The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  “That’s good, Jamie. Now, I want you to lay the rifle on the seat beside you. Barrel towards the passenger side. Real slow. That’s it.”

  He took a step forward. Booze and defeat wafted from the car. “Good. Set it down gently and let it go. Now bring your hand to the steering wheel. You’re doing real good, Jamie.”

  This is when it could all go bad. That moment of choice when panic and despair could kick in. This was when Mike had to hold on tight and not let the man see the moment.

  “Now I’m gonna open the door real slow and you’re going to step out.” He lifted the handle and the latch clicked. He eased the door open wide. He didn’t want to startle the man. He was aware of the smooth quiet of his voice.

  “Keep this hand up. Good. Now bring your other hand out and keep them both in front of you. Now you’re going to step out of the truck. Go ahead.”

  The man stepped out of the truck and turned towards Mike. Blinking in the light, he had a face that looked like someone you’d want to have a beer with.

  “For officer safety I’m going to ask you to put your hands behind your back.”

  The man complied, and Mike holstered his weapon and slipped the cuffs on his wrists. He nodded to Peterson, who opened the passenger door and retrieved the rifle and a box of ammo. He ejected two hollow-points. Son of a bitch had wanted maximum damage.

  “You did the right thing, Jamie.” He patted the man down, thoroughly and efficiently, not bothering to put on his gloves.

  The man spoke to the pavement. “I just wanted her to see me. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “I know. But this didn’t help things, did it? You’ve had too much to drink tonight, so we’re going to take you in. Do you understand? We want everyone to be safe tonight.”

  He guided the man, the man whose name was—Mike searched for it—Jamie, to the car. It wasn’t his place to judge. He didn’t know their stories. He didn’t know who they were outside of this moment. He saw people on their worst days. The only thing he knew was that by the time he got back from the holding cells, the paperwork for this call would take him to the end of shift. The worst thing about this job was the paperwork.

  His lower back throbbed. He was acutely aware of his belt riding low on his spine and his inability to adjust it while restraining the man. And his feet were aching again. And it was hot, too hot for the middle of the night. And he had to take a leak, which wasn’t going to happen any time soon. And neither was stopping for a coffee. The stench of the man was churning his stomach. Even with the windows down, he wouldn’t get the smell out of his car for hours.

  He looked to the woman in the doorway talking to Peterson. Blonde, five six, 125, mid-thirties. Blue housecoat. Bare feet. Mascara-stained cheeks.

  At the living room window, a small girl peered through the curtains. Long brown hair. Six or seven years old. Pink nightie. The tattoo was a good likeness. What was the girl’s name?

  The man wrenched sideways, teeth bared. “Do you see me now, bitch?” he yelled. “You see what you’ve done to me!”

  Mike twisted the cuffs, placed his hand firmly on the perp’s neck, and shoved.

  4

  Kate took a sip of cold coffee and immediately regretted it. She checked her watch, another mistake. There were still two hours remaining until shift end. The patient board was almost clear. Most had been discharged, or were awaiting admission, and walk-ins didn’t come to emergency at this hour. The Waiting Hours had begun.

  The nurses’ stations had settled into the endurance segment of the night. Conversation and gossip had dissipated an hour ago. Exhausting the litany of kid trouble, husband trouble, restaurant recommendations, rumoured liaisons with hound dog paramedics, and the ever popular, boundless gripes about the ineptitude of the latest batch of baby nurses. The old adage of nurses eating their young had been proudly upheld.

  For the entertainment portion of the evening, patient stories had been swapped and notes compared. The grosser the story, the higher its value. The most shocking were destined to become classics. The best revolved around excretions and secretions, specimens brought in household containers, and inventories of stomach contents, which all contributed to their growing list of foods to be avoided.

  Kate personally hadn’t eaten Chinese food for three months after a patient vomited during chest compressions. She also didn’t eat leftovers stored in plastic containers, unless they were the red, festive kind. She had never seen a patient bring in a holiday container, but dreaded the day when it would happen.

