Jex Blackwell Saves the World

by P. William Grimm

  The nurse blinks twice and then he gets it. His flush fills with blood and he is instantly red. “Nothing,” he barks. “Let’s go.” The nurse stands and looks around. “Hey,” he barks out to two EMTs who were jogging out of the hospital. They stop in their tracks. “Get that stretcher,” the nurse says, pointing at a nearby ambulance. “Get this man prepped and find a doctor. He is T1, repeat T1.”

  Jex knows this is a serious ranking, Triage-1. Code red, in simple terms – immediate treatment needed. The two EMTs comply, with one speaking into a headphone connected to a walkie-talkie on her belt. Jex breathes a long sigh of relief and sits down next to Marcus as he is loaded onto the stretcher. Eugene, who had been completely stunned into silence watching Jex speak to the nurse, has now recovered enough to place his hand on her shoulder. She looks up and sees his smiling face, framed with the setting of the sun behind him. “You’re good, Jex,” he says. “Thank you for helping Molly’s friend.”

  Jex looks around through the maddening frenzy around them. “Where is she,” she asks.

  Eugene points his finger at his truck. “She’s chilling in my ride. The whole thing has been hard on her. I don’t know what she would have done if you weren’t there.”

  Jex shakes her head as she stands up, looking around at the craze of the crowd. There seems no rhyme or reason, no order or sense to it all.

  “What the fuck is happening, right Jex?”

  Jex pauses and then shrugs her shoulders. “All that suffering. I feel completely helpless.”

  Eugene lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Are you serious, Jex? You just saved that kid’s life – and you probably saved Molly from having to up her klonopin dosage too much.”

  Jex smiles and shakes her head again, in a dark cloud already. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Aw, come on, Jex,” Eugene protests. “Don’t be that way. You know …”

  Eugene doesn’t have the chance to finish his thought. The nurse has returned from helping to prep Marcus. It is clear he is in charge of this triage effort and the look on his face is a mixture of determination, anger and grief. “Hey,” the nurse says loudly, interrupting Eugene in a way that is clear will not be followed by an apology or any other nicety. Eugene – who would typically not take too kindly to such a move – silently moves back. He knows this is not a time to beef about respect. “What’s your name,” he demands of Jex.

  “My name is Jex. Jex Blackwell.”

  “You have medical training,” the nurse says, in a statement not a question.

  “No, not really,” Jex says, “I’m just an intern at the hospital. I’m not certified or anything, I just help out.”

  “Well,” the nurse says without hesitation. “You’ll be helping us right now. This triage is overwhelmed and we need every body that has an inch of medical training. You have your own stethoscope,” he says, pointing to the instrument hanging around Jex’s neck. “You passed the interview. Come with me, there are two more ambulances about to arrive and I need some help.”

  Jex gulps but does not falter for even a second. She turns to Eugene and says, “I have to go help. Can you take care of Molly?”

  “Yes, of course,” Eugene says. “We’re going to stick around for awhile. Let me know if you need anything, or a ride home or anything.”

  Jex pats him on the shoulder. “I think it’s going to be a long night. You should take Molly home. I’ll be OK. Thanks so much. You’re a lifesaver.”

  Eugene smiles. “Ok, Jex. You have my number if you need anything. You know I’m always around. And I’m really proud of you. You’re just incredible.”

  Jex smiles and the two hug awkwardly. Jex pulls away and points to the truck. “Now go take of Molly. She needs you.”

  Eugene smiles and says, “we all need somebody.”

  Jex smiles and pauses as though she is about to speak. Instead, she turns to follow the nurse. Eugene watches her go and, as she walks away, she says over her shoulder, “thanks again, Eugene.”

  “Thank you, Jex,” Eugene shouts back as she disappears into the sea of injured, frightened and alone.

  Four hours later, Jex is taking her first break from the rigors of the triage rotation, having deftly ditched, at least for a moment, the annoyingly overworked nurse that recruited her. She has her headphones in, listening to Elvis Depressedly. She smokes a Camel Crush and sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup with one hand, a Snickers bar in the other.

