Page 33 of Black Wave

“Already done, Boss.”

“Good.” I shake my head in agreement. “Now, on to more important things. Your hand? How is it? Do you need treatment?”

He nods his head yes.

“Okay then, I’ll accompany you.”

Gus tries to protest. “Boss, you don’t have to do that. I know you are busy here. I can get one of the other security personnel to take me. I’ll be fine.” He starts to walk to the door.

“Gus, you are not just hired help. You’re my friend. I’ve known you my whole life, and I said I will take you.” I pat his shoulder as we walk out.

We walk into the emergency department, and it is a fucking zoo. As we walk to registration, someone is vomiting into a bucket. The clerk is kind, despite the craziness of this place on a Friday night. She looks at the blood dripping from his hand and frowns.

“He was stabbed, and the wound is deep,” I tell her. “It hasn’t stopped bleeding.” She looks a little queasy, and I think that perhaps this isn’t the best job for her, but I keep my thoughts to myself. “We might need some more…” I pause to look over at Gus. “Gauze, maybe?” He nods without saying anything, looking back at the lady.

She visibly gulps and nods. “I think maybe I’ll put you in one of the rooms in the back, but let me get you to the triage nurse so they can look at you and make that determination. Just a second.” She gets up and walks away.

As she does this, a lady in cuffs with a police escort falls back and hits her head on the floor. The ‘thwack’ that sounds across the room makes others gasp, and one child who witnessed thefall starts screaming. We stare at this clusterfuck and shake our heads.

“Yep, a fucking zoo,” I comment aloud. Gus grunts in agreement.

Staff come out from behind the locked door and gather the woman in cuffs onto a backboard. One of the nurses yells at the officer to take the cuffs off. I have to admire these nurses. They have probably seen it all. It takes a special kind of person to have to deal with this level of shit on a daily basis. A couple of people place her on a stretcher and wheel her in through the doors, followed by the annoyed-looking police officer.

A man who must be the triage nurse tells me to come through a locked door displaying a green light as he holds his badge up to it, allowing us entry. We get up and proceed to follow him through the door. Once we get in there, he notices a trail of blood coming from the door to the chair he asked Gus to sit in.

“Fuck me,” he mutters as he runs his hand through his hair. “Follow me,” he mumbles in resignation. “No need to have you bleeding all over the place, and I need to unwrap that anyway.”

“Fucking perfect,” I say in agreement.

We follow the tall nurse into one of the bays that is big enough to fix a few stab wounds to the hand or other body parts tonight.

“I’ll give this to the nurse assigned to this area”—he smiles maliciously as he continues speaking—“who’ll be in soon. If you think you’ll pass out, come get someone.” He glances my way before leaving.

Gus nods also, but we know that won’t happen. This isn’t our first rodeo, and it’s not as if he was shot in the chest. I think we are both remembering that time when only an inch over for the gunshot wound that went through his chest could have killed him. Luckily, the bullet happened to miss important structures and vessels. Otherwise, it would have been a very differentscenario, and likely that we wouldn’t be here today. Getting his hand stitched is nothing in comparison, but no one needs to know that.

About ten minutes later, the nurse comes into the trauma bay with what I assume is Gus’s chart and, without looking at us, announces that her name is Emma, and she will be the nurse caring for him. She halts when she finally turns and looks in our direction. She looks right at me and drops the chart along with whatever she was going to say. One hand goes to cover her mouth as she gasps in shock, while I notice the other hand goes to the necklace I gave her a decade ago before she vanished from my life, but there she is, a vision from every dream I’ve had over the years made flesh and now standing before me.

Gus watches this exchange but doesn’t comment. I stand and walk around the equipment to get to her. She stays where she is, and I look at her hand holding her necklace. I tower over her, and I realize how little she is. She looks up at me with those striking green eyes I have pictured in my mind over the years. The mental pictures that haunt my every thought and when I try to sleep at night stay with me in my dreams.

She sees me looking at her, holding my necklace. I break the silence. “Is that the necklace I gave you? You still wear it?”

She realizes she is holding it and lets it go. Her eyes are a little teary, and I instinctively want to keep her and wipe away the heartache about to spill from her eyes.

She swallows. “I never took it off. I’ve worn it since you gave it to me and held on to it when I never saw you again.”

She looks down, and I grab her chin and raise it to look at me again. I always want her to look at me so I can get lost in those emerald-colored eyes. I need her to look at me so she can see the truth.

“I tried to return to you, but I had to honor our family’s wishes—your family’s wishes, too. I thought it was what youwanted. Had I known, I would have come to you sooner. I would have reached out to you after your high school graduation.”

She steps back and turns around, not looking at me. I walk over and grab onto her, spinning her around. “What is it, Emma? Is there something wrong? I heard about your parents...” I let my words trail off.

She looks up at me. “Yes, but first, let’s fix your friend here.”

I don’t like the redirection of this conversation, but I’ll play along for now. “How do you know he is my friend, not my employee?” I want to know this girl’s thoughts and how her mind works. She’s all grown up now.

She laughs. A hint of humor touches her eyes as she looks at me and over at Gus, who still hasn’t said a word, just staring at what I am sure is an amusing and conflicting exchange between Emma and me.

“Well,” she continues, “if he was just your employee, then I bet you wouldn’t be standing here personally seeing to his medical care.” She raises an eyebrow, challenging me to deny it.

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