The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  “I know him,” but that was an unacceptable excuse. She tried to extricate her hand, but he was crushing her fingers and she had to squeeze back. “One, two, three—lift.” She crouched to get out of their way and was caught in a web of snaking lines and monitor feeds. Paramedics’ stained gloves pulled away and the fresh blue gloves of nurses laid hands. The doors opened and the on-call surgeon entered. Outside the trauma room, police officers, tight-jawed and rigid, glared back. The doors shut on them again. Stats were being relayed, IVs run, there was a call for two more units of O neg. A chest tube was readied.

  Donna pushed on the man’s back, trying to ascertain the path of the bullet. “Mike, can you feel this?” He thrashed. Jenn held his legs. “Mike you have to stay still.” But he couldn’t hear them. He was fighting the IVs. “Mike, we need to roll you over. One, two, three—”

  They tipped him forward. He screamed. They couldn’t find an exit wound and rolled him back. Monitors alarmed. His head tossed and Rhonda readjusted the mask he had shaken off. They considered restraints.

  Kate leaned in closer. “Mike. Mike, listen to me.” The cop’s panicked eyes found hers. “You have to lie still. They’re going to help you breathe. You have to help them.” His body quieted and he gulped broken air.

  “That’s good,” she said. “You’re doing really good. Just look at me.” She glanced up at Rhonda, who nodded okay. She could stay. Morphine was ordered. The surgeon slid his hand along the heaving ribs, probing for the incision point. The chest tube was standing by. Mike was trying to say something, but all that came were gasps.

  “Don’t talk,” she said. His chest spasmed and his hand flashed open. In her palm was a pill bottle with a woman’s name on it. Yellow pills. Codeine. He clamped her hand shut again. His eyes were pleading. He needed her to understand something. His eyes shifted to their hands and back to her eyes.

  “He takes codeine,” she said. The team paused. “I’ve seen him before. There’s something wrong with his back.”

  Dr. Savoy came around to look his patient in the eyes. “Mike, can you hear me?”

  But the cop’s eyes were fixed on hers. She bowed her head, so he would have to look at the doctor.

  “Mike, can you hear me?”

  He nodded.

  “Have you had any in the last two hours?”

  He nodded again.

  “How many?”

  Mike sucked air. Spittle clogged the mask.

  “One?”

  He nodded.

  “Two?”

  He nodded again.

  “Three?”

  He held his head still. The effort trembled down his arm to Kate’s crimped hand. His hand was huge and the nails clipped short. There was a scar on his knuckle.

  “Cancel morphine. Local anaesthetic. Fifteen mils.”

  Kate looked up. “You did good, Mike. They’re going to give you a needle. Just a little sting.” She knew a local wouldn’t be enough. Amy prepared the syringe. Jenn suctioned. Rhonda swabbed, sterilizing his side. His skin stained orange-brown. Mike whimpered as the needle was inserted into muscle. She thought, That will bruise. He pulled her closer. Nose to nose. The mask was fogged. “Tell Lori,” he gasped. “Tell…”

  “I will,” she said. She had heard all the words before. The surgeon’s fingers marked the spot between the ribs. The team looked to her and she braced her hand. Heart rate rising, BP dropping.

  “It’s just one bad day,” she said. “Hold on.” But his eyes weren’t listening. “I remember your little boy.” She searched for his name. “Caleb.”

  By the twitch of his hand she knew she was right. “He was so brave when he was here.” The man’s deep blue eyes held hers. Tears streaked his cheeks. She made her eyes calm to hide the pain he was about to feel. The surgeon made a small incision and inserted his finger to determine the tube’s path. Mike flinched. “He told me his alligator’s name was Snappy, right? He said it wasn’t an alligator, it was a crocodile.”

  Outside the trauma room, voices skirmished. The doors opened and two more units of blood arrived. Skin was snipped and scissors inserted. The blades opened, tearing a wider entry. The man’s wife tried to claw her way past the scrawny security guard. A scrum of officers shoved him aside and a spider of blue arms held her back. She screamed, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” And the doors shut again.

  “Hang on,” Kate said. His pupils were pinpoints in a constellation of blues. Her eyes promised-promised she wouldn’t let go. His eyes begged, trusting her with his life. The tube pushed through skin and muscle between the ribs and into the chest wall. The man’s face screamed ten on the pain scale. Her hand screamed eight. She dropped to both knees, pressing down on his wrist to ease his crushing grip. Blood flushed into the tube. Mike’s eyes rolled back and his hand went limp.

  Rhonda knocked against her. Spent needles and sterile packs rained to the floor. She staggered back, freeing herself from the flurry of arms and legs, and him. Mike’s face was lost in the huddle.

  He was naked. She couldn’t remember his clothes being cut off. The floor was slick with blood. Tatters of his uniform were balled in the corner and his utility belt and holster were coiled on a surgical tray. There was an old bruise on his back, scrapes on his elbows and knees, and his heels were callused and cracked. He needed better boots. She had never stood in this spot before.

