make you feel better in a few minutes.”
“What do we do?” Kevin asked.
“We can’t do anything. Just get to the hospital.”
Murray continued to gulp for air, clutching his chest. As the truck sailed through a green light doing seventy, Kevin spotted a blue sign with a large capital H. Below it, another blue sign said two miles.
Dr. Jake Hammersmith studied the board, looking to see who could be admitted to make more room in Community North’s ER. In his new position as chief resident, he had to make the tough decisions. Maybe he could get Neurology to take the head trauma in room 3. It was really a toss-up; the man was babbling about miniature robots living in his brain, but Psych had already said they wouldn’t take him without insurance. Maybe if…
The ER door burst open and a man ran in, skidding to a halt in front of Jake. The man was covered in blood.
“I need help!”
“It’ll be okay,” Jake said as examined him for wounds. “What happened to you.”
“Not me! My dad! He’s outside! Come on!” The man ran toward the door, waving for Jake to follow.
“Peter!” Jake yelled. “Get a gurney outside, stat!”
He ran outside with the man. Peter was right behind him with the gurney.
A huge dualie was parked with the driver’s side next to the ER door. “What happened?” Jake said as he climbed into the truck.
A woman in the passenger seat had her arms around a large man who was unconscious. Both were soaked with blood.
“At least one gunshot wound to his chest,” the woman said. “He’s lost over two pints of blood. Possible hemothorax.”
“How about you two?” Jake said.
“It’s his blood,” she said. “We’re fine.”
Jake removed the bundle of torn clothing the woman had been using as a compress. He tore away the man’s shirt and inspected the wound. “You a doctor?” he asked the woman.
“Not yet. Just started my fourth year at South Texas.”
“What’s your name?”
“Erica.” She pointed at her male companion. “This is the patient’s son, Kevin.”
Jake didn’t waste time with formalities. “Kevin, is he on any medications?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s possible,” said Erica. “He has lung cancer.”
Kevin’s eyes widened. “What? How do you know that?”
Before she could answer, Jake said, “Kevin, what’s your father’s name?”
“Murray.”
Jake lightly slapped Murray’s face. “Murray, can you hear me?”
Murray nodded groggily, still struggling for air. Then he passed out again.
They carried Murray from the truck and placed him on the gurney. Jake kept pressure on the wound, knowing it wasn’t going to do much more than keep the gurney clean.
In seconds, they burst into the trauma room. Kevin started to follow them in. Jake was about to ask him to leave when Erica pulled him outside.
“They’ll take care of him,” he heard her say. “We’ll just be in the way.”
An orderly moved the portable curtained partition so the trauma scene couldn’t be viewed from the hall. Still, Jake knew that Kevin and Erica would be able to hear the commotion.
“On my count!” he said. “One, two, three!” They lifted Murray onto the trauma table, and the five doctors and nurses in the room were on him immediately, starting IVs, hooking him up to instruments, and intubating him.
Jake put the stethoscope to Murray’s chest listening for breath sounds. The med student was right about the hemothorax. Breath sounds were present on the right, absent on the left. Blood filling the chest cavity on Murray’s left was not letting his lung inflate.
“I need a chest tube,” Jake said. He kept talking while he inserted the chest tube. “Call the OR. Get a surgeon and a perfusionist ready.”
Once Jake had the tube in, blood came out in a torrent. For a moment, it seemed to subside but then it resumed.
“I’m losing the pulse,” one of the nurses said. “BP 60 over 40.”
“Tamponade?” the intern said.
“Let’s find out!” Jake said. “Where’s the pericardiocentesis tray?” If the bullet had nicked one of the coronary arteries, the pericardial sac would be filling with blood, resulting in cardiac arrest.
Jake eased a needle into the pericardial sac and withdrew the plunger. It filled with blood immediately. “Good call,” Jake said to the intern. The pressure of the blood on the heart wasn’t letting it pump. Jake continued to remove the blood. “Where’s Kirk?” Kirk Mannheim was the surgical resident on call.
“I paged him a minute ago, Dr. Hammersmith. Haven’t seen him.”
“No pulse,” said a nurse.
“Damn!” Jake said. “Start CPR. Give me an amp of epi. And get the paddles over here.”
For the next fifteen minutes, they continued to attempt resuscitation, but the blood loss had been too great. After listening for a heartbeat for the required 60 seconds, Jake had to call it. Time of death was 7:41 PM.
Jake threw his scrubs away and went to break the news to Murray’s son. He was surprised to see that Kevin and Erica weren’t still standing on the other side of the partition. He went to the waiting area, but they weren’t there either.
Jake stopped one of the orderlies.
“Did you see where this guy’s son and the med student went?”
“I think so. They went outside five minutes ago.” The orderly pointed at the ER loading doors.
Jake walked out onto the ambulance platform, thinking that he would see them smoking a cigarette or crying on the truck’s tailgate. He looked around for a minute, but the dualie was gone. They were nowhere to be seen.
It wasn’t until an hour later when the police came to investigate the shooting that Jake realized Kevin and Erica weren’t coming back.
CHAPTER 24
Soft lighting bathed the Houston Grill dining room as white-gloved waiters flitted around the room like bees tending the hive. The private dinner club was unusually crowded for a Monday evening due to an oil convention in town for the week. Executives found it a convenient way to elegantly entertain guests while charging it to their companies’ tab and taking the full allowable tax deduction. Many of the groups would later head to one of the numerous “gentlemen’s clubs” on Houston’s west side for further tax-deductible entertainment.
Clayton Tarnwell not only found the gentlemen’s clubs-actually high-class strip joints-to be useful for convincing business associates to partner with Tarnwell Mining and Chemical, but they were also a frequent source of his overnight companionship. The dinner club was adequate, but Tarnwell was not a gourmet. All he needed was a good steak, which he had finished twenty minutes ago. Since then, all he had been thinking about was getting on with the evening’s entertainment.
Milton Senders, the only one Tarnwell had invited from his company, knew about Tarnwell’s eagerness to get to the gentlemen’s club, so he hadn’t ordered dessert. Unfortunately, the three executives from Forrestal Chemical ate with infuriating leisure, lingering over Bananas Foster and their third bottle of Dom Perignon ‘57.
Eight days, Tarnwell thought, suppressing what would have been an out of place smile. Eight days from now, Clayton Tarnwell would be making his speech to the stockholders of both Tarnwell Mining and Chemical and Forrestal to praise the synergy the two companies brought to the merger. A speech in which he was to announce a revolutionary new process that would take advantage of each of the companies’ skills and make billions of dollars.
