“Show me a thumbs-up,” said the woman. “Give me a squeeze…”
Rick tried to squeeze her finger, which she’d put in his left hand, but just moving it was ungodly painful.
“He’s not following commands. Sir, can you wiggle your toes?”
Rick obediently wiggled his toes.
“Guess not,” someone said.
The woman said, “Okay, two liters up, CBC and trauma panel.”
“You want some fent?” a man asked.
Some piece of equipment rolled up alongside his bed. He felt something cold and gelatinous being squirted onto his chest.
“Fifty of fent to start,” the woman said. “You still with me, sir? Open your mouth. Wide.”
Something cold and metallic, he assumed it was a probe, was moving in small circles on his chest.
Rick obeyed, or thought he did. He moaned. His jaw was incredibly painful but only when he opened his mouth to breathe or talk. His chest and stomach ached terribly. He moaned again.
“No pericardial effusion, good cardiac motion,” someone else said. A young man. “Multiple abrasions and bruises over the chest wall.”
“Ahhh,” Rick moaned. He gasped in pain.
“Sorry,” said the young man. “Good sliding motion on the lungs, no pneumo.”
“Got a big lac over the left parietal scalp,” the husky-voiced woman said. “Stapler.”
“No blood in Morison’s pouch. Left paracolic gutter dry.” The young guy.
The woman: “Let me have twenty of etomidate and 120 of succs ready in case we have to tube this guy.”
“Already got it,” a woman said.
The young guy: “He’s pretty altered; you should tube him.”
The woman: “Sir! Say your name.”
Rick tried again to say his name, but this time it came out as Off me.
The woman: “Sir, I have to put a tube in your throat to protect you. Do you understand? We need to put you to sleep for now.”
I don’t want a tube in my throat, Rick tried to say. That’s totally unnecessary.
“FAST is negative,” said the young guy. “Call the scanner and let them know we have a tubed blunt head on the way.”
Something glinted-a blade of some sort? The doctors and nurses seemed to shift position around the bed. A baby or a kid was crying nearby.
“RT here?” asked the woman.
“He’s here,” someone said.
Someone ran past with a heavy tread. He heard a hissing noise. Then somebody put a mask, loudly hissing, over his face.
“Sats going up ninety-six.”
“Okay,” the young male doctor said. “Push the etomidate, then the succs.”
“I got your tube,” the husky-voiced female doctor said. “You do C-spine.”
“Okay.”
“Drugs are in.”
“Sir!” said the woman doctor. “Sir! You’re going to feel sleepy now. Just relax, just go to…”
49
Andrea Messina is talking to him, looking more gorgeous than ever, backlit as if in a TV commercial for shampoo. But he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. He asks her to repeat it, but now she doesn’t understand what he’s saying, and he can’t keep his eyes open, and when he opens them again, she’s gone.
The next thing Rick was aware of was light, blindingly bright. He wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven, but he also felt as if he’d been hit by a truck-no, as if the truck had rolled over him and was still parked on top of his body-and he didn’t think you could be in heaven and also be in a world of hurt.
Everything was bright and glary, and he realized he was only looking out of one eye. His left eye wouldn’t open. He heard steady beeping and another sound, a strange sound that went whoosh-click,whoosh-click,whoosh-click. He heard a hubbub of loud voices as if he were in the middle of a crowd.
He coughed and realized something was in his throat, something big, and now he began to gag, to choke, and then he tried to breathe in, but it was like breathing through a straw, he could barely get any air, and he had to get that thing out of his throat or he’d choke to death. He was overcome by panic. He struggled, tried to get up, tried to rip this thing out of his throat, and then there was a loud beeping and he heard a woman’s voice saying, “He’s awake, he’s bucking the vent.”
“The doctor’s right here,” said another voice.
He couldn’t clear his throat, couldn’t stop choking.
“Okay, relax, relax, you’re feeling the ventilator,” a woman said. “You need to show me you can breathe on your own. I need you to breathe out and cough.”
Rick, in full panic mode now, struggling with all his strength, managed to free one hand and reached up toward whatever the hell it was that was lodged in his throat.
“Mr. Hoffman, relax, you have a tube in your throat, you’re on a ventilator, but-Mr. Hoffman, if you understand me, give me a thumbs-up, okay?”
Rick stuck his thumb up, with the only hand that seemed to be working, thinking, There’s your goddamned thumb, get this thing out of my throat, but unable to say anything.
“Mr. Hoffman, take a nice breath in and out.”
Rick tried to breathe in, but he could barely suck in any air.
“Okay, excellent,” the woman said. “Now I want you to cough for me. Or push out really hard as if you’re coughing. Make a big cough. On three, I want you to cough. One, two, and three-excellent.” Rick coughed, though it felt more like he was gagging, he hacked and then caught his breath-and a moment later he was taking a deep, wonderful breath, and it was like coming up from the bottom of a pool; he gulped the air in and it was great. And then at almost the same instant, he felt a terrific stabbing pain in his chest.
“Good, there you go. Now spit.”
And someone was holding a pink plastic bowl under his mouth and he spit out gobs of something and it felt terrific.
“Mr. Hoffman, I’m Dr. Castillo. You were intubated because they were worried you might not be able to protect your airway. Do you remember what happened?”
The doctor was out of focus. Rick blinked a few times and she began to swim into focus, but he was looking at her only with his right eye.
“Uh,” he said.
“Your vital signs look good. Can you say your name?”
“Uh… Rick Hoffman,” he said. His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt.
“Excellent. Now, it looks like somebody beat you up pretty good. Do you remember what happened?”
Rick just looked at the doctor, who was dark-haired and pretty and looked barely out of her teens. “Uh,” he said. The room was white and dazzlingly bright and mostly out of focus.
He remembered the baseball bat and the guy with the shamrock tattoo swinging it at him, remembered shouting at the guy to stop. And the guy not stopping. He couldn’t figure out how he got here, how he ended up in this hospital, wherever it was.
But why could he see out of only one eye? He reached up to touch his left eye, pulled it open, and he could see blurry shapes, and when he let go, his eye closed again.
“Well, you got banged up, quite a bit,” the doctor said. “You’ve got a left lateral nondisplaced clavicle fracture-that’s a collarbone fracture. Plus you’ve got some fractured ribs on your left side-posterior ribs three, four, and five on the left. The CT scan showed you have a fracture of your left cheekbone, a zygomatic arch fracture.”
He took a deep breath and gasped as he felt the stabbing pain in his chest once again.
“Yeah, you’re going to hurt a lot, pretty much all the time.” She gave a low chuckle. “We’ve got you on some pain-killers but you may need some more, looks like. You’ve got some big bruises on your back and on your chest and over your left kidney. You had some blood in your urine, what we call hematuria, from the renal contusions.”