Right.
He loved to listen to Barbie question incoming patients. She was so cool. Nothing frazzled this woman. Seth wanted to be exactly like her, so no situation that walked up, was wheeled up, or got dragged in would make him bat an eye.
She was a large woman, and wore even larger scrubs, so she looked as big and green as a tank. She was chewing cinnamon gum, a habit Seth mostly observed in the ambulance crews. The aroma kept you from getting nauseous when you had to take a deep whiff of your own patient.
A youngish man sat in front of her complaining of severe chest pain. “What have you been taking?” asked Barbie, scrawling on the patient information sheet.
“Nothing,” said the young man.
“Gimme a break,” Barbie said irritably. “What were you drinking?”
The young man looked away.
Barbie chewed on her pen along with her gum. “My man, if you’re having a heart attack or if your best friend stabbed you, how am I gonna know? You think I read minds? Talk to me or get out of the way, there are people in line behind you.” She didn’t even sound interested, and of course the worst thing when you get to an emergency room is if the nurse is not interested, so the man answered after all. “Vodka.”
“How much?”
“Prob’ly — um — half a bottle.”
“This your usual amount?”
“Yes.”
“You eat anything today?”
“I had some lunch.”
“What are you smoking?” said Barbie.
“Crack.”
The nurse rolled up the man’s sleeve to take his blood pressure. Tracks on the arm were visible. “What are you shooting?” she said.
“H.”
She would not tighten the blood pressure cuff if he had just shot up, because the scab on the vein might burst. “What pills?” she said. “You swallow anything?”
Wow, thought Seth. The guy smokes crack, drinks vodka, does heroin, and takes pills. Talk about full-time activity. He wondered what Barbie saw, that he had not, knowing right away what was going on here.
“Nothing today. But — but — I think I OD’d,” said the young man nervously. “I think I’m dying.”
“You might be,” agreed Barbie. “I mean, you poly-abuse like this, what do you think is gonna happen? You think your heart is just gonna shrug?”
Apparently the guy was in trouble, because Barbie didn’t make him wait a single minute, but called an aide to wheel the addict back into Medical. She never glanced after him but turned to the patch from an ambulance that burst metallically from the speaker behind her desk. At the same time, three lines were ringing at Knika’s desk. Seth listened greedily to everything.
“We are inbound to your facility with a two-seven female complaining of severe abdominal pain,” shouted the patch. “Patient states she has had fever two days, currently at one oh three. Upon palpation abdomen is rigid in lower right quadrant. Patient currently receiving ten liters of oxygen and has line of normal saline. Blood pressure 140 over 100. Pulse 100. Respirations 30.”
“Roger,” said Barbie. She beckoned to the next patient slouching near her and began filling out two forms simultaneously: the new patient at her desk and the incoming. “What’s your ETA?” she said to the ambulance.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Roger.”
Seth murmured to Knika, “What’s a two-seven?”
Knika gave him the sort of look Seth hated most. You’re in college and you can’t deduce what a two-seven is? “The patient, cupcake,” said Knika, “is twenty-seven years old.”
Cupcake? She dared called him cupcake? He who was going to go to medical school? He would never speak to Knika again. Or go near her desk. He walked away.
“You gonna say thank you, maybe, for the explanation?” said Knika.
Seth stopped, turned, took a deep breath, pasted a smile on his face and said, “Thank you, Knika.”
“Hey, cupcake, any time.”
Barbie hung up, laughing. “He gets into medical school, Knika, he’s gonna snub you.”
“Oh, no,” said Knika. “I’m destroyed. Another white doctor snubbing me? Can I live through it?”
In his burning ears Seth heard Diana accusing him of becoming a doctor in order to have people admire him and treat him with awe. Telling him how pushy and arrogant he was.
He sat on the edge of Knika’s desk. “When I go to the cafeteria, I’ll bring you back a cookie.” The hospital bakery made enormous, terrific chocolate chip cookies.
She laughed. “You gonna bribe your way out of this, cupcake?”
“Could you call me Seth instead of cupcake?”
“Nope. I never call teenagers by name. It gives them airs. They think they’re worth something.”
Routes 14-A and I-95 6:25 p.m.
“I CAN?” SAID ALEC reverently.
“Sure.” Alec’s cousin punched him lightly. “Just don’t hurt it. You would not believe what I paid for this baby.”
The motorcycle was absolutely beautiful. Huge, heavy, gleaming, powerful — everything Alec had ever yearned for in a bike. And his cousin, decked out in leather — everything Alec had ever yearned for in clothes.
The girls were on the sidewalk, giggling. Alec didn’t much like any of the three girls present, but they were still girls. Alec yearned for girls probably twice as much as for a motorcycle, which was a lot, and both seemed equally impossible to get.
He never understood girls’ laughter. What were they laughing at?
He tried to believe they weren’t laughing at him, they were just laughing, but whenever he looked their way, they dissolved again into giggles and he could not feel attractive, just stupid.
He had only been on a motorcycle twice before. This one was far heavier and more powerful.
His cousin was grinning.
Three girls were giggling.
