the laryngoscope handle, was beginning to shake.
Eric reached up and depressed the woman s larynx a bit.
'There, look,' he said. 'That's her epiglottis right there. Just come up underneath it. Easy does it. That's it, that's it.'
Marshall began to nod excitedly.
'I've got it… I've got it,' he said, slipping the polystyrene tube into place. 'Sweet Jesus, I've got it.'
Quickly, the respiratory therapist blew up the balloon on the tube, attached the breathing bag, and began a series of rapid ventilations.
Eric checked the woman's chest with his stethoscope to ensure the proper placement of the apparatus. Then he looked up at Reed and smiled.
'Hell of a good shot, old boy,' he said.
Almost immediately the flow of blood began to abate. The woman's color improved. The relief and elation in the room were nearly palpable.
'Yes, sir,' Eric said, patting Reed on the shoulder, 'one hell of a shot.'
'What gives?'
The team turned toward the doorway, where Dr. Joe Silver stood appraising the scene.
Unable to contain her enthusiasm, the nurse rushed over to him.
'Dr. Silver,' she gushed, 'you just missed it. Reed just intubated this woman through a massive hemorrhage. One minute she was dying; the next..
She gestured at the patient, who now was being ventilated quite easily.
'Nice going, Reed,' Silver said, striding to the bedside.
'Actually, I don't think I could have done it without-'
'What was it? Steering wheel to the neck?'
'Exactly.'
'Gutsy move.'
'Eric here was the one who-'
'Does she have any other injuries?'
I've only had time for 'C-spines and a chest film, but they were normal.'
'Excellent, Reed. Really fine work. well then, why don't you get on with your secondary survey of her.' He turned to Eric. 'It's a madhouse out there.
Your stand-in, Dr. Darden, has apparently forgotten how frantic our kind of work is. He left to examine his patient after seeing about three people in the time we see ten.'
I,ll get on it now,' Eric said.
'It doesn't look as if you ever had to leave.'
Eric started to respond, then just nodded and left the room.
The flow of patients into the E.R. slowed, then virtually stopped.
With Joe Silver pitching in, Eric was caught up in less than two hours.
The E.R. chief gave no indication that he knew of Eric's role in the Garber woman, s resuscitation. Instead, he told almost anyone who would listen about Reed Marshall's heroics. Eric was sure that Reed had spoken up for him, but it was clear that Silver had heard only what he wanted to hear.
With a few final words to the triage nurse, Eric headed down the hall to his office, his back and legs aching from the long day. He glanced back at the front desk, where Joe Silver was orchestrating the care of what patients remained, and tried to imagine what life would be like for him should he be forced to leave White Memorial.
He entered the office and shut the door. In almost a fugue state, he pulled the envelope from the lower drawer of his desk and held the fine caduceus pin in his hand.
From beyond the door he heard the sounds of the hospital. He deserved the promotion. The events in Trauma Two merely underscored that truth.
He deserved it, and yet it seemed more than likely that in a matter of days, he would be looking for work.
He ran his finger over the pin. Putting it on would obligate him to nothing. If the work Caduceus was doing was unacceptable, he could simply refuse to participate.
Eric's pulse was raging in his ears as he ignored persistent pangs of uncertainty and fastened the caduceus to the lapel of his clinic coat.
Between diving once or twice a day and running five miles several times a week, Laura Enders was in the best shape of her life.
Even so, every muscle in her legs ached as she left the subway and climbed the stairs from the Charles Street station to the White Memorial overpass.
She had spent her first full day in the city-two days ago-making countless lists of the places she would go, and locating those places on her map. Then, late that evening, she had picked up the fliers at the printer and begun her search in earnest, planning to work her way, one at a time, through the grids she had drawn on her map. By eleven the next night she had walked at least twenty miles and had left posters with two hundred bartenders, policemen, hotel workers, hospital clerks, and receptionists.
The fliers, standard 81/2 by 11, black-on-white, had come out reasonably well, although the blowup of Scott's face was grainy, and flatter than she would have liked. She had stopped by Bernard Nelson's office and left half a dozen with his frowzy receptionist, who accepted them while barely missing a stroke in filing her nails.
It was nearing nine in the morning, and for the first time since her arrival in Boston three days before, the sun was shining. Charles Circle was alive with traffic, ambulances, joggers, and streams of pedestrians headed from several directions toward the hospital. On a whim, Laura stopped in at the Charles Street jail and left off a flier.
Then she fell in with the crowd and followed a stretcher through the emergency doors into White Memorial.
She had been to the emergency rooms of two hospitals the previous day and was impressed by how busy each had been. But compared to White Memorial, they were serene. Everything and everyone in the broad, fluorescently lit receiving area seemed to be in motion. The scene reminded her of the teeming life above a coral reef.
Three stretchers, each with a patient and two ambulance attendants, were lined up along one wall.
A group of what looked like medical students were clustered in a doorway, listening intently to an older physician. Nurses and doctors in scrub suits crisscrossed to and from the broad semicircular reception counter, dropping off charts, picking up laboratory slips, or just pausing to talk. Behind the counter two women and two men jockeyed past one another, answering phones, responding to questions, and logging patients in and out of rooms diagrammed on a huge white acrylic tote board.
Laura took a minute to gauge which of the four seemed the least harried.
She settled on a slight, pale man with. ming sideburns and an easy manner that suggested he was a veteran at his job. Then she timed her approach to coincide with his rotation from the tote board to the counter.
'Help you?' he asked.
'I hope so.' Laura pulled two fliers from her shoulder bag and set them in front of the man. -my name is Laura Enders. I'm trying to find my brother, Scott. I was hoping there might be a place where I could put up one or two of these.'
'Have you checked to see if he's been a patient here?' the man said, scanning the sheet with no sign of recognition.
'No. No, I haven't.'
Laura cursed herself for neglecting to do that at the two previous hospitals she had visited. At the same time, she pictured the posters she had left off crumpled in wastebaskets beneath counters similar to this one.
'Well, why don't you let me call the record room and see if they have anything. Have a seat over there and take in the show.'
Relieved, Laura settled in a blue molded-plastic chair off to one side.
At first she focused on the patients, some clutching wounded or aching parts, some strapped to wheelchairs, and some, it seemed, just hanging around. Gradually, though, her attention shifted to the doctors. Most of them, especially those in scrubs, were her age or younger. And all of them, men and women alike, looked exhausted and
