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She smiled and hugged me in thanks.

*

Time was getting tighter going into the finals and state exam, and two weeks before that most important test, we had to go on our ambulance rotations. We’d not only get some real field experience, but we’d also receive grades on how well we handled it. We had to pass the rotations because if we failed, we couldn’t progress to the exam. Bob had made sure to emphasize this point: pass the rotation or return to the beginning.

We had a choice of hospitals and times and would do a total of four eight-hour shifts. Mine were at night because I worked and attended other classes during the day, so I was assigned to University Hospital, North Site. I’d spend a day assisting in the emergency room, another on the bus, the next back in the emergency room, and the last night on the ambulance again. There were EMTs in the emergency room as well as on the bus, and Bob wanted to make sure we were exposed to both—just in case.

I stopped at the uniform and medical supply store; we’d also been instructed to wear the typical white uniform shirt and black uniform pants. After I spent more money than I expected and more time than I wanted to have one of the clerks measure my pants so they could be hemmed—otherwise I would have to roll them, which just looked terrible—I was ready to rock and roll: white shirt, black pants, work boots, and utility belt complete with all of the required tools. I had a cheapo stethoscope slung around my neck. It wasn’t a Sprague, which I really wanted, but at least it worked, and it was a neat aqua blue.

I showed up at the emergency room promptly at seven p.m. and was directed to the nurses’ station. Once there, I introduced myself to a harried nurse.

“Go get some coffee, um, Scott, Scotty? Scotts,” she directed, stumbling over my name as she read it off the clipboard in front of her. “It’s over there.”

“Scotty’s fine,” I assured her as she waved me in the direction of the staff lounge.

I walked into a room the size of a closet, but at least it held a small counter with a coffeepot, a sink with a cabinet over it, and a tiny refrigerator.

I found a cup, then poured some coffee and almost spit the shit out. It was black, bitter, burnt rocket fuel—thick enough to walk on, and it smelled like gasoline.

I dumped the cup and rinsed my mouth in the sink, then tossed the rest of the poison down there too—no clog would survive that.

After searching the cabinets I found the makings for a fresh pot, so I set it up while I waited, and when it was brewed, a woman walked in, blue scrubs and gray eyes—and a charcoal gray Sprague slung over her shoulder, the bell tucked into the pocket of her shirt.

She was slender, sharp, angular: beautiful. The couple of gray streaks that streamed through her wavy black hair did nothing to detract from how very attractive she was—in fact, they added, because those streaks perfectly reflected the color of her eyes.

“Hey,” she smiled at me as she walked over to the counter, “you make this?” She poured herself a fresh cup of java, then reached into the little fridge next to it for some milk.

“Yeah,” I answered as she doctored her cup, “that other stuff was for shit.”

She closed her eyes as she inhaled the steam that rose from her mug. “Smells great,” she said finally, then took a sip and opened her eyes in surprise. “Nice!” She took another swallow. “Very nice. Oh, I’m Trace, by the way.” She held out her hand.

“Glad you like the brew,” I answered and reached for her hand. “I’m Tori.”

She had a nice firm handshake and her skin was soft; her hand felt just the slightest bit cool in mine.

“Nice to meet you, Tori.” She held the mug up in salute. “We’ll have to keep you around here if you’re going to keep making coffee like this.”

I laughed and shrugged. “Actually, I’m supposed to be doing a rotation tonight, only no one seems to know what to do with me.”

Trace leaned her hip back on the counter and frankly examined me. For one naked second, I could see the flash of appraisal, approval, and even attraction in her eyes, and I grinned to let her know that I’d seen it, and it was fine by me.

The look she gave in return let me know that whatever came next from either one of us would be totally okay.

“Well,” she drawled, “you let me know if no one can figure out what to do with you—page me in respiratory therapy.”

“Will do,” I agreed. Nice. Very nice. An open door with a pretty woman. Every nerve in my body snapped to attention. The game was on.

