Emergency Room (2 page)

Okay, when he was sixteen, and had a driver’s license, then he’d be able to do everything. No. All he could do was errands for his mother — pick up a quart of milk or take his sister to the orthodontist.

Fine. When he was eighteen, he’d be a grown-up; he’d go to college, vote, have a girlfriend, and be unsupervised.

Well, here he was, eighteen, at college, unsupervised, and what was he doing? Running errands.

When was this kid stuff coming to a halt? When did he actually get to be a grown-up?

Speaking of girls — although not, regrettably, girlfriends — he spotted Diana Dervane down the hall, on her way to check in. Her hair, shorter than his, was black and crisp and incredibly cute. Her cheeks were unevenly ruddy pink, as if she had just been working out. Diana always wore earrings so unusual he wanted to lean forward and study them. Then his thoughts would begin to spiral downward from her ears — throat, shoulder, breast…

“Volunteer,” said a passing nurse. She did not really look at Seth because he was merely a volunteer and she was not required to make eye contact with lowlifes. “Blood Lab,” she said, handing him a plastic bag labeled
BIOCHEMICAL HAZARD
. Inside, a tube of blood awaited analysis.

Seth yanked a size large pair of disposable gloves from one of the boxes lining the countertops and jerked them over his hands. The talcum powder with which they were lined sifted softly between his fingers. The first time he’d put these on, he’d had doctor fantasies so bad he almost took over the Trauma Room.

Seth managed to laugh at himself (not one of his strong suits) and took the plastic bag. He read the physician’s instructions on the form, but didn’t know the abbreviations. Trying to be casual and surprised, he glanced up when Diana was only a few steps away.

He was crazy about her, and last week had gotten up his courage to ask her out — furious with himself that it took courage and more furious that he had had to rehearse the question. Diana had said yes to the date, but she sure hadn’t said yes to anything else.

The evening was a disaster. Diana spent the whole time telling him how much he annoyed her.

It turned out that everything about Seth annoyed her. He even stood in the hall, Diana said, in an arrogant fashion. He spoke to the patients as if he were their doctor, not the volunteer pushing their stretcher to X-ray. He talked as if he were prescribing the medicine, not running to the pharmacy to get it.

He supposed that she had it right, especially the part about standing like a doctor. The medical students were nervous and hunched, listening hard for every crumb of knowledge. The residents were tired and hostile, working so hard they didn’t even have posture. But the doctors — the Attending Physicians who supervised the residents, the on-call specialists who arrived constantly, and the private doctors coming in for their own patients — they had a special walk.

Whether they were women or men, WASP, Jew, Chinese, Pakistani, Indian, or African, tall or short, plump or skinny, they were so very visibly
doctors
.

They possessed knowledge. They understood, they decided, they acted.

They knew.

Oh, how Seth wanted to know!

Diana met his eyes expressionlessly.

Seth plastered on his wide protective grin. In high school he had of course been voted Most Likely to Succeed, but he had also won Best Smile. He protected himself further by using the fewest possible out-loud syllables. He even skipped “hi” and said only, “Diana,” with a slight nod to accompany it. He felt slightly sick chatting with somebody who not only saw through him, but disliked what she saw.

Diana actually stopped and beamed up at him. If only he could analyze smiles the way he could analyze chemicals! Was hers, too, pasted on? Hiding affection? Hiding loathing? Had their difficult date been so meaningless to her she’d forgotten it, and this was just a courtesy, this smile that was making his heart leap?

He couldn’t help himself. His smile turned real just looking at her. She was so pretty. He loved being taller than Diana was. Okay, so it was sexist. The fact was that he felt more masculine, stronger and tougher, because she was little and he was big.

“So, Seth,” she said with a smirk, pointing at his gloved hands. “Playing doctor again tonight?”

Well, okay, at least he knew Diana’s smile was hiding contempt.

He managed to keep his own smile bright, although under the gloves his hands turned sweaty and it took a conscious effort not to clench them. He held up
BIOCHEMICAL HAZARD
. “Just taking the usual precautions.”

But she was already ignoring him, saying hello to the clerk to get her own assignments for the evening.

