Chasing the Lost Read Online Free Page B

it.
    Chase came to an abrupt halt as he spotted a woman wearing jeans and a green smock waiting for him. Her red hair was fiery as he remembered, but cut short now, tight and efficient. “Erin?”
    The veterinarian smiled. “Horace Chase. Been a long time. I got your message, but you didn’t leave a callback number and it just said private line.” The smile faded as she saw the blood on his and Sarah’s clothes. “Bring your dog in here.” She pointed toward a swinging door and led the way.
    Chase carried Chelsea in, and gently set her down on an operating table. Erin already had a needle out, and expertly stuck it in Chelsea’s right front leg.
    She looked at the ACE wrap, bandage, and seal. “You know what you’re doing. QuickClot. That’s good. And the seal.” She glanced up at him. “But that’s Army gear and Army training, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “All right. West Point, and all that good stuff. Never saw you again after you left for the Academy. Tried to call you, and you never called back. Tried to write, and you never wrote back.” Erin shifted her focus back to the dog. “She’s stable. You can go back out now. I’ll take care of her.”
    Chase nodded and slowly backed up.
    Erin smiled. “Good to see you again, Chase.”
    Chase could only nod, then his back was against the door and he almost stumbled out into the front room. Sarah had collapsed on a rumpled old bean-bag couch at one end of the room. He half-smiled, thinking the couch and the rest of the waiting area fit Erin Brannigan as he spotted a large rocking unicorn in the corner. At least the seventeen year-old Erin Brannigan he remembered with surprising clarity from his teenage years. Weeks, Chase reminded himself. He’d only known her weeks.
    “You need to call nine-one-one,” he said.
    Sarah was about to answer when the door to the operating room flew open, and Erin stuck her head out. Her red hair was covered with a surgical cap and her smock had a splatter of blood on it, and Chase felt a moment’s déjà vu, remembering the Evac Center in Kandahar, waiting on the doc to tell him about one of his men.
    “Get in here, Chase. I need help to get the bullet out.”
    Chase ran to the door, following Erin to the large, blood-stained table where Chelsea lay on her side. An IV ran into one leg above the wrist and a large mask covered her muzzle, a pump rhythmically working.
    “She has a pneumothorax on the left side,” Erin said as she took a position on one end of the table, pointing for Chase to get on the other. “The bullet hit the chest obliquely before penetrating, or else she’d be dead. It cracked a rib before piercing the lung.”
    “Where’s the bullet now?” Chase asked.
    Erin shook her head. “In the lung. I need you to hold the outer wound open so I can go in and line up the pleural wound, remove the bullet, then suture it.”
    Chase nodded and grabbed a pair of surgical gloves.
    “Here.” Erin pointed. “Push the skin forward.”
    Chase did as instructed. He looked up as Sarah stuck her head in the door. “Do you need my help?”
    “No,” Erin snapped without looking at her. “Hold it there,” Erin ordered Chase. He watched as she used a scalpel to cut into the wound, widening the narrow opening so she could work. Then she dropped the scalpel and picked up a pair of forceps and forced them in. Chase glanced at the swinging door. There was no sign of Sarah.
    “Steady,” Erin whispered, as much to herself, Chase figured, as to him, as she maneuvered the forceps inside of Chelsea’s chest. She clamped down, and then carefully pulled the forceps out. She dropped a disfigured bullet into a tray along with the forceps.
    “Keep holding,” she ordered. She grabbed a tube and placed it in the wound. “I’m tunneling under the skin following the entry pattern of the bullet.”
    Chase maintained his hold on Chelsea’s chest. He could see it rising and falling, but knew that could be the machine working, and