PROLOGUE
| June 24 1998
THE WIDE DOORS at the emergency entrance flew open as a metal gurney was wheeled in by a team of shouting paramedics. A priest slipped in behind it; a state policeman blocked anyone else who shouldn't have from entering, shouting himself to be heard above the noise. Several doctors and nurses joined the party wheeling the gurney into the emergency room; the priest was held out as the doors shut behind him. He wasn't there for last rites. The trooper came along and quietly ushered him away to the waiting room. Their patient didn't look too good. The crash hadn't been disfiguring, but it had been bad. A wide gash ran across the right side of his forehead; blood was running down into his eyes and over his face. That part looked much worse than it was. His arms were broken, and judging from the bruises the doctor in charge assumed he must have some pretty sore ribs, if not broken ones. A nurse stepped forward and cut open his shirt, neatly slicing through one of the chains around his neck. Someone hooked up a heart monitor while they were hastily examining him. The beep-beep-beep, usually so steady, was fluttering now, rapid and then more rapid still, slowing and speeding up again. "His blood pressure's dropping," a nurse reported. "No wonder," the head doctor muttered. "Paul, tell them to get ready down the hall. I want to give him a CAT scan. I don't like the look of his head..." He broke off as the beep-beep-beep did the same, flickering, growing faint, tapering out into a long, high-pitched drone. "He's coding," the nurse said, unnecessarily. "Damn." He'd been hoping against this. "Get the defibrillator over here." The machine was already nearby. The doctor grabbed the paddles and rubbed them together. He didn't like the thought of using them with the possibility of broken ribs. Yet there was nothing else he could do about it. "Clear," he shouted, and pressed the paddles down to the patient's chest. The patient jerked, his hands balling into fists, and slumped back. The high droning of the heart monitor continued. "Damn it," the doctor muttered again. "Turn it up. Clear!" He pressed down the paddles again. Again their patient jumped, sank back, his head lolling to the side. Someone had put on oxygen mask over his mouth and it seemed to cover half his face. His eyes remained closed; nothing changed. Feeling just a little bit desperate now--he, at least, knew who the patient was, had seen him on TV before--the head doctor tried again. All he earned was another convulsive jerk. The heart monitor's droning was drilling into his brain. He glanced up at the clock, told himself not to, and looked down. "Turn it up," he said again, knowing it wouldn't help. He tried a fourth time, and when that didn't work, a fifth time, though he believed five was an unlucky number. Their patient remained unchanged. He sighed and set the paddles down, glancing up at the clock again. He'd dreaded this. "Call it," he said. Outside in the hallway the priest paced back and forth, not too far from the waiting room. He hadn't wanted to sit and wait. It just made him more anxious. He couldn't go down near the emergency room either; the state trooper stood nearby, keeping an eye on both the door and on him. He knew it was just the policeman's job; the cop did him a favor by not granting him any sympathetic looks. Sympathy implied there was something worth being sympathetic for. Right now he preferred not to think that. He lifted his head and froze in his tracks. A doctor--one of those he'd seen attending to the man they brought in--was coming down the hallway towards him. He was pulling off his gloves; the priest didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. He decided it must be the latter, judging from the look on the doctor's face; he felt his legs growing weak and put out a hand to the wall to stop himself from falling. The trooper caught his arm and helped him stand; together they watched the doctor approach. In the emergency room, most of the people were clearing out, snapping off gloves, murmuring to each other as they went. A couple of interns worked at cleaning the place up a little bit, kicking bloodied rags to one side of the room. The heart monitor, which no one had bothered to disconnect, droned on. One of the interns sighed and stooped to pick up a scalpel that had fallen from the instrument tray, being careful not to cut himself as he did so. He started to stand up. As he did so he was sure he must have done something--though he didn't know what--terribly wrong. Their patient--the one they'd quit working on several minutes earlier--jerked again as if he'd been shocked, sucking in a choking breath like someone who was held underwater being allowed to surface. The intern yelled and backed away; the heart monitor jumped back to life, its beep-beep-beep fluttering, failing, growing stronger again, rapid but steadying. "Did you touch the defib?" the other intern asked, before he too heard the monitor and let his jaw go slack. The first intern stepped cautiously forward and--as he didn't know what else to do, he trusted himself more than some machine--pressed his fingers to the patient's neck. He didn't have to. He could see the man's chest rising and falling, albeit with some difficulty. The guy was breathing. "Get Dr. Penn back here!" he shouted, and his companion dashed out of the room. Out in the hallway the priest felt the policeman squeeze his arm; he'd been ready to faint but the motion steadied him. He took a breath and stood up straighter, looking the doctor in the face. The doctor hesitated a little before coming up and standing before them. The priest noticed the blood on his gloves and felt faint inside again, knowing whose blood it was. He sensed the trooper behind him and attempted to find his voice. He didn't have to. His look must have said all. The doctor sighed and averted his eyes momentarily to the floor. He spoke the two words the priest had been dreading most. "I'm sorry." He shook his head; the priest would have staggered back had the policeman not been there. "We did everything we could. There wasn't anything else we could do for him." The priest stared at him, having to struggle to find his voice now. When he did speak it was so faint he could barely hear himself. "...When?" It hadn't been what he was going to ask; Why, what, how, maybe, but not when. The doctor didn't look at his face this time. "12:07." He put out a hand. "Like I said, we did absolutely everything we could--" He broke off, hearing the sound of someone running coming from behind him. He turned to see one of the interns who had been in the emergency room jogging his way. His face was ashen white; there was a smear of blood down his front. "Doc," he gasped. "I think you better come see this." The doctor turned away from the cop and the priest--they both followed--and jogged back down the hall to the ER. As soon as he pushed open the doors he thought he was hearing things; the heart monitor was beeping, an exhausted-sounding but steady beep, and he could hear the patient's breathing through his oxygen mask. He glanced at one of the interns, who shrugged. "He just took in a breath and his heart started up out of nothing. Neither of us did anything. I don't know how it happened." The doctor looked back at their patient, lying still and unconscious--but alive. "Get him down to the CAT scan," he said, his voice faltering. "I want to check out his head injuries." The interns unhooked the heart monitor--its sudden stillness filled the air louder than the beeping--and wheeled him out of the room. The trooper took the priest's arm again and pulled him aside as they went past. The priest stared after them; he felt like crossing himself, but somehow couldn't summon the strength to raise his hand. He watched till they disappeared from sight. The doctor left the emergency room and came towards them, glancing up at the clock as he did so. 12:21. He turned back to the other two, shaking his head. "I don't know what to say," he said, rubbing his hands together. "That's the first time that's ever happened..." "He's okay? He'll make it now?" The doctor gave him an odd, almost suspicious look. "I'm not sure yet. But it looks like his heartbeat's steady, his breathing's normal... We'll have to do a CAT scan to find out how bad it is. And I think he has broken ribs so we'll have to check for punctured lungs. But I think he's pulled out of it for now." "For how long?" A sigh; the doctor rubbed his eyes. "I really can't say, but I'll guess that if he makes it through the next two days he'll be out of the woods. As to when he's going to wake up, I don't know. That could be anytime." He looked up at them again, making eye contact. "Look, in all the years I've worked here I've never seen anything like that. I've heard of people coming back from the dead, but I thought that was just zombies and stuff. Your nephew's got to be a real fighter to make it through all this." The priest smiled faintly, his face drawn in the bright light of the hallway. "You don't know Damien," was all he said. |
CONTINUE
THE TIES THAT BIND
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