"A guy that doesn"t send his baby girl birthday presents? A guy that lets her grow up without even being able to recognize him in the street? Or the hospital bed?" Seth shook his head. "Kill him, I say."
"I think there are a couple people in the Waiting Room who have weapons to lend us."
"Heck, let"s just hire them. They probably need the money. What"s he worth to you, this father? I have enough cash to buy a candy bar. Or off the guy in Bed Eight."
"This is the sickest conversation I have ever had in my life," said Diana. But she was giggling.
"He"s sicker," pointed out Seth.
"You mean mentally," said Diana, "but he"s also sick physically. That"s why he"s here."
"Let"s check out his next of kin," said Seth. "This wife might be in the Waiting Room. What was her name, do you remember?"
"Bunny."
"No way," said Seth. "n.o.body is named Bunny."
"It probably wasn"t her real name. It was probably a nickname. Her real name was probably Gertrude or something. But I don"t necessarily want to do anything, Seth."
"You think this patient could be your biological father and you"re not sure whether you"re going to talk to the guy or introduce yourself or anything?" Seth was dying to know, and it wasn"t his father!
"What would I say?" Diana asked him.
"How about, "Hi, I"m your daughter Diana, who you haven"t seen in fifteen years, and I have a lethal dose of poison for you."?"
"Stop that! You pervert! I don"t want him to die. I want..."
Her voice drifted off. She didn"t know what she wanted.
Seth knew what he wanted. Diana. She might just be the prettiest girl at the entire college. Although that medical student was in the running for prettiest girl at the hospital.
He knew he shouldn"t say girl. He should say woman. But he didn"t like saying woman because it sounded too compet.i.tive. Girl sounded more controllable. Then he hated himself for wanting to control Diana. She would certainly hate him for it.
"How can I help?" said Seth. There. Success. Just the voice he wanted. s.e.xy, but comforting. He tightened the arm that was lying on her shoulder, in what he hoped would be a friendly fashion.
She took the hand off, as if it were a scarf, and like a scarf twisted his fingers around hers. He liked it. Her hands were cool and smooth and her fingernails felt neat, glossy clear polish sliding against his skin.
"Oh, Volunteer?" said Meggie, having actually left her desk and walked around to find them. Meggie was not fond of exercise, and leaving her swivel chair was an awesome amount of activity for her.
Seth opened his mouth to tell Meggie he was busy, but she saw the words coming. "Busy, huh? Typical. You college kids come down here, show off a little, try to rack up points with your professors, do good, that kind of c.r.a.p. And then you -"
"What do you need?" interrupted Seth. "Name it, we do it. Seth - and/or Diana - at your service!" He gave her his biggest, finest grin but Meggie simply looked at Diana.
Meggie hated Diana, it was in her eyes. Seth all but shivered. What"s that about? he thought.
It never crossed his mind that it was about him.
"They need that guy"s paperwork," Meggie said to Diana.
Seth whipped the insurance sheet out of Diana"s hand and bowed to her. "I shall accomplish this task," he said in his knight-in-shining-armor voice. He could hardly wait to stare down Bed Eight. Check out what kind of guy - "What do you think you"re doing!" hissed Diana, ripping the sheet right back out of his hand. "I"ll thank you not to interfere in my life. Or his either! Who do you think you are, you arrogant future doctor, you?"
Seth stared at her. "I was just helping," he protested.
"It"s my own fault for saying a single thing to you," said Diana, furiously, and he thought how grand she looked - really regal - in her rage. Not whiny, not minor, but immense, as if Diana"s fury could blow the walls down.
"Stop smiling!" shouted Diana. "It is so sick the way you take such pleasure in other people"s troubles."
She stomped away, and now his attention was taken by the wonderful switch of her walk.
Meggie said, "Guess you"re not sharing a taxi after all, huh, Seth?"
Oh, no! She was going to invite him out again. Seth said hastily, "I think they need me in Trauma, Meggie."
Emergency Room 7:10 p.m.