Where did she get this power to ruin his night? He could control his grades, his roommate, his parents.…Why couldn’t he control his emotions toward Diana Dervane?

Possibly because a girl like Diana could be put into a sickly pink volunteer jacket that hung wrong, was missing buttons, and had sagging pockets, and still be gorgeous.

Stop thinking gorgeous, he told himself. Instead think about changing nights. Come Tuesday instead of Monday. Then you don’t have to work with her. Think about what a pain in the neck she is.

Neck visions, however, brought Seth’s thoughts once more on a downward spiral.

T
HE BLOTCHY PINK VOLUNTEER
jackets were so hideous that Diana could only assume the color prevented people from stealing them. It was absolutely impossible to wear anything that would look decent with that shade. Even a plain white turtleneck looked awful, her small head sticking up out of the pink and white as if she really did have the neck of a turtle.

She attached her photo ID and hiked down long confusing corridors to the Emergency Room. Large when it was built, the hospital had acquired five major additions, connected by ells, above-the-road glass hallways, and underground tunnels. Diana loved thinking about everything that was happening here — every operation, every tragedy, every lab procedure, and every triumph. Most of all she loved knowing that one day she would be a medical student here.

Okay, so she was only a college freshman now. Just wait. She’d train at this very hospital and have the edge on everybody.

The ER was built like a letter H, with four treatment halls jutting off the control area: surgical, medical, psychiatric, and pediatric. Special rooms were set aside for eye injuries, broken bones, and police holding. Next to the ambulance arrival pad was the real excitement: the Trauma Room, where the most badly injured patients were rushed.

Rush
was the right word. It gave Diana a rush just to be here. Adrenalin spurted, making her hot and eager to see everything there was to see.

Of course, the instant she had to check in with the clerk, she would come down off the high. Meggie detested volunteers, especially college volunteers. They were just annoying do-gooders who got lost making pharmacy runs, and had to have their hands held when things got rough.

Diana turned down the final hall to see Seth standing between her and the desk clerk.

Wonderful. The humiliation of their only date made her cheeks burn and her temperature rise.

Seth was a hunk. Hair as black as her own, but longer, thicker, more casual. Eyes that burned blue, like some alien fire. Whenever their paths crossed, Diana found herself studying Seth inch by inch, starting at eye level, which for her, on Seth, was midchest. Seth was very buttoned up, and she imagined unbuttoning him.

If only he weren’t so arrogant! You couldn’t even apply to their college unless you were pretty full of yourself, but when it came to ego, you could stack Seth’s next to anybody’s. Seth was only a college freshman, but he already considered himself a medical student, a doctor, a Nobel Prize winner, and God.

Diana never talked to Seth without wanting to put him down.

Sure enough, she accomplished it first sentence out, which pleased her, and she moved right along to the desk clerk. “Here I am, Meggie,” said Diana cheerfully. “How are you tonight?”

Poor choice of question. Meggie was never well. Her feet hurt, her head ached, and her fillings fell out. She liked to take these problems out on healthy people, like, for example, this perky, bouncy little rich girl with the glowing cheeks.

Meggie actually smiled, which meant she had something unpleasant to assign. “Insurance,” said Meggie gloatingly, “needs a volunteer.”

Diana stared at Meggie. “
Insurance
? No way! Stuck filling out insurance forms?”

Who do you think I am
? (She just barely kept herself from saying that out loud.)
I don’t go to just any college
,
you know
!

Meggie heard every word even if Diana didn’t say anything. She smirked.

Seth’s grin remained in place like a computer spreadsheet.

Perfect for his personality, she thought.

“What’s
my
assignment, Meggie?” he said.

Seth looked terrific even in a salmon-pink jacket that didn’t fit. Possibly why Meggie was shipping Diana off to Insurance. The better to flirt with Seth. Well, Meggie could have him.

Meggie did not smile, which meant she had good news for Seth. “After you get back from the Blood Lab, Trauma needs a runner.”

Sexist! thought Diana, absolutely furious at Meggie. You’re giving him the good stuff because he’s cute and male. “I don’t want to do Insurance,” she said. I volunteered to help save the world, she thought, not help insure it.

