by Michael West
She made her way to her own room and opened the door.
Tashima sat alone at her desk with her laptop open, her I-Pod hooked to a speaker dock, her music blaring. She stopped typing and looked up at Kim, her eyes demanding details. “So how was it?”
“It was nice.”
Tashima looked disappointed. “Just nice?”
“What’s wrong with nice?”
“Nothin’ I guess. You gonna see him again?”
Kim smiled. “As a matter of fact, he’s making me dinner tomorrow night.”
Tashima’s eyebrows rose. “Damn.”
“I know.” Kim giggled. “Guess I must have made a good impression, huh?”
“Congratulations,” Tashima told her. She reached over to hit stop on her i-Pod, then nodded at the answering machine. “You’ve got mail.”
“Don’t tell me it’s my mother.”
“It’s Burke.”
Kim’s smile withered.
“He’s not calling to pressure you. It’s an apology.”
She gave Tashima a questioning stare, marched over to the answering machine and hit play.
The professor’s accented voice filled the room, “Yes, Miss Saunders ... this, this is Professor Burke. About this afternoon, I’m sorry if I put you on the spot in any way. I can assure you, that was not my intent. I’d like the opportunity to listen to your concerns, and to offer my help if I can. Please call my office or stop by when you have the time. Sorry again.”
She erased the message and sat down on the edge of her bed, her arms crossed beneath her breasts and a sinking feeling inside her gut.
“Wanna talk about it?” Tashima asked, staring at her from across the room.
She shrugged. “Nothing to talk about. I’m not going.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You’re not saying it, but I can tell you’re still trying to think of a way to get me to change my mind.”
“Look, Kim ... I can tell this is a big thing for you. I don’t even pretend to know every little thing that went on in your life before I met you, and I’m not gonna lay a bunch of motivational crap on you now.” Tashima got up and walked over, sat beside her on the bed. “Yeah, I’d like to have you there with me, sure, but I want you to be happy more.”
“Thanks.”
Tashima put an arm around her shoulder. “If you’re gonna lead any kinda happy life, and I’m asking, do you need to face this shit and get on with it?”
Kim regarded her evenly.
Tashima went on, “Look at what happened tonight?”
“What about tonight?”
“Before tonight, when was the last time you were on a date? A real one-on-one date, not out with a group or at some party?”
They both knew the answer.
“See?” Tashima said. “You got up off your ass and took a chance, and he wasn’t like the asshole, was he?”
She smiled. A long time ago, Carter Donovan had become “He Who Shall Not Be Named,” so Tashima just called him “the asshole.” Kim loved her for that.
She blinked, and a single tear wound its way down face. “I’ll think about it.”
Tashima reached up and wiped Kim’s cheek. “I’m sorry. I won’t say another word.”
“Okay.”
“On one condition.”
Kim glared at her. “What?”
“Help me with my Algebra?”
“That I can do.”
She gave Tashima a hug, but later that night, when the books were closed and the lights were out, the old nightmare came again, and it came at Kim with a dark vividness, a ferocity she had not experienced since leaving her home in Greencastle. When her eyes sprang open, she used the pillow to muffle her scream.
10
Stanley University Medical Center was a teaching hospital, “a 694 bed tower, offering the most up-to-date systems and technology,” according to the most recent brochures. Second-year residents were required to spend three months learning the ways of General Medicine, three more months on Electives, two months working on their planned subspecialty (training in Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Occupational Medicine, or Preventive Medicine), one month each in Geriatrics and the ICU, and two months in the ER.
Tyler looked at his watch and walked over to the Nursing Core counter. Each floor of the tower was designed like a wheel with the nurses’ station at the hub. The designer wanted every room in the hospital to have a view. This philosophy started on the second floor, Tyler noted. The only view he got to enjoy in the Trauma Center was that of cinderblock walls.
“Morning, Sharon,” he told the nurse behind the desk. He’d learned not to say “Good morning,” because she would always have the same response: “What’s good about it?”