  They told terrible stories about horrific deaths, devastating maimings, and grotesque indignities involving body parts and orifices, which made them laugh until their eyes teared and their stomachs hurt from spasms. Laughter was the most defiant and life-affirming thing they could think to do when they couldn’t do anything else.

  At this time of night, most of the nurses were huddled in the cocoon of their stations, ringed by the closed doors leading to their patients’ rooms. They watched EKGs blip past, checked on blood results, and slipped in charting codes to warn and amuse. ATD—acute Tylenol deficiency. DFO—drunk and fell over. JPS—just plain stupid. TMB—too many birthdays. Fluorescent lights hummed, monitors beeped, IVs pumped, and vital machines alarmed. These were all good sounds that said “alive.”

  She had two frequent flyers—one in heart failure and a diabetic with a renal infection. She had paged and re-paged the appropriate specialists hours ago, but both patients were stable and therefore low priority. Hospitals had no capacity for slow deaths.

  Buzzers sounded for rooms 27 and 6. They weren’t hers. At this hour, it would be patients needing to urinate, needing reassurance, needing someone to remind them that they hadn’t been forgotten. The majority of her charges had gone home with a few cosmetic stitches, IV hydration, blood work recommending follow-up, a rapid heartbeat recalibrated with meds, two broken toes splinted…garden-variety cuts, bumps, and bruises. Fortunately, they had all been grateful patients and families. It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

  There had only been one emergency, Motorcycle versus Pavement. The twenty-eight-year-old male had road rash from shoulder to hip. The gravel she tweezed from his flayed elbow and torso half filled a kidney dish and dinged against the metal pan like hail. He was conscious and chatty while they worked on him, and didn’t flinch when she scoured his ragged flesh with a scrubbie and iodine. He had applied the tourniquet around his thigh himself. It was brittle, army-issued rubber tubing, a talisman from two tours in Afghanistan that he still carried in his front pocket for luck.

  Tattooed on his upper calf was a helmet atop a rifle propped upright in a pair of military boots. Bones piercing the skin obliterated the name and date. En route to the operating room, he thanked them for taking care of him and told her she had beautiful eyes.

  Kate stood and stretched. Her scrubs smelled stale and antiseptic. Her skin was dry from the air conditioning and she was cold. Her core body temperature had dropped and her hypothalamus was fighting to regulate her sleep-wake cycle. She put on her sweater and took a walk to stimulate her circulation.

  The outer corridor was stark bright, washed in a sickly yellow light. She paused in front of the windows overlooking the parking lot. It was dark. There was too much glare to see if the sky was brightening. In the reflection, a petite blonde-haired woman with a short, severe ponytail, blue sweater, and scrubs stared back at her. Kate looked tired.

  Farther down the corridor, a.k.a. the boarding room, two elderly patients slept on stretchers waiting for admittance. They didn’t belong in ER and the hospital didn’t want them. The system was jammed from budget cuts, bed shortages, and political standoffs as to where they should go to die. The hallway was their purgatory. Their accompanying paramedics, unable to sign off until their charges were admitted, were playing games on their mobiles. They didn’t look up. She gave the ER entrance a wide berth, so as not to trigger the sliding doors. On the other side of the glass wall, beyond triage, a handful of lon
g-haul walk-ins were sprawled on the tattered vinyl waiting room chairs. Some were curled up with their heads hidden beneath thin hospital sheets, breathing in germs. Others stared blankly at the mute overhead TV screens.

  She recognized two as “treat ’em and street ’ems” who dropped by a couple of times a month to plead for pain meds. Antipsychotics and opiates brought a good price on the street. They had been in the waiting room when her shift started ten hours ago. It appeared, by the dried blood under his nose, one had been in a fight. So long as they didn’t cause a commotion, security allowed them to sit in the air-conditioned room with free TV and Wi-Fi. Come dawn, they would accept defeat and wander back out to the street. She had to admire their self-control, determination, and deluded will in this one aspect of their life.