THE HALLWAYS WERE SO crowded that neither Seth nor Diana could pa.s.s. Stretchers b.u.mped into stretchers and portable X-ray units and treatment trays and wheelchairs snagged on people"s legs.
They were rolling one of the GSWs out of the Trauma Room.
The girl from college. I forgot her! thought Diana. She might be dying and instead of thinking about her, and worrying about her, or praying for her, I"m all worked up about some man who - if he"s my father - never got worked up enough about me to send a birthday card.
The girl was just paler than she had been, and becoming fidgety, her finger knotting and searching the bed. Jersey. That was her name. She roomed with Susan and Mai.
"Systolic blood pressure is dropping," said one nurse impa.s.sively to another. Jersey was going into shock; blood loss was causing her body to shut down whatever it could in an attempt to save whatever it could.
Rolled blankets had been packed along Jersey"s body to keep her on her side. While a medical student held her IVs aloft so gravity would keep them running, and the tech rolled the portable heart monitor alongside, a doctor and two nurses wheeled the stretcher toward the patient elevators. They must be taking her to the operating room.
Briefly, the doors to the Trauma Room remained open.
Where Jersey"s stretcher had been, and where her blood had spilled, the floor was not red, but yellow. Footprints of Jersey"s blood tracked out of the room and down the hall. The housekeeping staff mopped up.
"Everything"s fine, sweetie," said the nurse to Jersey, patting her hair. "Everything"s going to be all right. You"ve got excellent surgeons waiting for you. w.a.n.g and Seredy, they"re the best."
Let it be, thought Diana. Let w.a.n.g and Seredy be the best and let it all be all right for Jersey.
She slid a little on the yellow slick of Jersey"s blood, and swallowed hard before she went back to Insurance.
Mary didn"t even ask why Diana didn"t want to do Bed 8, but just nodded, took the paperwork, and set off to interview Mr. Searle.
Diana tried asking herself why she didn"t want to do Bed 8, but it was too much. She literally could not think about it.
She could not think about Seth, either. Why must she always lash out at him? How did other girls just enjoy boys? How did they relax and flirt? Why was she either at war or at a loss?
Emergency Room 7:16 p.m.
THE MOB OF POLICE had thinned out. The ER was rather like the ocean, with schools of fish coming and going. Groups of cops or doctors or student nurses or sobbing families were swept in and out, as if by tides, and where they went or where they came from was often hard to tell.
Seth stationed himself at the ambulance bay to see the motorcycle accident come in. Trauma would want him around in case they needed an errand done, but if they didn"t, he"d get to watch.
The victim was almost completely covered with sheets, and there were four EMTs, one at each side of the stretcher, rushing him straight into the Trauma Room, so basically he saw nothing.
Seth was irked. No fair covering up. He tried to remember that somebody was in agony under that sheet. Who was Seth to want to gape and stare and calculate the man"s chances?
I"m a future doctor, that"s who I am, thought Seth. Calculating as they come, or so I"m told.
He followed the stretcher into Trauma.
The Trauma team was ready, having had perhaps five minutes between the GSWs and this MVA. When the sheet was lifted, there was much less blood than Seth expected. Basically the body was shredded from the waist up, looked fairly okay from the waist down, and the face was no longer very facial.
Ambulance attendants hovered around, frowning over clipboards, trying to fill in their various forms. There was more form-filling at City Hospital than body-healing. Seth looked over the EMT"s shoulder to see what was being checked off.
If vehicular, was victim - driver? pa.s.senger? pedestrian?
Trauma source - sharp object? blunt object? firearm? toxin/drug?
Source - contact sport? fight/violence? machinery? self-inflicted?
Seth hoped shortly to witness some machinery, sharp object, and fight/violence stuff. Then he glanced at the man"s date of birth.
The man was one year younger than Seth.
He was a kid. He"d be in high school!
Seth looked away from the pieces of paper and back at the real patient. The boy was naked, although somebody had ineffectively flung a sheet over his lower body. He was now hooked up to two portable monitors and had two IVs running.