  She wondered who was watching his boys and why he had the pills of the woman in the room two doors down. She looked at the jutting tubes and wires barbing his body. It was going to be a long, hard recovery. Her throat flushed hot and she almost cried.

  Get a grip.

  The doors opened and a portable x-ray machine was rolled in. She emptied her eyes for the long walk back to her chair. His family would be searching for tells.

  She dropped the pill bottle into the hazardous waste bag.

  55

  It was morning. Not a cloud in the sky. It was hard to believe a hurricane was coming. Tamara shut her eyes and breathed in dew, tinged with warming tar and asphalt. A bird warbled in the bushes. Traffic droned from the road below, and nearby a back-up signal beeped-beeped. She blinked away the overexposed world. She and the rest of the team had stayed beyond their shift, awaiting word.

  Her feet were swollen and tight in her sandals. She cut across the parking lot to the strip of grass littered with cigarette butts and sat at the picnic table. Beyond the warehouse rooftops, tugs were guiding a cruise ship out of the harbour. Heading to a safer port ahead of the storm. Its wake rippled becalmed waters, rocking the sun. She picked at a flake of peeling red paint.

  Long ago, someone had carved a line down the middle of the table and scored an L and S in the top board. Lost and Saved. Lines crooked and straight, thick and thin, light and heavy kept count. Some had the sharp edge of a penknife, others the shallow dent of a fingernail, the wobble of a stone, or the scratch of a quarter.

  She picked up a small rock. A sharp, thin line appeared under Lost. She carved it deeper. The Saved section was crammed full. Soon the gouges would drop over the edge. A few had already been chiselled on the seat. She added her week’s tally, making the notches small and close. She carved her last nick under S deeper to match the first. Mother and son. She trailed her fingertips over the pocked sheet music spanning between them. Mike’s mark wasn’t hers to make.

  Sitting up straighter, she lifted her hands to the table’s edge and played the random notes in her head, Tamara’s Opus Under Blue Sky. She sped it up and slowed it down. She held the deep cuts, long and full. The softer ones, she barely brushed their slivered edges. She used both hands to draw out the deep chords, rolling them together in a tumbling wave, ebbing and flowing, building repeats, until it soared, flourishing highs and lows. It sounded like birdsong and sideways rain and laughter and hallelujahs and turning pages…

  A steering belt squealed and a car pulled into the parking lot. She laid her palms flat against the warm heartwood. The cab followed the curb to the picnic tabl
e and kept the engine running. Tamara with Short Hair stood and straightened her dress. The sun shone on the nape of her neck. Hassan stepped out. He wasn’t wearing his cardigan. He looked at her and smiled, just as she had imagined he would.

  “Good morning, Tamara.”

  “Good morning, Hassan.”

  He walked around to the passenger side to open the door and waited for her to choose front or back. In the vase were freshly pulled dandelions. Her favourite flower.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Another beautiful day.”

  The dashboard gleamed lemon-polished.

  * * *

  —

  Navigating the labyrinth of streets, Kate scanned the taut, grey faces of caffeine-deprived drivers heading to work and wondered if her own face was as steeled with resignation. Go home, they had said. We’ll take good care of him. It’ll be easier, they said. They didn’t say Matthew didn’t want to see her, but it was understood. She should have gone straight home and washed away the lies, but she’d forgotten to lock up her mother’s house. In truth, she wanted one more good sleep in her old bed before the storm. She wanted to wake and hear the sound of birds.

  She looked at Zeus asleep in his crate. He hadn’t barked when the police and paramedics took Matthew away. He had lain across her lap trying to quell her shaking and licked her hands, coaxing her to pat him. Poor boy. Later, she’d take him for a walk and let him wander wherever he wanted to sniff. She hoped he would forget.

  She eased onto her mother’s street and thought about the police officer who wouldn’t be going home today. She had heard they left the bullet in. The lung would heal. The nurses all agreed it was a good day for him. There were thousands of people walking around with bullets lodged in their chests.

  She geared down to second. Up ahead, a crowd was milling in the street, strobing in and out of the sun. She hoped it wasn’t an accident, but sat up straighter, preparing to respond. Zeus stood. Slowing, she proceeded past the trash bins, discarded lawn chairs, broken toys, and garbage bags piled at the ends of driveways. Light flared and shimmered along the curb. She lowered her visor. Wing to wing, her mother’s angels blazed in the morning light. She pulled over. The bruise over her heart throbbed.

  A woman wearing fluffy blue slippers and pink sweatpants strolled by with an angel cradled under each arm. “Morning,” she said. She looked Kate directly in the eye, confident that she had finders-keepers rights. At the curb, a small boy lifted an angel’s dress to see what was underneath. Kate looked back at Zeus.

  His tail wagged and his eyes said, Play?

  “Later,” she said.

