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............Part
20.......,
"Can we see him, Doc?" Bellingham asked Mike Morton.
"Just for a few minutes," Morton crossed his arms. "He's going to surgery
shortly to stabilize his spinal fracture."
Bellingham and Dwyer entered the treatment room. They stared, transfixed
at the sight of their injured colleague.
Brice lay on the stretcher, eyes closed. Multiple bruises and cuts littered
his face, and upper body. His cracked glasses sat on the counter. A sheet,
as pale as Brice's skin, covered his lower body. He opened his eyes and squinted
at Bellingham. "Who's that?" he asked weakly.
"It's me, Craig," Bellingham leaned closer to Craig. "Your partner."
"I can't....I can't hear you!" sobbed Craig. He closed his eyes tightly.
A tear slid down the side of his face. "Go away!" He lashed out with his
right hand.
Bellingham caught Brice's hand and held onto it tightly. He glanced at Dwyer,
who shifted uncomfortably. "Get me some paper."
Dwyer picked up a lab slip and turned it over. He took the vital sign sheets
off of the clipboard and put the paper on it. Dwyer handed it to Bellingham,
who released Brice's hand and wrote furiously.
Bob tapped Brice on the shoulder.
"I said, GO AWAY! You don't really care about me!" Craig shook his head.
"Nobody does!"
Bob tapped Craig on the shoulder. He held the clipboard close to Brice's
face.
Craig opened his eyes and looked angrily at Bellingham. "I said..." He stopped
short when he read the message. "Do you mean it?"
Bob nodded and grasped Brice's outstretched hand.
"What did you write?" Dwyer asked.
Bob gave Dwyer the clipboard. Printed neatly on the stark page was the message:
"We're not going anywhere, Brice. We care."
"Gage..." Brice asked, "How's Gage?"
Bob shrugged.
***
"Finally," sighed Brackett as he stared at the defibrillator burns that dotted
Johnny's chest.
"It's a good thing you found him when you did, Kel," said Dr. Lambert, the
Neurosurgeon, who worked through a long incision in Johnny's skull. "Suction."
He took the suction instrument and stuck one end of it in the surgical field.
"With the size of this clot, he would have herniated and died by the time
she got him to the car." He shook his head. "He's going to have one hell
of a headache when he wakes up."
"If he wakes up, you mean, " Brackett said. "It took us a long time to get
him back. I just hope he's not a vegetable."
"I don't think he will be," replied Dr. Lambert. "He's young and healthy,
plus we've kept his body temperature very low for the surgery." He paused.
"I'm ready to close. Let's start re-warming. Sutures." He dropped the used
suction onto the instrument stand and accepted the clamp holding the fine
silk thread. "Imagine, I never would have believed that Alicia would just
go off the deep end like that. She seemed like such a nice girl. She was
never like that when we went out."
"You dated her?" asked Brackett. "I didn't think she was your type."
Dr. Lambert shrugged as he carefully placed the sutures. "She asked me out
and I don't know why I accepted, but I did. Maybe it was because I was flattered
that a good-looking young woman would ask me out. Anyway, by the end of our
first date, we ended up at my place. I thought we really had something going.
She was great in bed, but one
day, she stopped returning my calls, and wouldn't talk to me when I stopped
upstairs to see her." He dropped the clamp on the stand. "She said she'd
met someone else. Stapler."
"How long ago was that?" asked Kel as he suctioned blood from the incision
site, then dropped the suction head onto the instrument tray. He held the
incision together as Dr. Lambert closed the wound.
"About a year ago," replied Lambert. "Why?"
"That's when we started dating."
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