Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(19)
Paul wasn’t quite so lucky. When the second ambulance rolled up no one was waiting. The two ambulance attendants brought the gurney in. The only doctor still on duty in the ER was Alfred Peters, a second-year neurosurgery resident. He would have been in the operating room with Doctor Kellerman were it not for the fact that Alfred was nursing a hangover and hung back when the others rushed to answer the Code Blue.
“You gotta be kidding,” he grumbled when the second gunshot victim was brought in. Alfred had the makings of a great surgeon someday, but unfortunately this wasn’t the day. His head ached, and his eyeballs felt fuzzy and out of focus. If it were a kid with a broken arm or a woman showing signs of the flu, he could have stumbled through the process with no problem. But the boy on the table had a gunshot to the head.
The kid was eighteen, nineteen at most. Alfred looked down at a face younger than his own. The boy seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, but the fear in his eyes was palpable. Trying to gather his thoughts, Alfred asked, “Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“You’re at Mercy General Hospital. You’ve been shot, but we’re going to take care of you.” Alfred was trying to sound confident, trying not to let his voice reflect the haze he was stumbling through. “Do you remember what happened?”
Without moving anything but the focus of his eyes, the boy looked up. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but one that pushed through the hangover fog and grabbed hold of Alfred’s heart.
“Let’s get this kid stabilized!” Alfred shouted. Somehow he forgot the pounding in his head. He was no longer a resident with a hangover; he was Doctor Peters. Fifteen minutes later Paul, who by then had lost consciousness, was sliding through a CT scanner. Doctor Peters stood behind the glass watching attentively.
“Okay,” he said when he saw where the bullet had cut a swath across the right side of the boy’s skull. If he used the kind of skill he was capable of the kid had a decent chance, but given the swelling and external trauma anything could happen.
When Alfred Peters walked into the operating room, he felt a responsibility greater than any he’d ever before known. Life or death. A functioning human being or a forever comatose boy. It was up to him. Although the bullet had not penetrated the brain, the boy’s head was already starting to swell.
When Paul was brought in, he had twelve dollars and a handful of change in his pocket. No driver’s license, no voter registration, no “in case of emergency contact” information, not even a wallet. He was listed as John Doe.
Sidney Klaussner had been in surgery for five hours, but to Carmella it seemed a lifetime. She paced back and forth across the waiting room, first sobbing softly, then wailing so loudly it could be heard at the far end of the fourth floor hallway. Twice nurses came in and suggested she go home and try to get some rest.
“We’ll call you the minute your husband is out of surgery,” they said, but Carmella would have none of it.
“Go home?!” she screeched. “Go home when my poor Sidney is in there fighting for his life?” Not only did she refuse to consider the idea, she also refused the sedative they offered. At that point there was little anyone could do other than sit beside Carmella and comfort her.
After what she could have sworn was a week of waiting, Doctor Kellerman walked into the waiting room looking worn and weary. He sat on the sofa alongside Carmella.
“Your husband’s out of surgery and doing as well as can be expected.”
“As well as can be expected?” Carmella repeated. Her left eye blinked furiously, and a look of panic grabbed hold of her face.
“There was quite a bit of damage,” Doctor Kellerman said. “One of the shots went clear through Sidney’s upper left lung. The other hit his colon and stomach. There was a lot of trauma and swelling, but I expect…”
Threaded throughout the words he spoke was the sound of Carmella’s sobbing. “Dear God,” she repeated over and over.
“Sidney will be out of the recovery room in two or three hours,” Kellerman said. “You’ll be able to spend a few minutes with him once he’s settled in intensive care.” At that point Carmella no longer acknowledged his words; she just sat there praying for divine intervention. After he’d told all he could tell, Kellerman sat there for several minutes saying nothing but nervously rubbing his hands together as Carmella rattled off three Hail Marys.
It was almost ten o’clock that evening before Carmella was ushered into Sidney’s room. In a husky whisper the nurse informed her that it would be best if she didn’t stay more than ten minutes. “Right now what your husband needs is rest,” she explained.
Carmella knew better. After thirty years of marriage, she knew what Sidney needed was her by his side. She quietly slipped to the far side of the room and sat in the darkest corner, the corner behind the ventilator. She remained there for a long while listening to the machine whoosh air into her husband’s injured lung. At first she counted the breaths, wondering how many it would take before Sidney again opened his eyes. And when she lost count of the breaths she counted heartbeats as they bleeped across the monitor. In between the heartbeats and breaths she prayed, sometimes silently, sometimes in a whisper so small only an angel hovering overhead could have heard.