  She shifted into first and cautiously drove past a beer-bellied man sheepishly towing a child’s wagon. His wife added another angel to a tottering pile and he shrugged an if-it-makes-her-happy grin. An older lady hid her loot behind her back and waved. Burlesque feathers fanned her ample hips. She could hear her mother’s laughter. “Told you,” she would have crowed. “Told you they were worth something!”

  Two small girls in sundresses chased each other through the weave of wings. Their arms were flapping and the older girl was singing, “I’m flying higher!” And the little one sang back, “No, I’m flying higher!” And by the arch of her neck, Kate thought maybe she was.

  Zeus pranced in his crate. Play?

  “Soon,” she said.

  He pawed her seat and warbled his happiest sing-song groan.

  She shut off her buzzing pager and said yes.

  “Yes,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Far out at sea, a hurricane was churning, and inside the eye, a thousand birds—terns and petrels, chimney swifts and tanagers, a dozen white-tailed tropic birds, five godwits, and one brown pelican—were circling the spinning wall calling each other’s names.

  Ahead of the blackening cloud, propelled by the tailwind’s outermost shears, laughing gulls and frigate birds were hurling north shouting warning-warnings.

  And flying south, following its ancient rightful path from the tundra to the mangrove mudflats, a lone whimbrel tucked its head, spread its wings, and flew headlong into the roar.

  WORKS CITED

  QUOTED WORKS ON THIS PAGE

  But in the world according to Garp we are all terminal cases. You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. / “Like a dog!” he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him. It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow./ He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die. That may be, Nora said, but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory./ One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?” | Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.| Then there are more and more endings: the sixth, the 53rd, the 131st, the 9,435th ending, endings going faster and faster, more and more endings, faster and faster until this book is having 186,000 endings per second./ Yes, I said. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

  Irving, John. The World According to Garp. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.

  “But in the world according to Garp we are all terminal cases.”

  Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1953.

  “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

  Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Knopf, 1937. Translation Willa and Edwin Muir.

  “Like a dog!” he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him.”

  Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1973.

  “It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

  McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian. New York: Random House, Inc., 1985.

  “He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing.

  He says that he will never die./”

  Hammett, Dashiell. The Thin Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1934.

  “That may be, Nora said, but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory.”

  Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, Inc., 1969.

  “One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, ‘Poo-tee-weet?’”

  Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. London: Harcourt Inc., 1927.

  “Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”

  Brautigan, Richard. A Confederate General from Big Sur. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

  “Then there are more and more endings: the sixth, the 53rd, the 131st, the 9,435th ending, endings going faster and faster, more and more endings, faster and faster until this book is having 186,000 endings per second.”

  Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1926.

  “Yes, I said. Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

  QUOTED WORKS ON this page

  You must go on Yes, I said. the shame of it / —loud and long—/ the judge. He is dancing, dancing | But in the world That may be/ One bird said / I have had my vision / there are more and more endings

  Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1953.

  “You must go on.”

  Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1926.

  “Yes, I said.”

  Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Knopf, 1937. Translation Willa and Edwin Muir.

  “the shame of it”

  Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1973.

  “—loud and long—”

  McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian. New York: Random House, Inc., 1985.

  “the judge. He is dancing, dancing”

  Irving, John. The World According to Garp. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.

  “But in the world”

  Hammett, Dashiell. The Thin Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1934.

  “That may be”

  Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, Inc., 1969.

  “One bird said”

  Woolf, Virginia. To t
he Lighthouse. London: Harcourt Inc., 1927.

  “I have had my vision”

  Brautigan, Richard. A Confederate General from Big Sur. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

  “there are more and more endings”

  POEM ON this page-this page

  Anonymous. Where Shall I Write Your Name? Iraq: appeared in Al-Yanbou Literary Journal, date unknown, Translator unknown. Published as Ayna Aktib Ismiki.

  MUSIC REFERENCES

  “Happy Birthday to You,” Patti and Mildred J. Hill, Song Stories for the Kindergarten, Clayton F. Summy Company, 1896.

  “I’ll Fly Away,” Albert Brumley, Wonderful Message, Hartford Music, 1932.

  “Party in the USA,” Miley Cyrus, The Time of Our Lives, Hollywood Records, 2009.

  “Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major; Turkish March,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1783.

  “Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor; Moonlight Sonata,” Beethoven, 1801.

  “Stayin’ Alive,” Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever, RSO, 1977.

  “Suite Bergamasque, L. 30 No. 3; Clair de Lune,” Claude Debussy, 1905.

  “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” Kris Kristofferson, Kristofferson, Monument, 1970.

  “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932. First recording Heavenly Gospel Singers, Bluebird, 1937.

  “Touch Me Lord Jesus,” Lucie Campbell, (Margaret Alison and) The Angelic Gospel Singers, Touch Me Lord Jesus/When My Saviour Calls Me Home, Single 78-Gotham, 1949.