Chapter 8 Xander
XANDER
“A log truck hit a patch of black ice and took out three lanes on the highway before it crashed. I’ve got countless victims that need identification—names, phone numbers, medical information if you can get it. The more we have, the faster we can move. Can you sort that?”
Snow looks at me with wide eyes, sort of like a deer on the side of the road simply observing the world moving on around her.
I tried to call after she left my apartment, but she never answered and work took over before I could pursue other avenues to look for her.
The glimpses I got in the hallway were enough to assure me that she was around, but something is different.
It’s like the light inside her is battling against a gale threatening to snuff her out.
Even the smile she gives me now doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I can do that. Leave it to me.”
Then she’s gone, another head in the swarming crowd of medical personnel and victims of the carnage, but I can pick her out exactly as she hurries toward the front desk.
Short-staffing in a disaster is never ideal, but for those few seconds I stand there watching her, something twists like a knife in my chest.
As if she’s just as wounded as the people around me and no one can see it except me.
Yells of pain draw me from my distraction and I return to work, keeping Snow in the back of my mind.
One child is sent straight to surgery due to internal bleeding and it takes me five long minutes to pry his panicked mother from his side.
One driver is about to lose a leg and whimpers through tears as she waits for the orthopedic surgeon to arrive and work out what can be saved.
Another driver has more glass shards embedded in his chest than I’ve ever seen before.
I instruct several nurses to work on removing what they can but on my second loop around the bay, it grows clear that he needs surgical intervention and he’s swept up to my floor after Snow ducks in to get his details.
There’s a couple who are fine at a glance, lamenting about their luck and survival until the woman collapses and I find severe bruising on her abdomen. She’s also swept straight up to surgery with me in tow.
Forty minutes later, she’s stable and recovering in a quiet room with her husband while I return to trauma one and alleviate more of the stress.
The truck driver died on impact and the news is met in a variety of ways by his victims.
Some are angry and curse him, drawing the attention of the cops, while others are sympathetic to his passing and the ice that caused the crash.
One by one, each patient is seen at least once by me, and I pass Snow multiple times as our paths intersect.
Patient numbers are replaced with names, and correct medicines are adjusted as medical records are updated and attended to.
Thanks to Snow, we avoid giving one child a medicine to which he’s allergic.
Gradually, the chaos begins to calm and as the crowd thins within trauma one, something catches my attention.
A man sits on one of the beds with blood pouring from a head wound, his eyes glassy and his chest spasming every so often.
I don’t recognize him so after disinfecting my hands, I head over and greet him with a flat smile.
“Sir? Have you been seen by a doctor?”
He grunts, and his glazed eyes briefly lock onto mine.
Taking the light from my pocket, I gently catch his chin and briefly shine the light in his eyes. “Sir, can you tell me your name?”
He winces and tries to avoid my light, but I keep it up and quickly check his pupils.
Then he opens his mouth and the strong stench of beer breath hits me.
“M’fine, it’s nothing,” he grunts. “I fell.”
“You fell? Were you in a car crash at all? On the highway?” Satisfied by his pupils’ reactivity, I turn his head and examine the split stretching from his forehead all the way into his hair.
Blood weeps out steadily and a shadow of a bruise spreads across his temple.
He sways back and forth, although given his apparent drunken state, it’s impossible to tell at a glance the cause for his instability.
“I wasn’t driving, you tell them that,” he slurs, throwing one hand toward the cops. “I wasn’t even in my car! Who said I was? They’re liars! I wasn’t driving!”
“Sir—”
“Xander?”
I glance over my shoulder at one of the paramedics and grunt in greeting.
“I brought him in. Dude fell off the top floor of Bailey’s Bar and cracked his head open on the floor. Owner called us.”
“Right. Thanks.” A drunk accident is easier to handle. Turning back to the patient, I snap my fingers and regain his attention. “Sir? I’m going to get someone to look after you, okay? We’ll give you something for the pain and to sober you up and go from there, okay?”
“Doesn’t hurt,” he grumbles, brushing my touch away.
“It will.” After ensuring he responds to all other stimuli, I assign him a doctor and return to the desk with what little energy I have.
It’s long past midnight and the urge to sleep is finally creeping up at the back of my mind.
Poor Auriela is going to have to feed my cats again.
No matter how enthusiastically she takes on that task, guilt always follows.
She’s a sweet old dear and she loves those cats as much as I do, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling bad that she has to tend to them when I can’t make it home.
I quickly type in what I know about the drunken patient into the computer, sign it off, and then resume my loop of the trauma bay once more to see if anyone else is in desperate need of attention.
Halfway around, Nurse June catches my eye.
“You look dead,” she murmurs, looking me up and down. “You got much left in that tank?”