  The day has been hectic so far and is nowhere near over. Jex has carried stretchers and wiped foreheads and dispensed of needles and changed plastic gloves too many times to count. She has seen bloodied faces and broken bones, crying eyes and dead bodies. The death toll was thirty-five last she heard, and almost certain to increase, with over a hundred injured. She hasn’t taken the time to focus on who did this or why and she really doesn’t care; or at least she doesn’t take the time to measure whether she cares. She saw some people suffering, and she is trying to ease their pain.

  She enjoys her coffee, nicotine and candy without doubting that in another ten minutes, she will be back in the thick of it.

  She is looking out into the sky, lost in her thoughts, and so she is startled when she realizes that Dr. Cohen has walked up to her and is, with an odd air of some sort of stoic amusement, trying to get Jex’s attention. As Jex takes her ear pods out, it occurs to her that Dr. Cohen looks almost childlike in his gestures, cheerful almost, in a way that Jex has never seen him before.

  “Hi, Dr. Cohen,” Jex says with a start and a nervous smile. “I didn’t see you here.”

  “Yes, well I suppose we have all been a bit busy today, haven’t we? Not too busy to ingest carcinogens into our bodies though, are we?”

  Momentarily forgetting the cigarette in her hand, Jex remembers it and jumps a little. In most other circumstances, this likely would have resulted in quite a talk. Today, Jex thinks on it for a moment and then just shrugs. “Yeah,” she says with a stilted smile. “Whoops.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Cohen smiles in return. “Whoops, indeed.” He shrugs back and digs out a pack of Davidoffs. “I save these for only certain circumstances,” and skillfully lights one with a sleek lighter that looks as though it cost a thousand dollars.

  Jex chuckles and can only say, “whoa,” before snickering some more and looking down at her shoe as she kicks a small rock.

  “Yes, whoa,” Dr. Cohen mimics. He leans and whispers conspiratorially. “But please, we mustn’t tell Dr. Stephens. I would never hear the end of it.”

  Jex smiles. “Agreed,” she says with a wink. Now the two share a secret. This is not something that Jex would have ever expected. The day is chock full of surreal twists.

  Dr. Cohen takes a puff of his cigarette and looks around. “Hell of a day, isn’t it?”

  Jex nods her head. “Crazy.”

  Dr. Cohen stretches and allows a thin grin to appear on his face. “I quite hate to say it, but it’s exhilarating, isn’t it?”

  Jex cocks her head. “Exhilarating?”

  “Yes, indeed. I resisted admitting it for many years at the beginning of my career. I still don’t talk about it in some company. But trauma surgery is exhilarating in a way that nothing else I have ever experienced. I’m a licensed pilot, did you know that?”

  “No,” Jex says, shaking her head as she watches Dr. Cohen’s face intently. He is pure emotion, very much in a way that Jex had never seen in him before. There is a blaze in his eyes that Jex has never seen before.

  “Yes, I fly a Glasair with aerobatic capabilities. I built it myself. Really. Everything except the engine. I have over four hundred aerobatic flight hours alone. I’ve done all sorts of maneuvers – loops, spins, stall turns, Cuban eights. Most things, really. And I’m a high-altitude climber. I summited on Mt. Kilimanjaro. I’ve even raised three children and managed to stay married for over twenty years,” he says with a sardonic smile. “I’ve pushed my inner resources to the limit in all kinds of ways. Nothing compares to trauma surgery.”

>   Jex nods her head and contemplates that. “You love it,” she queries, knowing the answer but wanting to hear more.

  “Love it,” he says with a chuckle and a pause. “Yes,’ he continues after a moment. “I think you can fairly say that I love it. More than anything else I have ever experienced, indeed. When I was a young man, I spent three years teaching math in the Bronx, back when it was really badly impoverished, in very bad shape. Did you know that about me?”

  Jex shakes her head.

  Dr. Cohen nods, looking out into space as though he is looking back in time. “Those were some of my best memories of my life – like I was really changing something. It’s a big reason I decided to go into medicine. Because I felt I could make even more change, help more people, in medicine. The administration and rich old fools make the days slow going, making change, but in trauma medicine – you see change everyday.”

  The two of them smoke their cigarettes and drink their coffee. “What about you, Jex? I know you aspire to be a doctor. I’ve seen you with patients. You’re a natural. Do you think you might enjoy taking on trauma surgery?”