The sun was hot and the pavement stretched out black and shimmering with heat waves.
Alec got on the bike. It was like a living creature beneath him. He could have taken its throbbing pulse. Its heart ached to accelerate, to leave a patch on the road. His new jeans were deep indigo blue against the glittering purple of the metallic paint job his cousin had special-ordered.
“Wear a helmet,” said one of the girls.
Alec’s cousin laughed. “You think he’s a sissy or something?”
“You’re supposed to wear a helmet,” she said, her voice whiny and dictatorial, like a teacher nobody wanted to have.
Alec took off.
It was wonderful! The breeze he created became a wind, and his hair stood out behind him in a strangely sensual way. His fingers tightening around the controls felt longer and stronger, harder and more calloused. In a moment the girls and his cousin had vanished from sight, and then from his thoughts. There was nothing in Alec’s mind but the feel of the motorcycle and the look of the road ahead.
He went a mile.
Two miles.
Took two minutes.
A third mile took less than a minute. The slightest crack in the road was like a ravine; he could feel its measure on the tires and between his legs.
Signs for the turnpike entrance appeared. INTERSTATE I-95 NORTH, LEFT OFF 14-A.
Alec knew his cousin did not have the turnpike in mind. His cousin expected him back about now. But if Alec went for a long drive, there was not a single thing his cousin could do about it. Of course, he’d never let Alec borrow the bike again. But so what? At least Alec could have the ride he’d wanted all his life.
Of course, he didn’t want his cousin yelling at him in front of the girls. On the other hand, the girls would be impressed — if they were still there. Maybe Alec would drive for so long, the girls would have gone on home. What would his cousin do if he kept the bike for an hour? Or the whole evening?
When you sat on this huge vibrating monster, who cared?
Alec swung onto the entrance ramp and was instantly in trouble.
Maybe if
he’d been in the middle of the ramp, or if he’d been going slower. But he made his decision a little late for such a hard right turn at such a high speed, and the back tire of the bike crested on a patch of sand and gravel.
Alec knew what was going to happen during the split second before it did.
What would his mother say? She was always after him to follow precautions. He hated that word. Not only were you supposed to be cautious, you were supposed to be cautious before that, too. Precautious.
Forget it. Real men took risks. That was what life was about.
There was enough time to realize that he had taken a lot more risk than he had meant to. Enough time to realize how fast he was going to hit the pavement. That he was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans. That he had just gotten his braces off a month ago and if he hit the road jaw first —
And then he was out of time.
The City 6:30 p.m.
RESPONSE TIME WAS SLOWER here in the City than out in the suburbs. They had more calls, more danger, more traffic. Three ambulances were required at the scene of the shooting. Although an ambulance could in fact carry two stretchers, especially in a gunfight, you didn’t want to double up the victims.
One ambulance crew scraped up the college girl who had so foolishly walked into the middle of a drug dispute. “What are they thinking about, these university kids?” said the first cop on the scene, staring down at Jersey. “I mean, you’d think she’d notice.”
“They’re too full of themselves. Those snobby kids think they’re God just ’cause they got into that school,” said the driver.
“Or,” said a second cop more gently, “they come from a place where it’s actually safe to walk downtown. Poor kid. I’m glad I don’t have to call her parents.”
Jersey listened to and tried to analyze this conversation. Was she dying? Was this it? Her final moment on earth?
She wanted to be afraid, or at least to think about it, but she felt strangely floaty. Perhaps she was in the act of dying, her soul in the instant of drifting out of her body.
“Here’s her name,” said somebody. “Jersey MacAfee.”
They must have found her purse then. She wondered if she still had the hundred dollars. She wondered how she could have been so eager to have yet another pair of black shoes.
“No, that’s probably her address.”
“No, it’s her name.”
A face leaned over her. It was in pieces, floating around like her soul — a nose here, a mouth there, eyes wandering in front of her. It was terrifying and she began to cry. Crying was a relief; it was a bodily function, so didn’t that mean her body was still functioning? She wasn’t dying yet?
“Jersey?” came a voice out of the floating features. “That’s your name? Is that your name, honey?”
The cop could not believe the girl’s name was Jersey. “Who would name their kid after a state?” he said irritably.
She wanted to tell them the romantic story behind it; her parents’ honeymoon and her conception and the wonderful things that went along with her unusual name. But her mouth said, “Am I going to be all right? Am I going to die?” Oh, good! she thought. I can talk clearly. So things can’t be that bad. It’s just blood. They’ll just pour a few pints in me and I’ll be fine.
“We’re going to do everything we can, honey,” said the ambulance woman. She filled Jersey’s mouth and throat with a plastic cylinder. Jersey panicked and tried to pull it out. Dimly she heard people telling her not to be afraid, but she was afraid, and kept fighting and then, horrifyingly, scarier by far than bullets and blood, she felt herself being tied down, as straps tightened across her chest.
The Waiting Room 6:35 p.m.
NOBODY CARED THAT DIANA was supposed to be doing Insurance. People stopped her continually. The ugly pink blotch of a jacket that she had to wear was a badge of safety and help.