“As much as you need,” I reply. “Although I won’t mind if everyone stays off the roads for the next twelve hours.”
“You and me both.”
“What happened to the woman here?” I nudge the empty bed on my way past, noting a lack of a chart.
“She’s in surgery. They think her leg can be saved.”
“Good news.”
“Of which there is precious little. The cops want to speak to you as well.”
“About?”
“One of the victims is claiming a nurse was too rough with him and she says you were tending to him also. The cops just want your version of events.”
“Which patient?”
“Glass chest man.”
My brow lifts. “Everyone treated him with care.”
“I know. I think he’s just after somewhere to place his anger at the accident.”
“He isn’t placing it at the feet of my team. Where are the officers?”
Just as June turns to point through the doors leading deeper into the hospital, a crash of metal hits the floor and a man yells.
The drunkard from before surges up from his bed and shoves away the doctor trying to tend to his bleeding.
“Get away from me!” he yells. “Get the fuck away! What are you trying to do to me!”
He shoves at the doctor again.
I sprint forward, landing on one knee as I catch the doctor before he hits the floor and injures himself, then I’m on my feet and grabbing the drunkard’s arm.
“Sir, these people are trying to help you. Calm down!”
“Calm down?” He swings one hand wide, his hand curled into a fist. “You’re not sticking anything in me, ya hear? I don’t need it. I don’t even need to be here!”
“Sir, you’re injured and you need to be seen to before you lose too much blood. Please, return to your—” Another fist flies toward my face and I duck, narrowly avoiding it.
As he swings the next fist, I catch his forearm and follow his motion to twist his arm behind his back, trying to subdue him as he stumbles out onto the main floor.
“Get off’a me!” he yells.
His elbow flies backward just as I turn and it cracks into my jaw, sending me back against the bed as pain explodes through my face.
“Call security!” Pushing off the bed, I lunge after him as he throws a punch at the doctor who previously tried to help him.
Blood spurts out from where his fist breaks the doctor’s nose, and still, he carries on like a bull with no direction.
June darts out of his path and hurries to the desk as I give chase.
The man, clearly disoriented, shoves trolleys and people out of his way as he heads toward the open double doors.
As he reaches them, I collide with him with just enough force to knock him off balance, but as he tips, he grabs for my coat.
His fist closes around my collar and he jerks me with him and his eyes lock onto mine. Fury floods them. “I told you t’leave me the fuck alone!”
His fist curls and I can’t get my arm up in time to block it.
As he punches me hard in the face, we stumble together and I hit the wall at an off angle.
Pain lances up my shoulder while I grab the patient to protect his head from bouncing off the wall with me, and we tumble to the floor.
“Hold him!” comes a voice. “I can help him!”
Keeping him down is a struggle.
The man wrestles and squirms back and forth underneath me like a snake, roaring out his anger. “Get off me! Get off me! I’ll kill ya, get off me!”
For an injured man with booze flooding his veins, he’s alarmingly strong.
A man from security joins me a second later and together, we hold onto his arms and pin him as firmly as we can without harming him further.
“I need his arm,” comes the other voice. “Snow, can you grab his arm?”
Snow is here?
“Sure,” comes her breathless voice. I glance up briefly and glimpse her with another nurse wrestling with needles and medication.
“Sedate him,” I gasp against his struggles. “It’s the only way to help him!”
“On it! Snow, can you get me that?”
“Nooo!” The patient surges again, but security and I do a good job of keeping him down as safely as we can.
Until he feels the prick of a needle in his arm.
It turns him into a slippery wildcat and within seconds, he's fighting and flailing with all his limbs and even throwing his head back and forth.
Instruments clatter, grips slip, and items scatter as he fights to get free.
Releasing his other arm to security, I catch and cradle his head the best I can to stop him from hurting himself further.
After an age, he gradually starts to slow his struggles and within thirty seconds, he slumps under me.
“Thank God,” breathes the nurse. “I thought he was going to hurt himself.”
“We’ve got him.” Panting, I climb to my feet and motion for security to help me.
Together, we scoop him up and carefully shuffle him back to his bed where he can best rest. “I want a head CT and I want someone to find his emergency contact. We need to find out if he’s on anything before we make this worse.”
“Okay, I’ll get—Snow!” The nurse cuts herself off with a yell and my heart leaps into my throat.
As soon as the patient is settled, I spin around to the source of the cry and my heart punches up into my throat.
Snow stands nearby with tears glistening in her eyes, the nurse and June at her side and a broken needle protruding from the back of her arm, caught in her shirt.
“Did it stick you?” I bark, darting forward.
June removes the needle with her gloved hand while the other nurse rolls Snow’s sleeve up.
A single red pinprick stains her skin while a single drop of blood wells from the dot and trickles slowly down her arm.
Oh, no.