CHAPTER 19 #3
He turns to the IV pump at my right arm — IV acetaminophen running, hydromorphone PCA locked behind a clear door.
No ketorolac yet; not until the hemoglobin proves itself twice and my kidneys have answered.
The pump’s display is at his eye. The PACU nurse reads the order back before his hand moves.
Four digits. He returns. The cord is on my wrist again.
"Doll. Start with what stayed with you."
"The hiss."
"Yes."
"Seven seconds."
"Seven. We logged it. Biomed has it tagged. The regulator is sealed for Risk and the root-cause board. Give me the next fact."
"Alexei did not take off the medallion."
"He did not. He tucked it. He cleaned it himself in saline after. It is at your sternum. It is on the chain. The chain is on you."
My right hand goes to my sternum. The medallion is there. The chain is there. The hairline crack across the angel's wing is there.
"My flank."
"Dressed. Long midline incision; a lateral extension to access the spleen — the round took the spleen, Elena. We took it out. Alexei took it out. You are going to be all right. You will recover. The recovery will be real. IV acetaminophen and a low-dose hydromorphone PCA for the next thirty-six hours; ketorolac waits until tomorrow’s CBC and creatinine say yes.
The Foley is in. You will not like that.
It comes out the day after tomorrow. There is a JP drain in your left flank for forty-eight hours.
There is an NG tube I have already taken out because your gut was intact and you woke clean.
Your bowels were not breached. Your kidneys were not breached.
Your blood loss was nine hundred milliliters.
You took two units of packed O-negative in the room and one type-specific O-positive in PACU.
Before you leave this building, you get pneumococcal, Hib, meningococcal, and the fever card you will hate because it is a card and it will be right.
Asplenia is a boring danger. We will respect it.
You are stable. Your hematocrit is thirty.
Your pressure is one-fifteen over seventy. The rhythm steadies under my hand."
I take a long breath. The taking hurts at the left flank under the dressing. The hurt tells me I am here.
"Sophia."
The name slips its leash. The last time it crossed my lips was the call with Sister Mary Catherine, Day 13.
The sound stays interior this time — a thought wearing the shape of a word.
My mouth keeps its silence. The name is in my head and Stefan's palm is over my forehead before I have finished thinking it.
"Doll."
"I am all right."
"You are all right. You are in the room. You are with me."
"I know."
He nods. His palm stays on my forehead. He waits.
"The men," I say.
"All four."
"Hayes."
"Gone. The gunman is not Hayes. The gunman is a man whose father bled out in this bay six years ago and whose intake form Hayes signed. He is in custody. He is alive. He is being charged. He did not die. He will not die. He will be tried."
"Hayes."
"Hayes was in the corridor. The corridor camera has him at the south end. He did not draw. He did not fire. He was not the shooter. He is on the wing and he is being kept away from this PACU. But the different file is not only the cafeteria recording, doll. Six years ago Hayes signed the intake. He also signed the late addendum that changed the father’s status from trauma overflow to left-against-medical-advice after the man was already cold.
The son found enough of the truth to come here with a gun and not enough of it to know where to put the bullet.
Tomorrow I will deliver that file to the CMO’s office, with the dean’s counsel copied.
Today you will not think about Hayes. Will you agree to that, doll. "
"I will agree to that."
"Thank you."
"Stefan."
"Yes."
"He did not take the medallion off."
"He did not. None of us would have. He is in OR-3 sterilizing his hands again.
He will be in here in eight minutes. Nikolai is at the door.
Gabriel is in the chair near the bed's end.
He has kept the same chair for two hours.
He will not. You can sleep again. You can sleep through the move to the suite. We are moving you in an hour."
"Stay."
"I will stay."
I sleep.
---
I wake again at twenty-two-hundred. I am in the suite.
I have been moved. The suite's circadian dim is the gentlest light I have ever opened my eyes into.
The bed is the suite's bed. The pillow under my left knee is a thin pillow for the flank.
The drain is at my left side. The IV is at my right arm.
The medallion is at my sternum and someone has cleaned it — it has the faint clean smell of the OR's saline rinse Alexei would have done at the sink. The chain is unbroken.
I name, very slowly, the men in the room.
Alexei is in the chair by the bed. His left jaw scar catches the lamp; his right deltoid sits as a line of shoulder under the shirt, the bulge of it a fact for some other night.
He has changed scrubs. The knurled steel ring on his right thumb is at the chair's arm — resting only, neither turning nor pressing.
He is awake. Sleep is a country he has refused tonight.
Nikolai is at the door. He is leaning against the frame with his right shoulder, which is the shoulder that took my weight.
The collar of the same shirt he wore at eleven carries a smear of dried blood.
The Patek is on the third navy-leather strap.
The watch has crossed late into the night when his wrist drops a quarter-inch.
The gesture is a release, not a check; he is letting the time fall.
Stefan is at the IV pump checking the rate.
The Littmann is on his neck and his cord is at his left wrist and the dilution at the pump’s display is what he just keyed.
His eyes stay on the readout. He works the pump because the hydromorphone PCA has a lockout and the acetaminophen line has a clock, and the clock is what he gives me tonight in place of words.
Ketorolac waits for morning labs. He makes the waiting visible.
Gabriel is kneeling at my hand.
He is on his knees at the side of the bed with my left hand inside both of his.
His head is bowed. He is breathing six in eight out as he has always breathed.
The black silk strap is folded in his left lab-coat pocket against his hip — I can see the edge of it.
The strap stays pocketed. Tonight he is here as hand, as kneeling man, as breath.
The thin gold chain at his throat — his mother's — is visible at the V of his collar. The San Gennaro medallion the size of a sunflower seed is against my left thumb at his collar where his head is bowed.
Four.
I say it because I have one breath of voice and I want to give it to them.
"Still with you."
It is very small. They hear it. Nikolai's head turns at the door. Stefan's hand stills at the pump. Alexei's ring stops at the chair arm. Gabriel's grip closes by one millimeter on my hand and his forehead lowers to the back of it and stays there.
I sleep. The count holds.