  Kate smiled at the security officer tucked in the corner, who was fixated on a bank of monitors. Black-and-white images of the parking lot, hallways, waiting rooms, and corridors dissected the screens.

  “No movement,” John said.

  He was young, a wannabe cop who couldn’t pass the physicals. He cropped his hair military short. His skin was pasty, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He was struggling with night shifts.

  She leaned over his shoulder and quickly located her vehicle. Zeus was asleep, exhausted from the day’s accomplishment. She had walked and watered him on her first break, and now he’d sleep through the night. The windows were open a crack and a vent-lock propped up the back hatch for ventilation. Lately, there had been multiple news stories of dogs left unattended in suffocating vehicles. She had already treated one Good Samaritan who suffered extensive bites when he’d smashed the window of a running, air-conditioned car. The Doberman didn’t think it was being rescued.

  When she switched to days, Zeus would stay with his sitter, Sara, and her dog, Max, fellow SAR members. He’d spend his days going on walks, chasing balls, and sleeping on the couch in front of a fan. Whenever she dropped him off, her heart tightened a little with envy and regret, and also a slight pang that he could be happy with someone else.

  She and John stared at the image of her vehicle, locked in its hypnotic stillness.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He nodded and his eyes scanned the static images clockwise then counter-clockwise. She loved the emerg department. They took care of each other. After eight years, she was one of its veterans. As a contract employee, she had the perfect arrangement that accommodated her training and SAR calls. The charge nurse was always trying to rope her in for extra shifts, and every few months she was courted for a full-time position, but she preferred the flexibility. Still, it was nice to be appreciated.

  The screens flickered through the various cameras. The corridor around the corner from where she was standing popped up on screen. A police officer was leaning with his back against the wall. They didn’t sit like the paramedics. If she took a step forward, he would turn to assess her. On duty, he wouldn’t smile.

  He was stationed outside the isolation room, guarding one of her patients who wasn’t really a patient. He was a domestic brought in handcuffed, awaiting a psych consult. The guy had been restrained on the gurney after refusing to settle down. It was almost time for her to check on him again.

  Her thumb worried the antiseptic pad taped to her palm. The thin slash across her lifeline wasn’t deep enough for stitches, but the pain cut sharp. It would remind her to stay focused on the terrain next time. She opened her hand wide, so the wound wouldn’t heal tight. Her watch beeped. She headed back to the enclave of her station.

  Her heels were tender. The last time she went in to pull blood, the domestic hadn’t paid much attention to her apart from the usual vitriol of curses. He cried the entire time she was in the room. A portrait of two children was tattooed on his left arm. She wasn’t gentle taking his blood and used the strongest adhesive tape to affix the cotton ball. Before leaving, she covered him with a warm sheet.

  By the stench, his blood alcohol level would be significant. The nurse’s pool had him at .19. She had guessed higher. The pot was at twenty bucks, and she felt her odds were good. He had been flagged high risk for self-harm, but psych beds were more rare than geriatrics. He wouldn’t be admitted until morning for a seventy-two-hour observation. The officer who’d brought him in was excellent at calming him down. He made the need for restraints sound like a gift and a privilege. One would have thought he really cared about the guy’s well-being.

  The hum and beep of the emergency department warmed her. Bed 27 had thrown up. The timid newbie on her first shift was heading in with a kidney pan. The kid had literally been given every shitty job tonight. She’d toughen up, though. She was smart. She had already made it past the maximum hour they wagered she would crack.

  Kate called up to the eighth floor. It took five rings for the duty nurse to pick up, which irritated her. It irritated her more when she had to identify herself as daughter. “No change” was the answer, and the nurse on the end of the line went silent. Despite assurances that she could call any time, the implicit tone was Don’t. Kate didn’t like her.

  Gratefully, no one on this shift was working when her mother had been brought in. Her colleagues would have felt obliged to awkwardly comfort her and suggest compassionate leave. They’d second-guess her ability to do her job and would surreptitiously look in on her patients. There was nothing she could do on the eighth floor. Here she could still do something. She checked the computer records. The tests were in. The blood alcohol level was .23.

