• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Nah, I just know our boss, is all.” The nurse smiled. “You never let them go without checking and rechecking in case something could have been done differently.”

That was certainly right. Jane remembered every single patient who had died in the chute, whether she had been their admitting physician or not, and she had the deceased cataloged in her mind. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, the names and faces would run through her head like an old-fashioned microfiche until she thought she would go mad from the roll call.

It was the ultimate motivator, her list of the dead, and she was damned if this incoming gunshot was going on it.

Jane went over to a computer and called up the low-down on the patient. This was going to be a battle. They were looking at a stab wound as well as a bullet in his chest cavity, and given where he’d been found, she was willing to bet he was either a drug dealer doing business in the wrong territory or a big buyer who’d gotten the shaft. Either way, it was unlikely he had health insurance, not that it mattered. St. Francis accepted all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.

Three minutes later, the double doors swung open and the crisis came in at slingshot speed: Mr. Michael Klosnick was strapped to a gurney, a giant Caucasian with a lot of tattoos, a set of leathers, and a goatee. The paramedic at his head was bagging him, while another one held the equipment down and pulled.

“Bay four,” Jane told the EMTs. “Where are we?”

The guy bagging said, “Two large-bore IVs in with lactated ringers. BP is sixty over forty and falling. Heart rate is in the one-forties. Respiration is forty. Orally intubated. V-fibbed on the way over. Shocked him at two hundred joules. Sinus tachycardia in the one-forties.”

In bay four, the medics stopped the gurney and braked it while the chute’s staff coalesced. One nurse took a seat at a small table to record everything. Two others were on standby to bust out supplies at Jane’s direction, and a fourth got ready to cut off the patient’s leather pants. A pair of residents hovered to watch or help as needed.

“I got the wallet,” the paramedic said, handing it over to the nurse with the scissors.

“Michael Klosnick, age thirty-seven,” she read. “The picture on the ID is blurry, but…it could be him, assuming he dyed his hair black and grew the goatee after it was taken.”

She handed the billfold over to the colleague who was taking notes and then started removing the leathers.

“I’ll see if he’s in the system,” the other woman reported as she logged onto a computer. “Found him—wait, is this…Must be an error. No, address is right, year’s wrong, though.”

Jane cursed under her breath. “May be problems with the new electronic records system, so I don’t want to rely on the information in there. Let’s get a blood type and a chest X-ray right away.”

While blood was drawn, Jane did a quick preliminary examination. The gunshot wound was a tidy little hole right next to some kind of scarification on his pectoral. A rivulet of blood was all that showed externally, giving little hint of whatever mess was inside. The knife wound was much the same. Not much surface drama. She hoped his intestines hadn’t been nicked.

She glanced down the rest of his body, seeing a number of tattoos—Whoa. That was one hell of an old groin injury. “Let me see the X-ray, and I want an ultrasound of his heart—”

A scream ripped through the OR.

Jane’s head snapped to the left. The nurse who’d been stripping the patient was down on the floor in full seizure with her arms and legs flapping against the tile. In her hand she had a black glove the patient had been wearing.

For a split second everyone froze.

“She just touched his hand and went down,” someone said.

“Back in the game!” Jane clipped. “Estevez, you see to her. I want to know how she is immediately. Rest of you get tight. Now!”

Her commands snapped the staff into action. Everyone refocused as the nurse was carried over to the bay next door and Estevez, one of the residents, started to treat her.

The chest X-ray came out relatively