was stumbling from side to side like a prizefighter about to go down for the count.
But he did not go down.
Instead, he stepped off the curb and into traffic. Nick, closing the gap between them rapidly, saw the bus that was barreling through the rain toward Campbell from the right. His instantaneous estimation told him that his patient was better than even money to be dead in a matter of seconds. But his mind’s eye had locked on to something else as well-Sarah, coming from the OR, moving unaware across the path of a careening pickup truck, whose driver had no intention of stopping. The image of her being slammed in the midsection by the pickup froze him at the curb for what seemed an eternity.
Suddenly, he broke free of the paralyzing image. With no real plan, fully expecting to be killed, he charged into the street. Campbell was just about in the location between the headlights where Sarah had been when she was hit, but there was still a gap between the man and the massive bumper of the bus.
As he dashed across the road, Nick glanced to his right enough to see that the driver had spotted them and begun to react. She instinctively pulled the wheel to her left, just as Nick launched himself at Campbell, catching the half-naked addict by the waist. The two men pitched face-forward onto the rain-soaked tarmac and slid ahead half a dozen feet, past the speeding bus and into the next lane of traffic.
Brakes and tires screeching, the bus rose up on the driver’s side wheels as it skidded sideways. For several terrible seconds, it hovered motionless, the front and rear wheels on the right side well off the road, its full length now at a right angle from the direction in which it had been headed.
Nick’s chin snapped against the pavement and instantly split open. Dazed, he still managed to hold on to the two syringes. The SUV that had been following behind the bus spun out, with its passenger side wheels also lifting off the road. It smacked against the rear end of the bus. The impact kept both vehicles upright, and sent them skidding away from the two prone figures.
Nick rolled Campbell over. The addict was unconscious now, breathing slowly and sonorously. Drops of blood from Nick’s chin landed on the man’s chest and were instantly washed away by the pelting rain. On all sides, cars had managed to stop, forming a cordon around the two men.
Campbell’s respirations were getting shallower and more widely spaced. It was possible the problem was internal bleeding and not a drug overdose, but as things were, in this spot, one condition was treatable, one was not. Nick doubted the man was getting effective ventilation, which meant the four-minute clock of brain death had started. Something had to be done. First, though, he had to get some air into Campbell’s lungs. The addict’s pulse was faint, and no more than twenty beats a minute. Tilting Campbell’s head back, Nick closed off the man’s nose and administered several mouth-to-mouth breaths.
The bus driver and a passenger had hit the street and were charging across to them. Many others were closing in as well, a number of them with open umbrellas. Nick took the syringe of Narcan and fixed it into the IV. The slight flow of blood from the end of the plastic cannula told him the line hadn’t clotted off, or worse, been pulled out of the vein.
“Hey, what are you doing?” an onlooker called out.
Suppressing any number of snide responses, Nick emptied the Narcan and then the flumazenil into Campbell.
“I’m a doctor from the medical van over there,” Nick said. “I need someone to grab his ankles and help me bring him back to our clinic. Keep your hands on his pant legs and away from that wound.”
It was Eddie Thompson, breathless from his sprint across the street, who took the addict by the armpits and snatched him up as easily as the crazed man had knocked him down just a few minutes before.
“Just take care of that IV,” Nick said, pressing his sleeve against his chin. “Sorry about your bus, ma’am. That was a hell of a piece of driving. I’ll tell your boss.”
CHAPTER 7
The scene as comatose Mike Campbell was carried to the aft examining room of the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit would most certainly not have made the final cut in any Norman Rockwell selection process. Everything in the RV was wet-either with rainwater, mud, coffee, or blood.
Seated at their spots by the table, the two remaining students from Nick’s small class looked considerably more sanguine than Phillip MacCandliss, who was slouched in the driver’s chair, wrapped in a blanket that Junie had probably provided for him. His jaunty cap was gone, and his thinning, razor-cut hair was matted with mire. Janus Fielding stood to his right, leaning against the window, his expression appearing as if he might have dropped from the sky and landed in the Emerald City of Oz.
Comfortable with Junie’s ability to handle this, or almost any other medical situation, Nick paused as he was about to head to the rear of the van.
“Sorry about that,” he said to MacCandliss. “You okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. Do I look okay?”
“Nope. Now that you mention it, you don’t look okay at all. Sorry I asked.”
“Mr. Fielding is taking mental notes on all this, Garrity. He’ll be filing a report on the bush league operation you two are running here. He knows, as do I, that every one of these unfortunate men and women would be better off in an emergency ward or a city-run clinic. I don’t think that even in the weakest ER in the city you would find a doctor chasing his patients out into the street. You could have gotten any number of people killed. And for what? To save that… that cave dweller.”
“Well, we can talk about this another time. I’ve got to get back there and see what I can do for our patient.”
“What you can do, Garrity, is what you should have done when that wretched fellow first walked into this sad excuse for a clinic-you should have called nine-one-one.”
Nick took several steps toward the rear of the RV, then paused and looked back over his shoulder.
“You know, that’s an excellent idea, MacCandliss. I’m glad my nurse did it as soon as we realized how bad off the man was.”
At that instant, the heavy night was pierced by the sirens of an approaching rescue squad and police cruisers.
“WELL, DOC,” Junie said, “these Steri-Strips will hold until we can get you to a surgeon-maybe even a plastic surgeon. That is some impressive gash you gave yourself.”
“Nonsense. This mug needs a plastic surgeon like a warthog needs a beautician. Let me dismiss my class and check on the people who stayed around in the bus stop. Then we can talk about whether or not I need to be sewn up.”
“It’s still oozing. Look, do what you want. There’s just too much testosterone floating around here for me.”
As usual, the paramedic and EMT had done a stellar job under difficult circumstances. In what seemed no time at all, they had gotten Campbell onto oxygen, cleaned up his old IV and redressed it while simultaneously starting a second one, evaluated and dressed the wound in his side, and begun treatment to raise his blood pressure and oxygen saturation.
“We’re not going to have to intubate him at this point,” the paramedic said. “I think you saved his life by getting the Narcan and flumazenil into him when you did.”
“Aw, shucks,” Nick said.
“And I agree with you that the wound doesn’t look too bad.”
“Stand over here and say all that again,” Nick responded, gesturing toward the front of the RV where MacCandliss and Fielding were preparing for the arrival of a cab. “Nice and loud.”
By the time the police finished at the accident scene and entered the van, the cab had arrived and the two men were gone. The cops, grateful that no one had been seriously hurt, and citing that they had more than enough statements to type up already, agreed to have Nick and Junie stop by the precinct house on their way to the hospital.
The eventful stop at Jasper Yeo’s auto lot was almost over.