Trace took another sip of her coffee, then put the cup in the sink. “You really do make good coffee,” she said as she grabbed for the doorknob. “Oh, hey, when’s your shift over?”

“I’m supposed to do eight hours, so I guess I’m here until three.”

“Hmm, why don’t you page me when you’re done, and I’ll treat you for coffee while you tell me all about your first time,” she grinned, a sharp flash of teeth I instantly liked, “in the ER.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I’ll do that.” Set.

“Cool. See you later, then?”

“Definitely.” Match.

Well, that was cool, I mused as I sat there and played with my mug. It had been about four weeks since Kerry and I had—ah, enough of that, and enough sitting there. I checked my watch, the required one with the sweep hand, as I walked back to the nurses’ station. Huh. I’d already been on duty for half an hour. Surely I could do something besides make a better supply of caffeine.

*

“Hey, Debbie,” I said, reading the tag of the woman who’d sent me to the lounge, “give me something to do. I’m supposed to practice stuff.” I grinned. “And as much fun as the coffee room is, I’d really like to make myself useful.”

Debbie finally peered up from her chart. “Great, then. Bed five, over there.” She pointed. “Get his vitals.”

“Will do,” I said, and hustled over to bed five.

Bob and the rest of the instructors had been prepping us for this. If we were on a rig, we’d take vital signs and get an idea of the paperwork everyone had to fill out, the PCRs—patient care reports. If we were in the emergency room, we’d also measure and monitor vital signs, wheel patients around to X-ray and such, and if it got really busy? Help the triage nurse.

So with those duties in mind, I wasn’t prepared to meet Mr. Wheeler—his name was written on the bag on the hospital tray table in front of him, in big, black Magic Marker letters: Mr. Wheeler.

“Hi, Mr. Wheeler,” I said as I walked in, “I’m Tori Scotts and I’m—” I stopped cold. This wasn’t Mr. Wheeler anymore. This man lay with his head back and eyes open, eyes that had the strangest cast. Before instinct prompted me to touch his hand, I knew. He was still warm, but Mr. Wheeler was dead, very dead, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Did Debbie really want me to take his vital signs? Did people do that in a hospital setting, just in case or something?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wheeler, I’ve got to find a nurse,” I said to the dead man. He couldn’t have been dead long, and what if something was there, like a soul or something, and it could hear? “But I’ll be right back,” I told the corpse. I felt a little stupid, but what if, just in case… Besides, I believed that whether or not some ephemeral, ethereal something existed, it would be very sad if a person left the planet disregarded and disrespected.

I walked back to the station, but Debbie was gone.

“Um, what am I supposed to do with the dead guy?” I asked the first passing nurse.

She stopped and stared at me a moment, then sighed, obviously exasperated. “This way,” she snapped out. “Judy!” she called as we hurried down the corridor between bits of mechanical parts and stretchers. “I need a morgue kit!”

Like magic, one flew at her head, and she snatched it out of the air as she hurried over to bed five with me behind her. “We need to strip him and zip him,” she said as she pulled the curtain back around.

“Huh?”

She opened the kit. “Take off his shoes and socks, and after we undress him, we’re going to cross his hands and feet,” she explained as I carefully unlaced a well-worn black oxford, “and we’ll put him in this.” She held up a white plastic shroud with a zipper that ran along its length. I’d seen them in class because every rig carried at least one morgue kit.

“Hey, Mr. Wheeler,” I said as I took his shoes off, “it’s Tori again. I’m taking your stuff off, and we’re going to put it in this bag for your family.”

I made sure I had gloves on before I took off his socks—dead or no, socks can be gross. I glanced up to see the nurse give me the eye as I continued to talk to the corpse.