  The statement “You’re a natural” knocks around in Jex’s head as she considers a response. It is by far the nicest thing that she has ever heard Dr. Cohen say, and it is not lost on her. Despite that distraction, the question is actually an easy one for Jex to answer, as she has been thinking about it all day. She takes a long time to think about it, though, taking a drag and then putting it out on the bottom of her sneaker. She flicks the butt into a garbage can next to her.

  “Have you ever read any Shakespeare, Dr. Cohen?”

  Dr. Cohen smirks and says, “yes, I believe I am familiar with a play or two of his.”

  Jex smiles coyly. “I’m sure you are. Well, there’s this concept Shakespeare used, it’s called a recognition scene. Do you know it? It’s actually from the Greeks, ancient greek – they called it anagnorisis. It was one of the first things I remember reading when I was a kid that was really, you know, intense. I had a hard time pronouncing it, anagnorisis. I eventually just did phonetics, and came up with the name Ana Gnorisis, you know Ana and Gnorisis. I even named one of my stuffed bears after it, a red one. Ana Gnorisis the Red Bear. My dad thought I was crazy.”

  Dr. Cohen smiles. “I am familiar with the concept of recognition scene, or anagnorisis. Such as when Othello realizes it is his own jealousy that led to the killing of Desdemona.”

  “Right,” Jex says gleefully, her eyes on fire. “or in ‘The Odyssey,’ when Alcinous sends his minstrels to entertain the sad stranger with songs about the Trojan War, and it turns out to be Odysseus.”

  Dr. Cohen blinks and takes a moment to recall the literature. “Indeed,” he says with an approving nod.

  “It’s like the point in a book when a character moves from ignorance to knowledge, right?”

  Dr. Cohen continues to nod, smiling as he speaks. “Indeed,” he says again.

  “Yeah, that’s kind of like how I feel today. Like my eyes were closed and now they’re open. Like in King Lear, you know? When Gloucester gets his eyes plucked out, and only then can he see how the world goes? That’s how today was. I always wanted to be a doctor, you know? I want to help people. Today, something changed. I was ignorant about something, about what helping someone really means, you know? I feel like today opened my eyes to something. Like trauma surgery is what I was meant to do? I didn’t really see it until today – and now this is like, you know, my recognition scene.”

  Dr. Cohen nods his head and contemplates. “Yes. Well,” he says with a note of mischief in his tone. “You know most recognition scenes end in tragedy, right?”

  Jex smiles and nods. “Yeah, I know.” And then she adds, in a tone that is as mischievous as Dr. Cohen’s. “But not this one.”

  “Very good,” Dr. Cohen says, a new note of, perhaps, respect, in his voice. “That is quite a complex analysis of Shakespearean and Greek literature, Jex.”

  She shrugs. “Thanks, Dr. Cohen,” Jex says earnestly.

  He shakes his head ruefully and looks out into the starry night. “Maybe something good will come of today.”

  “Yeah,” Jex says, her voice suddenly pensive, those little memories of nights under covers, reading thick collections of Greek mythology suddenly gone.

  “Well,” Dr. Cohen says, opening up his pack of cigarettes. “One more cancer stick and then back to the battle?”

  Jex smiles. “Indeed,” she says in a not-too-terrible impression of Dr. Cohen’s own affects. He smiles just a little bit and lights Jex’s cigarette for her. The two stand silently as they smoke, staring out into the dark galaxy above them.

  * * *

  The night once speckled with stars is now dark with gray clouds by the time Jex pulls into her driveway. She is exhausted and exhilarated at once. She pulls herself and her bag out of the car and walks from the driveway to the front door of her house. She grabs the mail out of the mailbox and turns the key. She walks in, shuts the door behind her and drops her bag onto the floor.

  With just the foyer light on, she rummages through her mail and stops at a thick envelope. The return address is Stanford University. She stares at it for a moment and then walks to the kitchen. She pours herself a cup of water and then, leaving the mail, including the Stanford envelope, on the kitchen counter, walks out to the patio. She lights a cigarette and fiddles with her iPhone so that the music diverts to a small Bluetooth speaker she keeps on the small patio table. She picks a playlist called “evening tunes” and lights a cigarette. She stares up at the sky as Allo Darlin’ begins to play, singing about juicy fruit and Joan Didion.

