“White male victim. Age eighteen, gunshot wound to the temple.” The siren on top of the ambulance wailed as it raced through the streets towards the hospital. Daniel was strapped to a stretcher in the back, his face pale and bloodied, a white blanket pulled up to his chest and tucked in around him to keep him warm and fend off the shock. A paramedic held an oxygen mask to Daniel’s face and looked intently at the information on the machine that monitored his vitals.
“We’re five minutes out,” said the EMT behind the wheel. She picked up her radio and called ahead to the hospital to report the ambulance’s whereabouts.
“Oxygen level is dropping. So is heart rate.” A second paramedic jotted something on a clipboard as he placed one hand on Daniel’s arm.
Daniel could feel it. He could hear everything that was going on around him, and he could feel the warm hand of the paramedic through the scratchy white blanket. Even with his eyes closed and his brain unconscious, the scene in the ambulance played out in his mind’s eye as if he were watching a movie on the screen behind his own eyes. In fact, the angle Daniel saw it from was above; out of body, as if he were simply viewing a scene where an 18-year-old boy has been shot and is being rushed to the ER, and not as if it were actually his own lifeless body on a stretcher.
“This looks bad,” the paramedic with the clipboard said. “Any word on the shooter?”
“Cops put so many holes in that kid that if he drank a Coke it’d come shooting out in every direction.”
“Damn,” the first paramedic whistled. “I should probably wait to hear the whole story, but right now I’m looking at this kid here and thinking that the other guy got what he deserved.”
The second paramedic adjusted the IV running into Daniel’s arm, pulling a piece of tape off a roll with his gloved hand and securing the IV tube against Daniel’s skin. “Yeah, and it’s a shame about that teacher.”
“She didn’t make it?”
“Gone when they got to her,” he said quietly. “I guess she got shot in the stomach. She bled out before anyone got there.”
The ambulance hit a pothole and everything inside jostled. The sack of fluid connected to Daniel’s IV swayed on its pole. With the same hand, the paramedic reached out and touched Daniel’s arm again as a way of making the patient feel like someone was there. They’d been trained not just to offer medical care, but also to remember that every person who ended up in the back of their ambulance was an actual human being who belonged to someone. He applied a light pressure to Daniel’s arm that he hoped was reassuring.
As they wheeled into the short, curved driveway of the hospital, the paramedics started the process of readying Daniel for transport. The situation was critical enough that he’d have to be moved into surgery as quickly and smoothly as possible. There was no room for error.
The sounds and smells of a busy hospital penetrated the haze that Daniel’s mind had wrapped him in. He could feel the stretcher being wheeled down the hallway, and in a remote way, he knew that something unpleasant awaited him at the end of this ride.
“Prepping patient for x-rays and surgery,” said a female voice. “We’ll need to determine the entry point and find out where the bullet is lodged,” she said. “Do we know that it’s only one entry point?”
“We’ve checked him out, and there’s only one bullet hole,” said the same paramedic who’d decided that Blake had gotten what was coming to him.
“Couldn’t have gotten shot in a worse place, really,” the female voice said. “But he’s lucky, because Dr. Margin is on today and she’s the best neurosurgeon in the tri-state area.”
“Not sure this kid would see anything that’s about to happen as ‘lucky,’” said the paramedic. “But I’m pulling for him.”
“Thanks, Matt,” the woman said. She came in closer to Daniel, which he could tell because her voice was louder in his ear. “Hey,” she said gently. “I’m Stacy, and I’m going to take you to get an x-ray. You’re in good hands,” she said, squeezing his fingers for emphasis.
Daniel’s mind tried to process the voices and the words, but he’d lost the ability to view the situation he was in from a different vantage point. Now it was all blackness and echoing voices. And Stacy’s hand grasping his fingers. Stacy. She sounded nice. He wondered if she had kids, or a dog. Maybe a golden retriever. He’d have bet she had a husband. Someone who played on a baseball team on Friday nights and called her “Stace.”
And then Daniel wondered why he was able to have all the thoughts he was having but couldn’t even open his own damn eyes. Open! he shouted in his head. Sit up! Do something! You aren't dead! But as far as his ability to move and talk and think, he kind of was dead.
For Daniel, time started to move like a river. It flowed over and around him, and he had no concept of where it started or where it ended. Voices came and went, and he could feel his body moving slowly as the bed he was on was pushed through hallways and swinging doors. The overhead lights were visible through his thin, veined eyelids, but he was powerless to open them and see where he was being taken.
The sounds and routines of the operating room sprang to life around him as he lay motionless on the hospital bed. Sterilized instruments were placed in careful order on trays next to the operating table, and nurses and doctors scrubbed in behind a glass window, holding their hands up so they wouldn’t attract germs.
Dr. Margin entered the operating room. She backed through the swinging door, hands held in front of her as she waited for a nurse to snap her latex gloves into place.
“Music, please,” she said, looking at the nurse closest to the computer. “I think I’m in the mood for 80s today.”
“Tears for Fears?” the nurse asked, clicking her mouse.
“Sure.” Dr. Margin approached Daniel, looking at his still face. “Hmm,” she said pensively, scanning his head and taking in the wound on the side of his freshly shaved skull. “Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.”
The opening notes of “Head Over Heels” played through the speakers as everyone took their place in the operating room. Within minutes, they were ready.
Dr. Margin picked up the shiny silver instrument and held it in one hand as she took a deep breath and watched Daniel’s face. “Let’s do this.”