The nurses were scrubbing the boy"s torn flesh with an actual brush, getting the tar and pebbles and sand out. The way you would scrub a broiler pan with baked-on drippings. Hard.
The doctor was a thin, gray-haired woman. "What shall I call you, son?" said the doctor. "Alex?"
"Alec," said the boy, mumbling through his terribly damaged mouth. "Am I dying?"
"I hope not, Alec," she said. "But flesh and bone don"t do well when it hits pavement at that speed. We"ll do what we can."
Seth was shocked. Why hadn"t the doctor rea.s.sured this kid? What was with that little lecture? It was late in the day to bother warning him about the effects of pavement on skin. She looked kind and grandmotherly, and here she was letting this kid he there all bare and exposed to wonder if he was dying!
"Blood gas," called somebody.
Blood gas was an a.n.a.lysis to gauge the levels of things like oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide in the patient"s blood, but Seth did not know how it was done nor why a special technician was called. He watched closely.
The tech took the patient"s wrist firmly and bent it backward, until the tendons and small bones were visible. A two-inch needle was stuck between the bones deep down into the wrist. The tech wasn"t getting blood from a vein - one of the blue lines along the surface - but from an artery, safely hidden deep within the body. Getting arterial blood was no picnic for the patient.
It took the tech three tries, during which Seth winced more than the boy on the bed.
Blood began to fill the large tube attached to the needle. To Seth"s horror and shame, his stomach began to roil. He swallowed hard, trying to control his gut.
"Get out," said a nurse, moving him swiftly to the door. "Don"t even think about throwing up in here." She went out with him and shut the door behind them both, firmly. In the relatively dull hall, away from the sight and smell of Trauma, his stomach calmed and he could pretend he hadn"t been about to vomit over the doctors" feet. The nurse washed her hands at the wall sink. Handwashing was so continual that lots of people carried their own hand lotion around with them.
"Why did the doctor talk to the motorcycle accident so roughly?" Seth asked her.
"Roughly? Dr. Gold?" The nurse was startled. "She"s wonderful."
"She didn"t rea.s.sure him that he wouldn"t die."
"We don"t lie anymore," said the nurse. "We used to, twenty years ago. But it"s his life and if he just ended it, he has a right to know."
The Waiting Room 7:30 p.m.
THE ADMITTING NURSE LOOKED at Roo without any expression whatsoever. "Possible fever?" Barbie repeated. She was not sarcastic. She was not anything. She was just a nurse who then took the twins" temperatures. They had no temperatures. "It"ll be a long wait tonight," she said to the mother. "Do you have a private doctor you can call?"
Roo shook her head.
Barbie shrugged. She filled out separate sheets for Cal and for Val. The top sheet would go to the Pediatric ER so the doctors there could decide when to see the babies. The bottom sheet would go to Insurance. Barbie had made her own decision about the importance of these illnesses: Of the three boxes (Immediate, Urgent, Nonurgent), both Cal and Val were checked Nonurgent.
Roo read the handwriting upside down. "Mother claims fever."
So the nurse knew perfectly well that there was no fever. Roo turned quickly away, unable to meet the nurse"s eyes. Luckily a pale and sweating woman with a sliced-open palm was right there, dropping into the patient"s chair with a thud of need. The nurse now had better things to do than consider Roo.
Nonurgent patients, Roo knew from experience, might truly wait hours. Your runny nose did not ever come ahead of your gunshot wound. Since she hadn"t come in order to be seen anyhow, Roo was willing to wait hours. Strangers found the twins adorable and the Waiting Room held at least four middle-aged women who could be coaxed to hold a twin.
Just to be out of that terrible apartment gave Roo hope that she could endure. That somehow she would get through the summer and the twins would get easier and life would not be so very terrible.
Of course it was only May. Summer had yet to begin.
When Roo was pregnant and refused to say who the father was, her own parents had said, "Do you understand that if you have this baby, it will be for eighteen years? Do you understand that? You aren"t even eighteen yet yourself!"