Free Not Quite Enough (Not Quite series) by Catherine Bybee

young, petite blonde from the States.
    Monica lowered her voice and took a deep breath and started over. “Look, Shandee, we need to make this work for the minimal people we have helping here. You need to take the red room, Tauni in the yellow room, Freya in the green room. Once we have the sickest inside the building we can manage this better.” Though Monica had her doubts. Two critical patients were already in the red room dropping their vitals. There wasn’t enough power to run the X-ray machine and there certainly wasn’t a CAT scan available. Not that there was a surgeon to operate if they knew the severity of the patient’s injuries.
    “The red room?” Shandee glanced around and noticed several people watching them.
    It was time to put on a smile and tell Shandee what she needed to hear. “I’m told you’re a gifted nurse. These people need your help. I’ll focus on triage.”
    Shandee twisted on her heel and walked to the red room.
    Monica blew out a frustrated breath.
It’s going to be a long-ass day.
    Trent followed her around for the next couple of hours while she dime-store triaged as many patients as she could. After about fifteen patients, two teenage boys—Jerrick, who was Tauni’s brother, and Arcus, Shandee’s son—understood enough of the basics of triage to help.
    “If they’re breathing too fast, find me. If their skin is pale below their injury, find me. If they’re not making any sense or are unconscious, take them to Shandee.”
    Jerrick led a couple of his friends to help move patients around. Arcus moved in a different direction to look over the wounded opposite Monica and Trent.
    Monica crawled up into the back of one of the trucks where a patient lay. She placed a hand on his shoulder and found it stiff and unmoving. One look confirmed what she already knew. “Damn,” she whispered to herself.
    How long had this patient been out here? Was he alive when he arrived? Where was his family? Who owned the truck? She started to shiver despite the heat.
    Trent was returning from inside the clinic when she jumped out of the back of the truck. “Inside, or out?” Trent asked.
    Monica stiffened her spine. “He—he’s gone.”
    Trent looked behind her, his half grin faded. “Oh.”
    She brought a hand to her forehead and noticed it tremble.
    “Are you OK?”
    “Fine. We, ah… we need to find a place for him.” She swallowed. There were probably others. Maybe Shandee had already placed the dead in a certain spot… somewhere.
    Monica clenched her fists, trying like hell to stop the shaking. Exhaustion nipped at the edges of her sanity. Now was not the time to lose it.
    “Hey?” He placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK. You can’t save everyone.”
    His soothing voice and comforting hand would undo her if she let it. Monica pulled away. “I know that. He’s cold. Probably gone before we even got here.”
    Trent stepped back as if stung.
    Way to go, Ice Queen.
“I’m sorry. Listen, I know you’re trying to help me, but I can’t think about all this right now. I have to stay focused. OK? Do you get that?”
    She needed his help, but didn’t want his compassion. Not yet anyway.
    “Got it.”
    “Good.” She nodded and realized a tear had fallen. She wiped it away, frustrated by its existence. “Maybe Shandee knows where they’re keeping the deceased.”
    The hours lumbered by in the heat and misery. Using the protocols given to her, Monica started IVs on the sickest patients, and administered antibiotics in hopes that the minimum of infection-fighting medicine would help until Walt, Donald… or any doctor at all could come. The patients in the red room were simply too sick to send to the hospital. Monica knew they wouldn’t survive the trip on the Jamaican back roads.
    Tauni had gone home to sleep and Trent was still roaming the clinic… somewhere. Trent opted to stay, and had the locals transfer the patients in trucks to the main hospital. All Monica had to