My best insurance against Darwin was my associates.
“Just Callie and Quinn.” Figured I might as well let him think about those two hunting him down if anything happened to me.
“Camptown?” he said. “Like the song? What state?”
“Pennsylvania,” I said. “Look it up.”
“Doo Dah!” he said.
Victor was right. It wasn’t funny.
Chapter 4
Trinity Hospital, Newark, New Jersey.
The treatment rooms in the Heart and Vascular Unit were small, but mine had a window that overlooked the freeway. I was lying semi-reclined in a hospital bed, wearing one of those open-assed hospital gowns, watching the traffic, thinking how amazing it was that so many people had places to go. Did all these people have families and friends and jobs and people who depended on them? These thousands of people intersecting my life by passing my window at the very moment I watched them.
I focused on a single car, a cherry red Ford Mustang with a tan rag top, circa 1997. It was in my viewing range for maybe twenty seconds. I wondered if the driver was a man or woman, and if our paths had ever crossed. Maybe our paths were destined to cross in the future, and the driver of the Mustang would someday change my life. Maybe the driver has a child who will grow up to be the man or woman who eventually kills me. Or perhaps, moments from now, while attempting to exit the freeway, the driver will be sideswiped and fatally injured. Perhaps emergency rescue personnel will check his or her wallet and find a donor card, and the driver of the cherry red Mustang’s heart would be harvested just in time to save my life tonight.
There was a swooshing sound in the doorway as a young blonde with a perky smile slid the privacy curtain aside and entered the room.
“How are we doing today?” she said, in a practiced tone.
“We’re hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit,” I said.
She stopped a second, and then smiled.
“You’re funny,” she said.
She’d brought a small tray of medical items that included hypodermic needles, cotton, rubbing alcohol, and some type of rubber tubing. She placed the tray on the counter by the sink and I heard the snap of sterilized gloves being put on. Then she started swabbing the center of my forearm with alcohol.
“You’ll feel a little stick when I numb the area, and then I’ll set the IV,” she chirped.
It had been almost three hours since Camptown, and the pain in my chest had long since subsided. I considered getting out of bed and foregoing the emergency heart cath they’d been discussing, but decided I’d rather know if my ticker was going to be an issue. I couldn’t see any veins in the area the nurse had deadened, but I figured she knew what she was doing.
“Oops,” she said. “I missed. That happens sometimes.” She pressed a piece of gauze against the wound to stop the flow.
I nodded to show her I was a sympathetic guy.
“I’ll move up your arm a bit and try this nice vein just below your muscle.”
She was exceedingly young. Young enough that I felt dirty just reading her name tag, though it was nicely elevated.
Dana.
I forced my eyes to stop lingering in the area of her name tag and watched her face as she stuck me to numb the vein she thought was nice looking.
Dana’s mouth twitched slightly as she gracelessly plunged the IV needle into the crook of my arm. She had a pleasant face and flawless skin, but something caused her to frown.
“Oh dear,” she said.
“What now?”
“This one seems to have collapsed.”
I glanced at my arm and saw that my vein had done nothing of the sort. She had in fact missed it by a full centimeter.