  “I saw you in the car park, reading Joan Didion in the dark.

  It’s easy to see where things begin, it is harder to see where they end.

  And nothing feels the way it did before, and I am

  grateful for that.”

  She smokes one more cigarette and listens to three more songs (by Inky Skulls, King Everything and Mal Blum). She sighs and stands up, stretching a long time, touching her toes and extending her arms as high as they will go. “Erch,” she mumbles. She walks to the couch and collapses lazily onto it. Another song by Mal Blum plays as Jex’s eyes close shut. The music is like medicine to Jex and it does not take long before she is passed out asleep, a kind of restful sleep that is something almost foreign to Jex.

  Jex wakes up three hours later. She looks groggily at her iPhone and sees it is almost three a.m. She has three voicemails, and still laying down she presses play. A moment later the messages play.

  12:15 a.m.:“Hi, Jexy, it’s Eugene. I’m just calling to see how you’re doing, if you made it back from the hospital. What a crazy day. You were really incredible. I’m with Molly at our Aunt’s house in Glendale. Give me a call, you should come over breakfast. Everyone wants to see you. Call me soon.”

  1:15 a.m.: “Hi Jex, it’s Dr. Stephens. I heard you and Dr. Cohen had quite a conversation at the hospital today. You must have said something very smart as you seem to have impressed him. He sounds positively giddy, silly old man. Anyways, I am sure it was a tough day, and I would really like to catch up. Please give me a ring when you can. I’d love to talk. Take care, Jex.”

  2:52 a.m.: “Yo Jex, Q here. I’m on the bus to Venice, downtown is nuts but Imma wanting to do some taggin’. Wanna see you, boo. I’ll be under the pier by 4, leaves a couple hours before sunrise – stop by. I wanna see your ass – heard you fucking saved that drummer’s life. You the shit, girl. Call me bae. Or just meet me at the pier. Love you.”

  Jex groggily stands up and walks to the kitchen. She pulls out some coffee beans and her French press. Seven minutes later she is drinking fresh, hot black coffee. She blinks several times and walks to the hallway. She stops in front of the full length mirror in the foyer and stares at herself. She feels a little healthier. The roller coaster ride is long, but she’s made it OK so far.

  She takes a long, slow sip of coffee and walks back to the kitchen, to
the pile of mail on the kitchen counter. Picking up the envelope from Stanford, she lets out a deep sigh, somewhere between confusion and frustration. Placing the coffee mug on the counter, she rips open the envelope without ceremony and pulls out the cover sheet. She is accepted to Stanford University.

  Jex rubs her face a long time and then picks up the coffee cup. She takes another sip and rubs her face again. “Shit,” she says. She sits down on the cold kitchen floor and does nothing for a long time. Just sits there, thinking.

  After a long while, she stands up again, finishes her cup of coffee and pours the rest of the coffee from the French press into the mug. She cleans the spoon she used, and a couple of other dishes that were also in the sink. She picks up the French press, which has no coffee in it anymore, just the grinds collected on the bottom, which Jex stares at for a while.

  Jex walks over to Stanford’s cover letter and picks it up, along with the thick envelope and its contents of supporting documents, class options, financial aid issues. She walks over to the garbage can, opens it with her foot and drops the cover letter and envelope in unceremoniously. Without a second thought, she takes the French press and empties the coffee grinds into the garbage can, drenching the envelope and cover letter in dark, soggy water.

  “Maybe next year,” she murmurs, smiling to herself. “I have some other stuff to do first.”

  Jex grabs her keys and throws her messenger bag over her shoulder. She walks out the front door into the dark night, coffee still in hand. The moon is bright above. Stars twinkle. Her eyes, too. She opens the car door and gets in. She backs up and begins to drive west, towards the ocean. Not to Venice to meet up with Q, though; maybe somewhere up in Malibu. She knows a bridge that no one ever goes to up there, and could use some dope art. Tagging sounds good but, tonight at least, she wants to be alone. She pops in a CD and the music begins to play. She can’t help but look again at the stars above her, and the road in front of her. The stars and the road – they seem to go on forever.