“Morning,” she replied without looking up from her reports.
“How is the fast-paced and exciting world that is Emergency Medicine?”
This made her chuckle. She stopped scribbling and used her pen to direct his attention to the admissions board. Six of the trauma center’s fourteen beds were filled. “One’s a possible drug overdose,” she told him. “We’re waiting on the toxicology report on that one. Got a guy who was drunk and passed out on his beer bottle, required some 26 stitches to close the lacerations.”
Tyler pulled the chart. “Nice.”
“The last four have acute cases of Examinosis.”
He nodded. “Symptoms may include, but are not limited to, headache, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and dermatological problems stemming from stress.”
She smiled. “You’re learning.”
“They’ll be discharged by noon.”
“Yes they will.”
The door to the ER burst open. Two men rushed through it, one of them white, the other Hispanic, cradling a body in their arms.
“We need a doctor here!” the white man shouted. He had a scruffy growth of brown beard on his chin and a Dale Earnhardt ball cap on his head, the number 3 encircled by a halo. His shirt was ripped in places, the sleeves torn off to reveal his muscular arms. At first, Tyler thought there was blood all over this man, but as they drew closer, he realized it was actually paint splatters.
All the blood was coming from the limp figure in their arms.
Tyler ran to them. His right sneaker slid in the scarlet trail they’d left across the tiled floor, but he did not fall.
The injured man was also Hispanic. His eyes rolled loose in their sockets as if the muscles that tethered them in place had snapped. He squeaked as he tried to draw breath, and a frothy, white material collected in the corners of his mouth.
“How long?” Tyler asked the man in the Earnhardt cap.
“I don’t know ... half an hour? Maybe less. We got him into the truck and rushed him here quick as we could.”
They carried the patient to the nearest trauma room and placed him on the triage table. Tyler pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and pressed his fingers to the man’s wrist and neck. No carotid pulse. His eyes shot toward the nurses’ station, saw members of the medical staff rushing to his aid.
“Bag him!” Tyler called out. He ripped the man’s shirt open, found a lower chest and abdomen that were swollen and badly bruised. Tyler searched for breath sounds with his stethoscope, knowing he would hear none and discovering he was right.
“Spontaneous pneumothorax,” he said to no one in particular. “I need a 14-gauge.”
Sharon handed him a hypodermic needle, which he promptly inserted into the upper chest to relieve the pressure. Monitors were now wired to the patient and Tyler didn’t like the sounds they made. The guy was crashing fast. Sharon placed an ambu-bag over the man’s mouth to simulate respiration and he began chest compressions.
“Was it a car or a truck that hit him?” he asked the two who brought the man in.
“Nothin’ hit him,” the Earnhardt fan said. “I think his drill caught a power line. The lights dimmed and then he flew a good fifty feet, knocked him right out of his shoes.”
Tyl
er quickly surveyed his patient with doubtful eyes. “There are no electrical burns on the skin, at least none that I can see, and that kind of shock would’ve stopped his heart.”
“His heart’s still beatin’, I checked myself.” The man looked up at Tyler and his voice cracked, “Help him!”
The Hispanic man who carried the patient in was crying, and the nurses had to politely push him aside so they could work. Mr. Earnhardt Cap put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him out into the hall.
Tyler took a deep breath. This appeared to be a textbook impact injury. Something hit this man with sufficient force to crush his abdomen, damaging tissues so that blood now pooled beneath his skin, and his lungs were quickly collapsing beneath the strain.
“36-French and 20ccs of Xylocaine,” he ordered and was handed a chest tube and a syringe of anesthetic. He injected the drug at the site of his scalpel’s incision, the fifth intercostal, then fed the tube into the damaged lung.
If he was thrown back, he could’ve received the injury when he hit a wall or —
A bright red fountain gushed from the chest tube onto the trauma room floor. At the same moment, the erratic beat of the monitor became a constant drone.
