Page 34 of What is Found

CHAPTER 3

“Okay, Doctor.”He hitpause, freezing the image: George Clooney’s fingernail, rimed with dirt, marking a spot on Mark Wahlberg’s left chest midway between the notch of Wahlberg’s clavicle and between the second and third rib. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

It was near dawn. Fort Benning’s ER had finally quieted down, though not before two ambulances had rolled in: a motorcyclist, who’d lost an argument with a semi, and the semi’s driver. The driver had whiplash, which wasn’t going to kill him, but chest pain because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, so when he hit the brakes, he’d kept moving forward—those pesky laws of motion at work again—and smacked his sternum into the steering column. So, thatmightkill him, if there was bleeding within the pericardium. The driverwas up in the ICU and someone’s else problem now.

As for the motorcyclist: even properly geared-up, few make out well when their Hog barrels into a semi at ninety miles an hour. Make like Mad Maxwithouta helmet, and a motorcyclist’s chances of making it to the ERalive become diminishingly small.

Their guy had been one of the latter, something the EMTs failed to mention. Although they’d been bagging the guy in the ambulance, perhaps the EMTs felt that the white cloth draped over the cyclist’s head was a hint.

Whatever the case, ten seconds into the resuscitation, John studied that white cloth, noticed there wasn’t much of a nose bump—or, come to think of it, much of a forehead bump—and thought,Hunh. That’s when he lifted the corner of that sheet for a peek.

Which kinda put a different complexion on things. When he thought about it later, he figured the only way the EMTs had gotten a breathing tube down this guy’s throat was because the chin was, pretty much, the only recognizable landmark. Everything else was, well…

So,thatkind of night.

Head cocked, Roni studied the still of Clooney’s finger on Walhberg’s chest. “You mean, besides the fact that a tension pneumothorax sometimes doesn’t happen for days and then only if, say, a piece of bone from an undiagnosed rib fracture punctures the lung?” She shrugged. “Wrong placement. Clooneyshould’ve put the needle in at the fifth intercostal, not midclavicular at the second.”

“Well done, Doctor.” He started up the movie again. “Honestly, you’d think Clooney being onERat the same time they were making this would’ve taught him something.”

CHAPTER 4

He was not Clooney.He and Davila weren’t on the set ofThree Kings, and things had just gone from very bad to the brink of catastrophic.

“Easy, Davila, take it easy, I’m here!” He ripped open the package he’d selected and then another with an alcohol swab. The swab was pathetic, but that’s what he had. Plucking a long needle with a red stopcock at one end from its packet, he moved to Davila’s left, counted down his rib cage past the bandage over the groove the bullet had left, found the space between the fifth and sixth ribs, gave the site a quick swab?—

And then he eased in the needle, felt the slight hesitation and then give as the needle pierced the lung’s lining, slid the needle from its catheter, opened the stopcock, and?—

And then it really was just like the movie. Therewas a long, drawn-outssssas trapped air escaped. Five seconds later, Davila pulled in an enormous breath, let it out, pulled in another, let it out. On the third inhale, his eyelids fluttered as he struggled to focus and then slid his right hand around the wrist of John’s free hand.

“Wuh.”His voice was thick, groggy.“Wuh?”

“How’s your breathing now?” Carefully twisting the red stopcock to the closed position, he tore off strips of tape and secured the catheter in place. “How are you feeling?”

Davila’s color was coming back fast.“Bedder,”he croaked then cleared his throat. “Better. Wuh…what…”

“You tell me.”

“It was just…all of a sudden. I was walking around.” Davila swallowed. “Then I got this sharp pain.”

Crap.“Yeah, I think you have a rib fracture from where the bullet hit. Let me have a listen and then I’ll check your dressing.” Placing the flat diaphragm of his stethoscope over Davila’s chest, he closed his eyes, heard the steady movement of air in and out on the right. Air was moving on the left, too, but more softly: not with awhooshbut a muffledhuh.

He took down the bandage. The wound itself was unchanged. No bubbling, no new blood.

“You dropped a lung. A tension pneumothorax. The hole could be very, very small, there all alongand leaking air. That would account for your shoulder pain. Or a sliver of bone from a rib fracture was jostled loose when you got up and started walking around.Orjust bad luck, a bleb that decided it was time to burst because that sometimes happens to young, athletic guys. Here.” Crouching, he hooked his hands under Davila’s arms, mindful of the injury to the left biceps, and helped the other man until he was upright. “Let’s get you back into bed.”

“Yeah.” Settling back onto the cot, Davila let out a small groan. “Side really aches. How long do we have to keep that needle thing in?”

“For a bit. We’ll have to make sure it doesn’t kink. If we were in a hospital, I would have put in a chest tube, attached that to a pleural drainage unit, and left you be. The unit maintains a constant low suction to keep any air that leaks from collecting in the lung space. Since we can’t leave the stopcock open all the time, that means air builds up, and eventually it’ll be hard for you to breathe. Like putting a hand on a balloon when you’re trying to inflate it. Press hard enough and the balloon will never inflate.”

“What do I do now? Wait until I can’t…” Davila frowned. “You know, this reminds me of this movie. George Clooney was in it. Only he wasn’t the one who got shot.”

“Three Kings.”He explained about Clooney’s mistake then said, “But the principle’s the same for you as it was for the character Mark Wahlbergplayed. Soon as you feel like you’re short of breath again, you twist open the red stopcock and let out the air.”

“Probably the closest I’ll ever come to fame.” Davila cleared his throat again, though his voice was stronger, his tone steadier. “For how long? Like all night? All tomorrow?”

“Probably at least for the rest of the night. Even if you doze off, you’ll wake up when it gets too hard to breathe.”

“Like having a stuffy nose.”

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