Meggie shrugged. “I got no work for you down here.” Her enormous bosom strained against the shiny lime-green blouse she wore every Monday. Why couldn’t the woman expand her wardrobe? She certainly had no trouble expanding her waist.

Seth was laughing at Diana. “Hey, have fun,” he said. “Fill out an insurance form for me, huh?”

“How about I just lose you in the computer?” Diana stomped away, even though she was afraid. To reach Insurance, you had to go through the Waiting Room, a frightening hostile place Diana preferred to avoid.

Inner-city patients were okay when they were confined to stretchers and surrounded by techs and nurses and doctors, stuck with needles and fastened to machines. They weren’t people then, really, but patients, which was something else altogether. Their ages and races, criminal backgrounds or tragedy or confusion blended into the bedsheets and the ward activity. They were so much cleaner, somehow, in the treatment area. Out in the Waiting Room, however, you actually had to be among them; and out there, they were not yet patients.

Sullen, frightened, pain-ridden people sat tensely in turquoise plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Some would wait ten minutes to be seen and some would wait hours. They suffered every possible woe and wound, and had nothing to do in that Waiting Room but get angry that they had to wait.

Sick mothers had no baby-sitters and had to bring their small children; a gunfight over a drug sale brought in the families of both the shooter and the shot; babies screamed and children whined and people missed meals and work and appointments.

Diana passed through a sea of hostile black, Asian, Indian, Hispanic, and white faces. Again tonight there was a yawning policeman sitting next to a man in shackles. The room was so packed that Diana could not make a detour, but had to step over the man’s stretched-out legs. He smelled.

She reached Insurance alive, however, and tried to calm herself.

“A volunteer!” said a sexy black woman from behind a glass wall. She had fabulous fingernails and intricate hair. “Great. We’re swamped.” She actually smiled at Diana.

Diana had learned that her name tag meant nothing. Nobody would ever call her Diana. They would just shout, “Volunteer! Pharmacy!” In spite of past experience, though, Diana attempted conversation. “I’m always surprised that Mondays are so busy,” she confided. “I thought Friday or Saturday would be the night the ER gets swamped.”

“Nope. Nobody wants to ruin their weekend. People try to stay well or not think about it during the weekend. Monday it hits the fan.” Knika handed her a form covered with a nurse’s scribbles. “I’m Knika, Diana. You’ll help us get paper. We chase after every patient, or else find their family, and get the facts for the computer.”

Diana felt marginally better. She would at least know how everybody got hurt.

Knika listed the facts Diana would unearth. “Name, address, phone number, next of kin, and insurance or welfare status.”

Immediately Diana felt worse again. She could not care less about anybody’s insurance status. At this very moment, Seth was probably assisting on a GSW. (Actually neither Diana nor Seth had ever seen a gunshot wound, but they kept hoping.) “Do they have to have insurance to be treated?” she asked.

“Nope. This is City Hospital, honey. Everybody gets treated here, which is why it’s so crowded. If they don’t have insurance and they don’t have welfare either, write down ‘self-pay,’ even if you know perfectly well that nobody is ever going to pay the bill.”

WILLIAMS
, said the sheet which Knika thrust at her.
MALE. ETOH. FISTFIGHT. BROKEN NOSE. URGENT
.

Knika picked up the phone, having finished with Diana.

This was not what Diana considered extensive job training and she had no idea what to do next. Diana took her paper to the Admitting Nurse, whose name tag said Barbie. Diana could not imagine anybody who less resembled a Barbie doll. Nor could she imagine a Ken ever setting foot in this Waiting Room to meet her. “What do I do next?” she said to Barbie.

Barbie was incredulous. A volunteer dared talk to her? “I’m busy,” she said sharply. (Another Seth.)

“I’ll do the first one with you,” said an insurance clerk, popping out of her cubicle. She was barely five feet tall, slender, blonde, middle-aged. “I’m Mary. It seems a little zoo-y, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. It’s Monday. Mondays are zoos.”

In spite of the fact that everybody including children in the Waiting Room was bigger than Mary, Mary strode through the place as if it were empty. Diana felt brave enough to inspect the room. She actually focused her eyes. Yes. Everybody there qualified for zoo status. In fact, she would have felt a lot better about one man in the corner if he were in a cage.