Shielding Instinct, page 4
Did Cooper need something from her?
She shifted around to see how Hawkeye would respond to this, perhaps giving her an explanation.
Hawkeye’s gaze traveled from his dog to her. “You’re awake.” He stalled as she caught his gaze, and she watched as the man, without actually moving, shifted in front of her.
His demeanor had changed from bored and relaxed to something else.
“Will you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you smile for me?”
By habit, Petra let her lips slide down her face into a frown, melting her features. She’d practiced this look in the mirror. It wasn’t necessarily a frown. It was just letting her facial features go lax. It was her response when men told her to smile. Though clichéd, it happened with alarming regularity. Probably because her resting face was once described to her as “schoolmarm.” Not that she knew exactly what was meant by that, but it seemed to make people—men—uncomfortable. Men preferred to be smiled at and fawned over. She couldn’t believe an Iniquus guy—on the clock and in uniform—would be so gross.
“Shit.” Hawkeye’s response was formed on the exhale, but Petra had always had exceptional hearing, too good at times, and she’d heard it clearly.
So good, she thought, Hawkeye got her message; she wasn’t the smile-on-demand kind of woman.
He reached up and pressed the attendant’s light overhead.
There was a ping, and the flight attendant rounded the corner.
“I believe we have a medical issue,” he told her quietly, then turned back to look at Petra.
Petra stilled. What?
The attendant leaned in for a moment, then squatted in the bulkhead’s extra space.
“Could you smile for me, please?” She, too, changed her tone.
Petra, without any context to rest a thought on, was lost. “What?”
“Are you wearing a medical alert bracelet or necklace?” The attendant asked and, from her crouch, held her hand in the air, making some kind of signal.
Just waking up from a deep, medicated sleep, Petra was confused at that moment. As was sometimes the case under stress, there was a lag as Petra processed the words. She knew each word as an individual word. Her brain was slow in lining them up to form a meaning.
Maybe they thought that her grogginess from the meds was in some way concerning.
Petra scanned down her body. She wasn’t leaking anything from anywhere—no drool or snot. No blood. Why would they think she was having a medical emergency?
She looked at Hawkeye blankly as her mind raced, searching for a reason that explained his shift to professional calm. Professional calm was a different beast than regular calm. It had an accent of hyperawareness, a priming of the body that—while held loose and comfortable so as not to expend precious energy until it was needed—was still ready to dive off the X. She’d seen it in theater with the soldiers all the time.
And it usually signaled something very bad on the horizon.
Another attendant arrived with a medical kit, setting it down by Hawkeye’s booted feet, then leaned in to see what was going on. “Oh!” She sipped the word into her body with surprise.
Not helpful. Not informative. But obviously, all three of the people crowding around her agreed that something was wrong with her.
Petra felt fine.
Normal.
And also scared.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Petra whispered.
Hawkeye pulled his phone from a thigh pocket and opened the camera app. He held it up to her face. “I’m concerned about your pupil,” he explained.
Well, lo and behold, what in the actual hell was going on with her eye?
“You’re a doctor?” the attendant asked.
“I was trained as a medic in the military,” Hawkeye replied as he unzipped his thigh pocket and pulled out a first-aid kit.
“Flight attendants, take your seats for approach,” the pilot said over the intercom.
Petra kept staring into the camera. One eye looked perfectly normal. In the other eye, her iris was hidden behind her pupil. Her pupil had never been this large before, and the difference from right side to left had to be significant. Frightening.
Hawkeye pulled a penlight from his medical kit and held it up, asking for her permission.
“Sure,” she said on an exhale.
Flicking the light across her right eye and then her left, he announced, “Unilateral pupillary responsiveness.” He turned to catch the attendant’s gaze. “I think we need to treat this as a medical emergency. Could you let the pilot know?”
The standing attendant took off toward the front of the plane.
“Do you have a history of strokes?” Hawkeye asked.
“Strokes?” Was that what this was? Is this how it felt to have a stroke? Because Petra felt fine?
“Could you smile for me?” This time, with context, Petra understood that Hawkeye wasn’t a cad but someone moving through stroke protocol FAST – face, arms, speech, time.
This time, she did as was asked.
“Beautiful. Nice and even. Okay, scrunch up your face like the worst sour thing you ever ate. Okay, good. Grab my hands and squeeze. Pull me. Push me. You’re very strong.”
“Yes,” she whispered. Should she tell them that her arm had gone numb? It was mostly back to normal. Still a little tingly, but her fingers were warmer.
“Bilateral strength,” he said.
“Yes.” She turned her attention to the window. Below them, Petra saw a row of emergency vehicles racing forward. Those would be for her.
This felt ridiculous.
Did she feel like she was having a stroke?
What did it feel like to have a stroke?
Her arm was waking up and was painful with pins and needles. Was that what a stroke felt like?
It was the opposite arm to her weird eyeball. Was that important?
“Ladies and gentlemen, one of our passengers is experiencing a medical emergency. Before taxiing to our gate, we will be landing near emergency services so that the professionals can handle the situation. We ask that everyone remain seated with seat belts in place.