She fixed an ice pack for a waiting patient whose knee was wrenched and received a teary thank you. She found a blanket for a woman who was shivering and a Spanish interpreter for a large family desperately worried about their uncle. From the Pediatric ER she borrowed a box of sad, stubby old crayons and some discarded computer paper for the two little girls at the children’s table.
Armed guards sauntered around. They seemed only half there, as if they’d already had a long day and were now sleeping on their feet. Diana should have felt comforted by so much police presence, but instead she was more afraid. Why did the ER need so many? What kind of things happened out here in the Waiting Room anyhow?
She stood between Knika and Barbie, studying her latest form and trying to decide how to handle it. The med radio blared.
“Emergency Room, go ahead.” Barbie continued filling out the form for the child with a sore throat while she listened to the med radio.
The patch was very loud. “Uh, yes, we’re en route to your facility with three GSWs. A one-eight female…”
Diana swung around and stared at the telephone. Gunshot wounds? A one-eight female? I’m a one-eight female!
She listened to the recitation of blood pressure and pulse of a one-eight female, a one-four male, and a one-nine male.
Was this a street gang? Some horrible family shooting each other? Teenagers busily buying and selling drugs? Lunatics sniping off tall buildings?
Security promptly got on the PA system. “All visitors please report to the Waiting Room. No visitors may remain in the treatment areas. Until further notice, there will be no visiting of patients. Repeat. No visiting of patients by anybody.”
The simmering rage in the Waiting Room picked up. Not only did this mean everybody had to wait even longer, but you couldn’t go in with your relatives while they got treated. An old man who didn’t speak English had his middle-aged daughter with him to interpret — tough. She stayed in the Waiting Room, he went in alone.
Guards ushered angry arguing family members and friends back to the Waiting Room. “We got gunshot wounds coming in,” explained the guards. “Hospital rules. No visitors in back when we got gunshot wounds.” They yanked gloves over their hands and waited for the ambulances.
Diana dropped her insurance sheet right back into the box. Let somebody else do it. She was not about to miss out on three GSWs.
Trauma Room 6:38 p.m.
THERE WERE SO MANY revolving red lights that the ambulance bay looked like the Fourth of July.
The first ambulance backed up to the hospital doors and attendants lifted out the stretcher.
Triage teams were yanking on disposable gloves and over these, surgical gloves. Techs had finished tying clear plastic shoulder-to-floor aprons over the doctors’ and nurses’ clothes. The stretcher was so quickly surrounded by medical personnel that Diana could not see the patient, only the green cotton scrubs of the staff.
The second ambulance backed in.
In the moment before the patient was surrounded by the people who would try to save her life, Diana recognized her. A girl from college. She was in Diana’s sociology lecture!
Diana cried out, unable to stop her horror from surfacing. Nobody heard; there was too much racket. Sirens, police running in, police around the stretchers as much as doctors, walkie-talkies screaming staticky conversations, blood-gas technicians and specialists converging.
The patients were quickly slid off their ambulance stretchers and onto hospital beds. The ambulance attendants yanked their stretchers back out of the way and stood in the halls where they struggled with their own paperwork and made traffic impossible.
The sheets on which the girl had been lying were saturated with blood.
It was not possible. You did not attend college — certainly not this college — with the expectation of being shot on the street. You were there to study literature and philosophy and chemistry and find a boyfriend.
Diana could not remember the girl’s name. It was something odd. Something she would not personally give a daughter of hers.
“Wait wait wait wait wait,” said one of the cops to t
he Attending Surgeon. “You maybe got the shooter here in Bed Two, and his victims here in One and Three. Let’s make real sure bed two here isn’t still armed.”
The surgeon thought that was a great idea and stepped back while the cops double-checked.
“It’s always the way,” said one resident to another. “The shooters hardly even nick each other, they have such lousy aim, but they manage to get the bystander just fine.”
Diana was close enough to see the resident cut the clothes off the nineteen-year-old. Supposedly he was the shooter, but if so he had also been shot. A gunshot wound, she saw now, was a hole. A black-looking thing with no spread to it. Not very threatening, really. Diana was amazed.
The victim was quite proud, looking down at his hole as if it were a prize in an Olympic festival. “This is my fourth,” he said. “I been here three times already this year.” How amazing, thought Diana. He can talk even with a hole in his chest. How come all the air isn’t racing out of his lungs? How come he’s not drenched with blood?
“How we gonna keep you alive, you keep behaving like this, kid?” said Steven, the male nurse.
The boy laughed. Keeping alive did not seem to be a priority with him.
“It isn’t funny,” said the doctor. “What about your mother? Your family? They happy that you live like this?”
“They probably on they way over,” the boy said, laughing again. “Better than TV, you know.”
Diana wanted to see everything. Her eyes bounced back and forth, as if this were a tennis match, not an ER.
The team changed places, now rolling the girl onto her side, so they could work on both the entrance and the exit wound. They used the sheet to turn her, like a cloth spatula under a human pancake. They had cut away all her clothing. There was something dreadful about her nakedness, as if her body had become the lawful property of the trauma team.