X-ray Chapter 5, part 5

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The trauma team met them at the door, whisked their patient into Trauma 2 for a quick x-ray, then upstairs to OR. Frank nonchalantly sat down at a desk and wrote up his report, chewing on the end of his pen from time to time.. Ian attended to the stretcher, wiping up the smears of blood and bleaching the entire mattress before he remade it with clean sheets. Again and again he watched the chips of bone fall out of the woman's crushed, deflated knees as they transferred her to the longboard. He shook his head to clear it of the image.

On his way out to sanitize the ambulance's steering wheel he stopped to buy coffee at a machine. The machine ground and hissed, then gave him a a cup of hot water instead.

Before they left, Doctor Davis told them that their patient would lose one leg, probably both. They went back in service and returned to their post. "The weird thing was," Ian would tell Sara that evening, "that she was carrying church pamphlets."

Sara looked at him quizzically.

"If you're doing God's work, shouldn't He be looking out for you?"

But for now the thought had not yet formed, or had not yet solidified into words, and all he did was stare at the world through his rain-flecked windshield until the slow, steady beat of the wipers lulled him to sleep.

[END OF CHAPTER]

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