  “Pay up, my lovelies.”

  A collective groan greeted her. A couple of sore losers headed to her computer to verify the results. She grabbed a warm sheet for the domestic and held it tight to her chest. Heat bloomed over her heart. The paramedics would be stopping by soon with fresh coffees. She took a sip from her cup and regretted it immediately.

  5

  The clear blue sky was nauseating in its intensity. Tamara focused on the parking lot and withered patch of grass sprouting by the red picnic table that only smokers used. Her ears struggled to adjust to the sudden expansiveness of sound unbound by cement walls and white noise. The smells of warming pavement, parched grass, and gasoline churned. She felt dizzy.

  Bluebird Taxi pulled up to the curb. She had called fifteen minutes before, ensuring he would be there, but it was an unnecessary precaution. He was the same driver who’d dropped her off last night and whom she had been requesting these past few weeks. It worried her that she was relying on one driver. Not many people had shifts longer than hers, but cabbies were the exception. Studies proved sleep deprivation correlated to diminished reaction times, but she assumed there were safety checks in place and that he went home to sleep. At any rate, he never appeared to be compromised by fatigue.

  “Good morning,” said the driver. “Which way you wish to go today?”

  As always, the car was cool, clean, and quiet. The ID badge pinned over the visor said his name was Hassan. He might have been in his sixties or he could be an older-looking fifty. Regardless of the season, he always wore a cardigan over his thin, slouched shoulders, even during this heat wave. In the rear-view mirror, she could see deep pouches under his eyes, and when he tilted his head up, his teeth were yellowed. He was a smiley man. He spoke with a Middle Eastern accent, overemphasizing the vowels. On the passenger-side dashboard, he had glued a small bud vase that held three red silk roses. Stencilled in yellow paint on the glovebox were the words FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT PLS. The letters were thin, not commanding, but merely a friendly reminder.

  She told him to head up Neptune, then take Fenwick across to Johnston and—

  He stopped her. “You tell me when you want to turn.”

  She tightened her seatbelt, sat up straight with her feet flat, knees together, hands on knees to simulate the best outcomes of crash test dummies. Her colleagues tried to persuade her to get her driver’s licence, even offered to teach her, but she knew she would be overcautious and overreactive. She’d likely cause an a
ccident. And bicycles were out of the question. She had taken too many bike-related calls. She had tried buses. Twice. The second time, she froze on the steps, unable to get on or off. The driver had to hold her hand and help her back to the street. Taxis she had learned to manage.

  She liked that this driver didn’t engage in banal conversation. He kept his focus on the road and didn’t try to talk her into taking a more direct route or challenge her need to avoid left turns, which were statistically proven to be ten times riskier than rights. She knew where accidents happened. Without question, he circumvented high-risk intersections, blind corners, and high-incident off-ramps. He was careful and steady. The additional fare was a small investment for her safety and peace of mind.

  His window was cracked a few inches and warm air slipped over her shoulders and cooled her neck. She breathed in deep and held her breath. She exhaled long and slow. One-two-three-four. She was doing well. She was outside and she was calm. Practise. Practise. Practise. She breathed in the faint sun-baked almond smell of her hair.

  It was going to be another scorching day. Seventeen breezeless days since it last rained, with sustained temperatures nearing forty. Last week, the annual sail-past of tall ships had to shamefully leave harbour under motor. August had broken all daytime highs and triggered an epidemic of calls related to heat exhaustion.

  Slumbering houses slipped past as the cab wove through side streets to avoid the main thoroughfare of Pleasant Street and the risk-laden Five Corners. The pre-rush-hour commute was statistically one of the safest, but at this time of year sunrise was in the driver’s eyes. She took another breath. Her skin flushed hot. The bridge was fast approaching. She had considered moving across the harbour to be closer to work and avoid it, but the thought of uprooting her life was overwhelming. She preferred her personal world to be uneventful.

  “Right at the next block, please.”

  The driver nodded pleasantly and smoothly took the corner.