Pet Sematary - Stephen King [27]
The near-panic in Mastertons voice got Louis going in a hurry. He bolted out of his chair almost as if he had, in some subconscious way, been expecting this. A shriek, as thin and sharp as a shard of broken glass, arose from the direction of Mastertons shout. It was followed by a sharp slap and Chariton saying, Stop that or get the hell out of here! Stop it right now!
Louis burst into the waiting room and was first only conscious of the blood-there was a lot of blood. One of the candy-stripers was sobbing. The other, pale as cream, had put her fisted hands to the corners of her mouth, pulling her lips into a big revolted grin. Masterton was kneeling down, trying to hold the head of the boy sprawled on the floor.
Steve looked up at Louis, eyes grim and wide and frightened He tried to speak. Nothing came out.
People were congregating at the Student Medical Centers big glass doors, peering in, their hands cupped around their faces to cut out the glare. Louiss mind conjured up an insanely appropriate image: sitting in the living room as a kid of no more than six with his mother in the morning before she went to work. watching the television. Watching the old Today show, with Dave Garroway. People were outside, gaping in at Dave and Frank Blair and good old J. Fred Muggs. He looked around and saw other people standing at the windows. He couldnt do anything about the doors, but- "Shut the drapes, he snapped at the candy-striper who had screamed.
When she didnt move immediately, Charlton slapped her can. Do it, girl!
The candy-striper got in gear. A moment later green drapes were jerked across the windows. Chariton and Steve Masterton moved instinctively between the boy or. the floor and the doors, cutting off the view as best they could.
Hard stretcher, Doctor? Chariton asked.
If we need it, get it, Louis said, squatting beside Masterton. I havent even had a chance to look at him.
Come on, Chariton said to the girl who had closed the drapes. She was pulling the corners of her mouth with her fists again, making that humorless, screaming grin. She looked at Charlton and moaned, Oh, ag,
Yeah, oh, ag is right. Come on. She gave the girl a hard yank and got her moving, her red and white pinstriped skirt swishing against her legs.
Louis bent over his first patient at the University of Maine at Orono.
He was a young man, age approximately twenty, and it took Louis less than three seconds to make the only diagnosis
that mattered: The young man was suing to die. Half of his head was crushed. His neck had been Broken. One collarbone jutted from his swelled and twisted right shoulder. From his head, blood and a yellow, pussy fluid seeped sluggishly into the carpet. Louis could see the mans brain, whitish-gray and pulsing through a shattered section of skull. It was like looking through a broken window. The incursion was perhaps five centimeters wide; if he had had a baby in his skull, he could almost have birthed it, like Zeus delivering from his forehead. That he was still alive at all was incredible. In his mind suddenly he heard Jud Crandall saying sometimes you could feel it bite your ass. And his mother: dead is dead. He felt a crazy urge to laugh. Dead was dead, all right. Thats affirmative, good buddy.
Holler for the ambulance, he snapped at Masterton.
Louis, the ambulance is-
Oh Christ, Louis said, slapping his own forehead. He shifted his gaze to Charlton. Joan, what do you do in a case like this? Call Campus Security or the EMMC?
Joan looked flustered and upset-an extreme rarity with her, Louis guessed. But her voice was composed enough as she replied. Doctor, I dont know. Weve never had a situation like this before in my time at the Medical Center.
Louis thought as fast as he could. Call the campus police. We cant wait for EMMC