“Internal paddles!” Tyler roared. He sliced his way into the man’s chest, froze, then took a step back. “Oh, my God.”
There was nothing anyone could do to save this patient. Force from the impact had ruptured his diaphragm and pushed the lower organs up into his chest cavity. The lungs had been flattened, not by collecting blood, but by the weight of the man’s own stomach, and his heart —
Jesus, look at his heart.
Coiled snakes of intestine had literally strangled it. He’d never seen anything like it. He collected his senses and called time of death at 7:50.
Sharon reached over and turned off the monitors.
Tyler’s bloody gloves came off with a snap as he walked toward the Earnhardt fan and his distraught friend. “I’m sorry,” he told them.
The Hispanic man reached out for the wall, then lowered himself onto one of the chairs.
Tyler knelt beside him, put a hand on his shoulder, and expressed his sincere sympathy. “No había nada que podría hacer. Estoy apesadumbrado para su pérdida.”
The man nodded, wiped at his eyes, his hand and lower lip trembling. “Gracias, doctor. Gracias.”
Tyler stood, returned his attention to the Earnhardt fan. “I don’t care what type or amount of current, a live wire wouldn’t do what I saw in there. Care to tell me what really happened?”
“I told you what happened,” the man said. “Look, we were up at this old theater, the Woodfield Movie Palace. They’re tearin’ her down in a week or so and we went in to take out all the seats before they brought in the wrecking ball. See, I buy ’em up at a dollar apiece and then I turn around and sell ’em off on eBay. People put ’em in their Home Theaters. Believe it or not, they buy ’em for seventy bucks each. I also got —”
Tyler held up his hand. It was dusty from the powder in the glove. “What hit him?”
The man frowned. His eyes were dazed, shocked, but there was nothing in his face that said he was lying. “The floor. Other than that, there’s nothin’ there that coulda hit him. We were alone, inside this huge empty auditorium. He was using a power drill, taking out these big bolts that hold the seats onto the concrete floors.”
“Did he land on the backs of some chairs when he fell? Maybe with his stomach?”
“No, he ...” The man paused for a moment, trying to sort it all out. “He landed on the carpeted aisle and rolled. The electricity in that place ... I’ve never seen anything like it. It was all fucked up. The air conditioner kicked on full blast, the lights dimmed ...” His eyes drifted to the dead body on the table in Trauma One. “Christ ... he was hollerin’ when he flew through the air ...”
The Hispanic man crossed himself. “El Diablo.”
Tyler looked at him. “Que?”
“It means ‘the devil,’” Mr. Earnhardt Cap said.
“I know what it means. Why did he say it?”
“Segundo, he see something,” the man said with a thick accent. He looked pale, uneasy. “It come for him, but it ... it was not all there. You ask what hit him, Doctor?”
Tyler nodded.
“El Diablo hit him.”
A short time later, the police arrived. They took the two men aside to question them further. The Earnhardt fan continued to preach about the dangers of faulty electricity and the Hispanic man had gone silent in his shock and grief. Tyler had one of the nurses get him a blanket.
“Dr. Bachman?”
He walked back into the trauma room where Sharon was still cleaning up.
She held up the dead man’s arm. “Did you see these?”
Tyler cocked his head. There were three lacerations
across the forearm, the center one deep enough to scratch bone. During his first year ER rotation, he’d seen a girl brought in with a similar set of gashes. Her boyfriend had attacked her with a butcher’s knife and she’d thrown her arms across her face to shield her eyes.
Defensive wounds?
He put on a fresh pair of gloves, angry that he’d missed the cuts and curious as to their cause. Tyler’s fingers sank up to the first knuckle, then quickly withdrew. “What the hell?”
Sharon looked concerned. “What is it?”
He flexed his fingers, then grabbed a thermometer. “Ever been to a party with a big ice tub and reached for that last drink at the bottom?”
The nurse gave him a bewildered nod.
“It felt like that, so cold it burns.”
