse, where are you hurt?”
A man with black soot covering his face looked up at her. “My arm is burnt.”
Kenzie was in triage mode as she went from person to person assessing their injuries. In the distance, sirens sounded and she knew backup was coming, although as the fire raged closer, she worried about more injuries.
“Listen up! We’re going to be moving. Leave everyone I have against this black container for EMTs. For those who can move, please help people from this group move to the yellow container down there. If you have no injuries, move on to that blue container just a couple down from the yellow. That way EMTs will know who to treat first,” Kenzie yelled.
People began to move and then the smoke began to shimmer. Kenzie thought it was smoke being moved by a breeze, but then a tall man stumbled forward with a body over his shoulder. He laid the man down and then turned around and disappeared back into the smoke.
“Sir!” Kenzie yelled after him.
The man lying on the ground was coughing as Kenzie poured some water over his face and wiped his eyes clean. “Are you hurt?”
“Busted leg. He saved me. He saved the others, too, but the fire was so close. He said he would come back for me and he did. You have to save him. He went back in for Donnie,” the man said between coughing fits. Then she heard the sound of something heavy collapsing somewhere in the depths of the fire.
Kenzie looked down at the man and then at the smoke. “Okay, let’s get you to safety first.”
Kenzie was the average height of five feet four inches tall. She was athletic and strong from her work moving patients, but none of that mattered when she was trying to pull a 250-pound man with a broken leg.