We ask that you respect this situation – a human having a challenging experience – and honor that by affording them privacy. Please refrain from taking pictures or videos. Flight attendants strap in for the landing.”
Pictures or videos…
When paramedics show up at the scene of an emergency, one of the first things they did was to cut the patient’s clothes off. They did it to check for unnoticed bleeds or injuries, but also to make the patient’s body accessible to whatever medical intervention might need to take place once they arrive in the emergency department.
Everyone was going to see her like that, lying on a gurney. Just a moment ago, she was going to ask Hawkeye on a date, and now he was going to see her stretched out like that.
Like an emergency.
Like a problem.
It was crazy. She felt fine.
This seemed like a movie scene to Petra, like she could get up, have a lunch break, then head back when the director called out, “Places, everybody!”
As the plane landed with a bump and rolled down to what was obviously the emergency area with rescue vehicles’ lights flashing and sirens blaring, Petra could not believe they were there for her.
For her.
She knew today was destined for the crapper.
And oddly, since this was about to go viral with people sending out videos despite the plea, Petra found herself wondering, “What the hell underwear did I pull on this morning?”
Chapter Six
Hawkeye
Hawkeye was glad Cooper had signaled to him that there was a problem before he met Petra’s gaze, or his reaction wouldn’t have looked the same.
Oddly when he saw that her pupil was blown, his first thought was, “Shit, no, I just met her. We haven’t had time.” He immediately set that thought aside to examine later. Right now, he had to focus on figuring out what had happened to her from the time they were discussing brain wiring until this moment.
Hawkeye had seen blown pupils before. But they had always been in conjunction with a blast trauma or trauma to the head. And it was always treated as a life-or-death emergency, with evacuations by the PJs if necessary.
She’d mentioned a TBI, but it sounded like it had been back in the past, not something that she was healing from right now.
Since those soldiers had always had bilaterally blown pupils, what he saw in Petra didn’t align with his lived experience. But he’d never been around anyone who might be having a stroke. That not one but both attendants came to the same immediate conclusion, told Hawkeye that it wasn’t unreasonable to suspect a stroke even when everything else about Petra seemed fine.
“Would you mind if I took your pulse?” he asked as he pulled his arm around to see the face of his watch with its stopwatch capability.
“Thank you.” She held her hand out to him, but what he wanted was her in his arms. She looked so scared and confused. He just wanted to hold her to his heart and tell her that everything was going to be fine.
But he couldn’t say that truthfully.
Cooper leaned forward and sniffed her hand over before giving Hawkeye the go-ahead. The interesting thing about that exchange was that Reaper, the Cerberus trainer that they were meeting in St. Croix, had been expanding the Cerberus kennels’ scent training to include medical issues. Flu, Covid, and pregnancy were the three that they had focused on first. Pregnancy because that would change the way they treated an injured person during a natural disaster; Covid and flu so they could steer their protectees away from a contagion, or if the dog detected the illness—sometimes days before symptoms showed up—the team could get the client to a doctor in time to get prophylactics on board.
With Cooper’s all-clear, Hawkeye knew that Petra had none of those conditions. That Cooper checked without Hawkeye’s signal meant that Cooper believed this was a medical event.
“I’m drawing a blank,” Petra said.
Her voice was calm but from her racing pulse, Hawkeye knew she was feeling anxious. Who wouldn’t be?
“I know if you’re having a heart attack, you have to inhale as deeply as you can and cough out strongly and keep doing that violent coughing routine as a kind of self-applied CPR until you get to a hospital. But this?” She shook her head. “I’m racking my brain. Beyond checking FAST, What is the newest protocol? I’m thinking baby aspirin. But then I also seem to remember not to do baby aspirin.”
“If this is a stroke, all you can really do is get to the hospital as fast as possible. There’s a golden hour for getting the medications in. But no to the baby aspirin. You’re right, they used to advise that, but not all strokes are caused by blood clots. Ruptured blood vessels can do it, too. Since aspirin thins the blood, it would make any bleeds more severe.”
She rolled her lips in, bobbling her head, indicating that she understood.
Hawkeye hated this for her. Hated every second that she was in danger. He wanted the wheels down and Petra in an ambulance. He had no idea how far it would be to get help from here.
As if reading Hawkeye’s mind, Halo leaned forward. “Seven miles, brother. Ten minutes if they go lights and sirens once she’s loaded up. I can manage Cooper and your baggage if you want to go, mate.”
Hawkeye glanced over his shoulder, giving Halo a nod before turning back to Petra to ask what she wanted. “Would you like my support once we’re down? I can get to the hospital and make phone calls for you, keep people informed.”
For the first time, he saw a reaction from her other than bewilderment. Her eyes got glassy as tears dampened her lashes. “Would you? I was trying to figure out what to do on my own. And since we’re family.”
“Family…” he left that open-ended because he couldn’t guess what she meant.
“Not family. I must have been thinking of home when I said that, wishing my family were here or someone I knew better. But we do have people in common. Rowan Kennedy and his wife, Avery Goodyear, are dear friends of mine. So, I’m grateful for your kindness. I won’t feel like a complete stranger in a strange land.”
