LITMIR.BIZ

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Riley had pulled the worst float assignment of her career at St. Christopher’s Charity Hospital—the ER during a full moon, half the staff down with the flu and a green intern on duty.

      “But I’m just a ward nurse,” she said to Helen Mayer, the senior administrator who was standing in the doorway to the staff lounge. “Besides, I just finished my shift. I want to go home.” She rubbed her bleary eyes.

      “You? Home?”

      “I miss my cat.”

      “She’ll survive.”

      “Aw, c’mon, Helen. I’m tired. I really do have a life.”

      “Yeah? What’s his name?”

      “I didn’t mean a guy.” Shannon dropped her face to her hand, cupping her mouth. “Does it always have to be a guy?”

      “It couldn’t be anyone else. You don’t have any family.”

      “I know this,” Shannon looked away and stared at the wall.

      “Sorry.”

      Shannon was silent for a long beat. “It’s okay.”

      “No, it’s not. You’re more than just an employee here. You’re a friend. And that was unkind of me,” Helen said. “Please help me, Shannon. I’ve always counted on you, my ace.”

      A slow smile warmed Shannon’s face. “You’ll note this sacrifice on my record?”

      “Sure,” Helen agreed. “Come with me. You may be young but you’ve got more experience than I do.” She wagged her finger at Shannon. “You never heard me say that.”

      Shannon liked Helen. She’d been the one who’d hired her when Shannon came to St. Christopher’s six years ago.

      “This place has been pandemonium,” Helen continued. “Thirteen babies were born before midnight and both the labor and delivery rooms are full. I don’t know where we’re going to put them all. Maternity is on double shift as it is. On Four an elderly cardiac ICU patient died with no apparent seizure even though his latest prognosis was that he’d be going home in forty-eight hours. On Two, a stroke case, paralyzed on his left side, reacted to his meds and ripped out his IV, got out of bed and tried to walk out the door. It took five staff to get him into restraints and in the process they broke his arm.

      “ER has been plagued with that three car pileup on I-20 that was just on the news. God! I can’t tell you how I despise minicams! We actually ran out of cast plaster. But the worst part is this flu epidemic. Staff is dropping like flies. The doctors—”

      “I’ve heard all your good news. Now give me the bad news.”

      “Dr. Scanlon.”

      “No way.”

      “Sorry,” Helen said.

      Rising from her chair, Shannon said, “I like it when you need me.”

      “Take that grin off your face and promise me you’ll do me another favor.”

      “I haven’t actually agreed to the first one yet.”

      “We’ve got a coma and a gunshot to the head coming in from Sabine Pass. The ambulance just left Highway 79. They’ll be here in ten. I don’t have anyone but you. For the record, I’ll state that Chelsea Sikeston is taking this shift. That way, if anything goes wrong…”

      “Or right, then she gets the credit.” Shannon didn’t mind the shell game all the administrators played when the situation called for it, but it galled her to no end that twenty-five-year-old Chelsea, fresh out of college with only a year on staff under her belt, out-ranked her because Shannon was only a practical nurse and not an RN. If it was the last thing she did, she would get her degree someday.

      The fact that Chelsea used her affair with the wealthy and very married head of administration, Dr. Thornton, to gain special privileges for herself, incensed Shannon, though she pretended indifference.

      Helen’s voice brought Shannon back from her musings. “Do I have to say please?”

      “Yeah. It would help.” Shannon walked past Helen to the hall and headed toward the ER.

      Dr. Bradley Scanlon was not only a new resident to St. Christopher’s, he was new period. After two weeks on staff he’d lost two patients, both in the past six hours. He was exhausted and wanted only to climb onto a cot in the lounge and sleep for two days straight.

      “How could I be so unlucky as to pull another shift?” he complained to Shannon as they changed into fresh greens.

      “Triple shift is nothing,” she said flatly, cramming her auburn hair into a paper surgical cap. Double wrapping the ties of the smock around her, she heard the ambulance siren at the emergency doors. Two paramedics rushed alongside a gurney bearing the male auto-accident victim the state troopers had dug out from the bottom of the river.

      “Is this our John Doe?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic as he quickly checked the chart he was handed. Shoving the clipboard into Shannon’s hands, he began inspecting the patient for internal injuries.

      “One and the same, Doc,” the younger paramedic replied. “Collapsed lung. BP is 190 over 130 and coming down. Possible concussion. He’s been out since we found him.”

      “Chest tube and intubate him. Seven point zero ET 2. Give him Manatol IV and hyperventilate him,” Dr. Scanlon ordered Shannon who instantly began assembling the proper dosages for the IV. “CAT scan and X rays,” Dr. Scanlon said as he passed his hands along the man’s rib cage. “Feels as if they’re all broken.”

      After injecting the proper meds into the IV, Shannon prepared to intubate.

      “What’s over here?” Dr. Scanlon asked as he turned toward the second gurney coming into the room.

      “Again, unidentified. Richard Doe has been shot, Doc. BP is 80 over 60.”

      “I want an EKG and echocardiogram,” he said as he swabbed the blood from the gunshot wound to the man’s stomach. Without glancing at the paramedic, he asked, “Any idea what all these burn marks are?”

      The young man shrugged his shoulders. “The police were there nearly at the same time as we were. They think he was tortured. I heard one of ’em say it coulda been a cigar.”

      Dr. Scanlon continued groping into Richard Doe’s gunshot wound without further comment. “I can’t see dick. It’s buried pretty deep. Nurse, suction.”

      “Yes, Doctor.”

      “What else did the police tell you?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic.

      “That the front end of the car hit the riverbed, squishing it like an accordian. The steering wheel rammed into that one’s chest,” he said, nodding toward the other patient. “It shoulda killed him. He must be tough. We had to cut the steering wheel away in order to lift him out of the car. Only thing is, I couldn’t figure where he got the blow to his head.”

      “From the same person who shot this man would be my guess,” Shannon said.

      “Retractor.” Dr. Scanlon glared back at Shannon as he held out his hand to her. She properly placed the instrument handle side toward his thumb and fore-finger. Using a clamp to clear his view into the interior, Dr. Scanlon dug for the bullet. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll need a cross-match.”

      “Yes, Doctor,” Shannon replied. But as she cast a sidelong glance at his patient’s chalky color and at the readout on the monitors, she mumbled to herself, “Richard Doe won’t last that long.”

      “He needs Methahexol, morphine and valium intravenously, if he doesn’t defib,” she said.

      Just then the heart monitor went off.

      “Flat line!” the paramedic shouted anxiously.

      “Damn!”

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