“How’s that possible?”
Tyler didn’t answer her. He didn’t have to. They both knew it wasn’t possible. At room temperature, a lifeless body cooled at a rate of one and a half degrees Fahrenheit per hour. This patient had been dead far less time than that, yet it felt as if he’d been freshly plucked from a meat locker. Tyler slid it into the deepest laceration, watching dumbfounded as the mercury rapidly fell to twenty degrees Fahrenheit.
“I bet it was a tank of liquid nitrogen,” Sharon offered. “If it hit him just right, it would account for the abdominal injury and the cold.”
“Impact from the tank might have ruptured his abdomen, but the liquid wouldn’t just make him cold.” Tyler pressed on the skin of the dead man’s forearm, showed her how pliable it remained. “The arm would’ve shattered like glass.”
“What happened, Doctor?” she asked.
Tyler could do nothing but shake his head. He looked up from the slashes with hesitation, his eyes following the trail of blood that streaked across the floor, tracing it back to the point where the body was brought into the ER, his mind looking even beyond that. He continued to stare until the janitor arrived to mop it away.
11
“Just how old are you anyway?” Kim called out as she scanned Tyler’s music collection.
“Why do you ask?” He stepped out of the kitchen, smiling as he wiped his hands with a towel. He was making Jambalaya, and the smell of cooked sausage and spices made incredible promises to her rumbling stomach.
Kim giggled as she read the artists’ names off the CD cases, “Thompson Twins, Robert Palmer, Genesis, Duran Duran ... oh ... my ... God, how many Duran Duran discs do you have?”
Tyler pointed to some of the spines. “Well, these two aren’t technically Duran Duran. Power Station and Arcadia were splinter groups.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh-kay ... Do you have any music that isn’t at least twenty years old?”
“I do,” he said defensively, “just not on CD. I normally download all the newer stuff.” He flung the towel up so that it draped across his broad shoulder. “You like new-agey jazz?”
She giggled again and pointed to the door. “If you pull out Kenny-G, I’m gone.”
“No, no, nothing that drastic.” He slid the CD from the shelf and offered it up for her inspection. “Keiko Matsui. She’s really good.”
<
br /> “Full Moon and the Shrine?” Kim took it from him, turned it over in her hands, studying the cover photo and reading the track titles. “Is it like spa music?”
That made him laugh. “Well ... yeah, kind of, I guess. It’s relaxing. I thought it might be good to have on while we eat.”
She smiled. “Sure.”
He loaded it into his stereo. “And to answer your earlier question, I’m only twenty-seven.”
“Thank God!” Her smile widened. “I was afraid you might be about ten years older than that.”
Tyler looked absolutely horrified. “Thanks a lot.”
“No, I mean ...” She chuckled. “Sorry. It’s just that you’ve got my mother’s taste in music.” Her face warmed. “That didn’t sound good either, did it?”
“Not too old for you, am I?”
“Not at all.”
“Good.”
He leaned in for a quick kiss and she was more than happy to grant him one. It had been so long since she’d kissed someone, really kissed them, and she was surprised by how comfortable it felt kissing Tyler, how comfortable it felt to be here alone with him.
“Dinner will be ready in a minute,” he announced as he pulled away and moved back into the kitchen.
“No hurry,” Kim told him, but the rumble in her stomach said otherwise.
The bulk of Tyler’s apartment was really just one big living room, and it was obvious that a man lived here by himself. A bookcase filled the back wall, displaying medical textbooks, a few Robin Cook and Tom Clancy novels, and the CD collection that time forgot. There was a small entertainment center on the opposite wall, an X-Box 360 and a widescreen television. A worn loveseat and comfy-looking brown leather chair filled the space in between.
She moved down a short corridor, found two open doors. One was a closet-sized bathroom, the other was the bedroom. She glanced around, but she didn’t step inside. Instead, she sat down at the little wooden table that filled his breakfast nook/dining room, watching Tyler work.