He looked back at Halo. “I’ll take you up on that offer. I’ll get to the hospital with Petra.” Now that they could hear the piercing scream of sirens, her anxiety was rising. He hoped to distract her. “Interesting that you put Rowan, Avery, and me together in your mind.”
“Not really. The counter staffer told me I’d be sitting next to the working dogs. And when I looked out the window, I recognized the uniform. I was on the phone with Avery and sent her a picture of you all when you were on the ground by the luggage handlers. You were below my window. She told me who you were. Well, since I was above you, she couldn’t see your faces. But she was able to recognize Max and Cooper, and she was able to tell me that their handlers were Halo and Hawkeye.”
That explained their first exchange when he’d said his name, and she’d said “yes” like she already knew him. “Friends of Rowan and Avery, yes, that makes us family of sorts. You aren’t alone. Okay?” It felt good to have the connection and to have a stronger reason to stay with her and offer his support. It also felt good that she was speaking cogently about a timeline.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot announced, “we are coordinating with the paramedics to safely disembark the passenger who is experiencing a medical emergency. The responders are moving stairs into place, and the emergency crews will come on board. Please, keep hands and feet out of the aisles. We have no time frame for this event. Our passenger’s health and well-being are paramount. Hopefully, this is your final destination, and this delay will be a minor inconvenience. I’m leaving the seat belt light on. Please remain seated at all times. Imagine if this event took you by surprise, and let’s follow the golden rule. Yes?”
Petra’s eyes held wide as her lips sank into a frown.
She had to be listening to that, knowing that she was the problem. The surprise was happening to her.
“Hawkeye,” she whispered. “I should feel badly, right? Headache? Something? This feels kind of silly.”
He got it. From when she kept things contained during the dog and cat scramble earlier in the day, she did not like attention or disruption. Like anyone would, Petra would want to deny that anything serious was wrong with her.
She was a smart woman, capable of dealing with facts. So, he’d just lay it out. “Petra, I’m seeing a blown pupil that’s non-reactive. We aren’t playing with that. There’s a window to get the proper meds in. We need to exercise every caution and get you in front of medical staff so they can determine what’s happening.” Hawkeye wanted to add that every second she wasn’t in the hospital with help focused on her was a second too long for him.
This wasn’t about him. Not at all.
This was about Petra’s safety.
As the door opened, Halo swung out of his seat to stand in the aisle.
“Cooper,” Hawkeye pulled his dog’s attention away from Petra. “Go with Halo.” Cooper wasn’t down with that, and Hawkeye completely understood. If someone were to ask him to step away, there would be pushback. But this was not the time to argue with his dog. “Cooper, go sit with Halo.” He curled his fingers through Cooper’s collar to help guide him over.
Halo moved Cooper into the bulkhead space with the other dogs, then sat in the end seat, scooting down until his knees were against the bulkhead wall, blocking the K9s in and the rescue team out.
Cooper rested his head on Halo’s leg, watching intently as the paramedics came on.
“There’s a good boy, Coop,” Halo crooned. “Your new friend is getting some help. She’ll be right, mate.”
Hawkeye made to get out of the paramedics’ way, but Petra reached out and gripped his arm with both her hands to anchor him in place.
The paramedic watched it happen. “You’re fine there. Who are you?”
Hawkeye knew he was asking for a role, not a name. He went to the first thing he could think of to make sure he could stay with Petra. “First responder. I noticed the change in her pupillary response.”
“How long ago?”
“Undetermined. She was fine at the beginning of the flight but slept the whole way here.” Hawkeye handed out his notebook with respiration and pulse rates that he had taken every five minutes. The numbers had held steady.
“Instead of a gurney, since you’re conscious, we can bring up a wheelchair, then carry you down that way. Do you feel like you can’t hold yourself upright for that long?”
“I could carry her in my arms,” Hawkeye offered. He turned to Petra, “If you’d be comfortable with that. It might be safer than risking an event happening while you’re in the chair.”
“Event happening…” Petra’s voice wobbled. “Like I go unconscious?”
“In the unlikely event that you have trouble staying upright while you’re on the stairs.” He pronounced his words clearly and spoke just a bit slower to make himself as understood as possible.
“The stairs are steep,” the paramedic cautioned Hawkeye.
“We train on them. One of my team could go in front in case of a missed foot.” He turned to Petra. “Would that be all right with you? Do you want to make decisions here or would you prefer I make them?” For his sister, Cora, especially under stress, decision-making was mentally and therefore physically exhausting. Cora’s brain was constantly going, going, going. Not to say Petra was exactly like Cora—as Cora liked to say, “Once you’ve met someone who is neurodivergent, you’ve met one person who is neurodivergent.” But Hawkeye did have the advantage of knowing and loving Cora, and maybe his lived experience could be helpful here. “Or we can make the decisions together.”
Petra squeezed his arm and said with relief, “You, please. Down the stairs and decision making.” She sniffed. “Please.”
He hated the fear in her eyes. “All right, you just let me know if you change your mind.”
Having listened to them, the paramedic asked Hawkeye, “Do you want to go with her in the ambulance then, in order to provide continuity of care?”
