Page 1 of Tasting Fire
1
Every day wascrazy in the Baltimore General ER. Some days, it was merely batshit. Others, it was coked-up honey badger.
Today qualified as full-on HB level.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Dr. Emerson McKay chanted as she carefully navigated an intubation tube down the throat of a kid who, in no version of this world, should be lying on a hospital bed. “Someone page Dr. Zopher!” He was the best trauma surgeon in the hospital.
“Done,” Susan, one of Emmy’s favorite nurses, said as she finished hanging packed red blood cells and inserting a line into the boy’s arm.
Although David Hernandez had been breathing—barely—when he was brought in, things had degraded as soon as he was transferred off the stretcher. A gunshot to the chest would do that to a person, especially someone who didn’t weigh in at more than eighty pounds. The boy’s brown skin tone had leached away to a sickly yellow, and now he was completely unresponsive.
Once she had the tube in, Emmy tried to staunch the flood of blood coming from the entry wound in the boy’s chest. They’d found no exit wound, which meant a bullet was still lodged in that little body somewhere. “He needs to get to the OR now.”
But with her years of professional experience and the heavy feeling in her heart, she knew it wouldn’t matter. He still wasn’t breathing and blood was raining from his chest, down the bed, and onto the floor.
“Dr. McKay, he’s gone.” Susan said in a soothing tone, one a person might use with a wounded animal.
Emmy’s hands stilled and she took a shuddering breath. A glance up at the clock and she said flatly, “Time of death, 2207.”
From out in the hallway came a flurry of crying and fast-paced Spanish and English. “Mijo. Where is my Davido?” A wailing woman not much bigger than the boy on the bed came bull-charging into the room, pushing aside hospital staff twice her size. She took one look at her son, and it was if all the bones in her body were suddenly yanked out.
Emmy caught her before she hit the floor, smearing bloody handprints all over the woman’s shirt. “Someone take her and any other family members to an empty room. I’ll be out to talk with them in a few minutes.”
Then she took a last look at her doomed patient and gently closed his eyes. “Lo siento,Davido.”
In the staff restroom, Emmy ducked her head to keep from looking at her reflection while she was cleaning up. But it didn’t require a mirror to tell her that her normally neatly braided hair was like cotton candy during a North Carolina summer, sticking to her face and neck even though it was February and in the thirties outside.
She smoothed it back, but the motion didn’t make her feel any steadier about talking with David’s family. It didn’t matter how many times she’d broken news like this. It never, ever, became easier.
She couldn’t blame her hair for resisting.
She wanted to ditch her composure, too.
But working in the ER didn’t afford her that luxury. She had to stay calm when others were chaotic. Stoic when others were unsettled. Detached when others were dying.
Screw detachment.
What she needed was a few minutes of lose-her-shit. But that couldn’t happen even if she didn’t have to face a devastated family, because there was no place private enough tonight. Every bed was filled, and someone might walk into the break room or medication room if she was indulging in an emotional meltdown there.
“Breathe,” she whispered to herself as she strode out of the restroom and caught Susan’s eye.
“I put them in that little alcove near room one. That was the best I could do.”
Unwilling—ever—to look down on the family, Emmy sought out David’s mother and knelt to take the woman’s hands. “Mrs. Hernandez?”
“Si.Yes.” The words came out on a moan of pain.
The man beside her said, “I’m Manuel Hernandez, David’s father. My son, he will be okay?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez”—Emmy looked directly into their faces—“we did everything we could, but David’s injuries were too severe. He died.”
The woman’s grip on Emmy’s hands was downright painful, but she didn’t flinch. The pain was the least she could bear when these people had just lost their son. When Mrs. Hernandez finally released her and collapsed against her husband, Emmy rose and said, “I’m so very sorry.”
She rounded the corner out of their sight and used the wall to brace her body as she closed her eyes. Just a quick second. She could allow herself that.
“You should never say ‘I’m sorry’ to the family.” The sound of Oliver’s faint Boston Brahmin accent made Emmy’s back tense. “It implies fault.”
She opened her eyes to face him. Somehow, his dark good looks and lean body always took her by surprise. Handsome was too pedestrian a description for Dr. Oliver Amory. He looked as if he’d just stepped off a runway showcasing the newest in medical fashion. Crisp white coat, glossy black loafers, and a Burberry plaid tie secured with a double Windsor knot. Never a single because that would’ve thrown off the symmetrical perfection that was Oliver.