I knew, because of all my classes, we weren’t supposed to believe in such things as God or spirit. Everything was accident and evolution and that was it, no God, no one pulling any strings, but what if there was more? I was rather embarrassed, because I couldn’t really let that spiritual sense go completely. I knew it was very unscientific, and one of my professors had said that to even
think
that there might be a God or some such thing was very ignorant, still, what if? And if there wasn’t, then no big deal; I was just talking to the inanimate like people talk to the television. And if there was, well…better to err on the side of compassion.

“Well,” I asked her as she efficiently stripped off his shirt, “what if he’s, like, listening or something somewhere, you know?”

I looked up to see her smile at me across Mr. Wheeler. “That’s not a bad idea, kid,” she said, “it’s not a bad idea at all.” She started to talk with him too.

After I carefully crossed his hands and placed a bit of gauze around his wrists so the ties wouldn’t cut into them, things got crazy.

Debbie tore the curtain back. “Scotty, we’ve got an MCI MVA coming in. Go out to the bay and help the crew.”

“Right, okay,” I agreed, but glanced back at the nurse I’d been working with.

“Got it from here, kid.” She smiled yet again, more warmly than she had when we started. “Go play with the wreck.”

“Thanks.” I waved and ran off with Debbie to the ambulance bay. MCI was a multicasualty incident, MVA meant motor vehicle accident.

This…was going to be interesting. I wondered if I’d remember how triage was supposed to work, if I’d remember the basic stuff I was supposed to know. I wondered if I’d get so grossed out I’d forget everything and throw up my coffee.

As we waited for the doors to open, the first stretcher came in—and organized pandemonium began. It held a female in her fifties having a severe asthma attack brought on by the stress of the accident.

Next was a male, approximately forty, fully immobilized and complaining of a headache.

A sixteen-year-old male with an open tib-fib fracture of the right leg called loudly for drugs—and while in some respects I didn’t blame him, under her breath Debbie told him to shut the fuck up, because we had more, all immobilized and ready for their dates with the X-ray machine.

Then the night really took off. Another male in his sixties with chest pain. A woman with nonspecific, wandering pain, but normal vital signs at least. A boy, aged two, whose sister had stuck a chicken leg up his nose and left the cartilage in his nasal passage as a souvenir. He didn’t cry at all until I had to help hold him during X-rays, and I was certain those films showed more of my hands than they did of his head, poor kid.

Then the drunk driver arrived: fifty-year-old male, immobilized, well-bandaged head trauma, chest trauma, and obviously agonal, meaning distressed and difficult, breathing. Bennie had ridden third man on this call, and her face was pale but composed as we helped transfer the patient from the stretcher to an available bed.

The crash crew materialized like magic—I couldn’t even tell at what moment they had been paged, and while I helped pass things to people and clear beds and stretchers, I got to watch as Trace dropped a tube down the man’s throat and hooked him up for ventilation before he was wheeled into surgery.

Trace hung back a moment. “You’re due for a break soon, you know.” She grinned at me as she stripped off her gloves.

I glanced at my watch—one a.m. How had so much time gone by? “You sure?”

Debbie walked by just as I asked. “Yeah, kid, you’re supposed to get a break—if you get a chance to take it,” she said, sounding tired. She glanced around the ER. Except for the steady noises from machinery and the background hum of people talking, things had finally calmed down.

“Why don’t you go for about forty-five minutes?”

I was about to agree when I saw Bennie stripping down the stretcher she’d helped wheel in, the two techs she’d come in with gone.

“Check me in ten?” I asked Trace.

Her eyes traveled from me to Bennie, then back again. “Sure,” she agreed. “I’ll come grab you in ten.”

“Great,” I answered and smiled, relieved. I didn’t want to blow her off at all; I just wanted to talk to Bennie—she didn’t look right. I held up my wrist and tapped my watch face. “See you in ten.”

“Cool.”

I hurried over to my classmate. “You all right?” I asked as I helped set the stretcher up with a fresh sheet.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Bennie said, looking everywhere but at me as we wheeled the stretcher back out through the bay doors to the rig.

We opened the back of the parked ambulance and lifted it in, then slid it into position, locking it in place.