Trinity

"Hey, fuck you, homey. I ain't standin' next to no fuckin' volcano! No way, no fuckin' way! All them scrambled eggs and shit! Shit no, no fuckin' way!"

"Hey, you know, just thought I'd ask..." He fit the second syringe to the tubing and pumped the ipecac in, then listened before he quickly pulled the tubing out the woman's nose. As soon as the tube was clear a nurse held the woman's neck while everyone else rolled the woman on her side. An orderly stood beside the table with a fifty gallon trash can ready to go, a mask over his nose.

"Oh, crap," the orderly said seconds later, "here it comes!"

The woman's eyes opened momentarily, just before the deluge; she managed to say "what the fuck!" before she let loose. She convulsed violently then settled down a little, then kept barfing into the can, moaning between upheavals.

"Hey, Mannie!" one of the nurses said. "How'd you know she had scrambled eggs for dinner?"

"Fuck you, man! Just fuck you!"

Everyone laughed, everyone but Tanner. He ran his fingers through the woman's hair, leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She moaned, smiled a little before she closed her eyes. He continued rubbing her head until he was sure she was asleep again.

+++++

He got off after thirty hours on, went upstairs to Macy's room.

"Howya' doin'?" Tanner asked as he walked into her room. She seemed brighter today, not quite as down.

"Better, Doug. Thanks."

"Yeah. Say, your chemistries look good; they wanna cut you loose. Feel like taking a ride?"

"Doug. I mean it. Thanks. You saved my life."

"Bah! Nonsense!"

"I was gonna go get a hotel room. I would have been alone. The nurses said I'd have bled to death."

He looked into her eyes and nodded.

"Doug? You ever think that some things happen for a reason?"

"Maybe — I don't know."

"You don't, huh? Imagine that. I thought you knew everything..."

They laughed at that, but Tanner felt a little off balance now. "So, I brought you some things. Why don't you get dressed and I'll come back in a few minutes..."

+++++

He drove slowly, let her get used to the sun and the air and the greenness of her own life once again. The sky was pure bluebirds, not a single cloud could be seen anywhere, and the air was cool and fresh. The world smelled of mangos and freshly mown grass, girls on roller-skates and dudes on skateboards crowded the sidewalk by the beach, Frisbees flew just above the sand and out over the silvery-blue water beyond the beach dozens of sailboats crowded the cut from the marina out to the deep water beyond the protected waters of the bay.

He watched her, thought about what she'd been through, about the hopes and dreams she might have had, about the nightmare that had come calling in their stead. He helped her from the car when they got to the marina, walked arm-in-arm with her down the pier. There were fresh flowers 'from all of us here in the marina' and Lucille stood by as they passed, followed them and handed Tanner a huge pot of greens and corn bread.

Macy was pale and light and he had to admit it now: he had never really stopped caring for her. He fed her and put her in his berth in the aft cabin, drew the little curtains and crawled in next to her and held her while she dreamed through the night. He held her when she cried, he held her while she slept, and he brushed the hair from her face and kissed her eyelashes as gently as a breeze. She looked at him, held him in her eyes and she smiled from time to time and that seemed enough for him.

"See," she said, "I told you. You still love me."

"You were right."

"I know."

It was her turn now. She held him, held on to him as tightly as she could.

+++++

Tanner went in early the next morning — it was an off day but a third year resident had called in with the flu. When the Chief was short she knew who to call. Because Tanner never said no.

Sundays were slow days. They didn't usually get mad until evening rolled 'round, but even so most Sundays were easy. And so it was this Sunday. Medicine was busy, lots of flu presenting, and psychiatry was roaring along, too — because this was, after all, Miami. Paramedics came by with a teenage-girl strapped down to the gurney a little after noon; she'd slit her wrists — "the way they do it on TV" she told him, and he repaired a tendon and sutured her wrists while she went on and on about how life wasn't worth living because her boyfriend had dumped her...

"Just curious," he asked her at one point, "but what would make life worth living?"

She mentioned something about a new cell-phone or a Mercedes like her mom's and Tanner smiled as he looked at her, while he steri-stripped the margins of the wounds and covered them with four-by-fours. A resident from psychiatry came by, and when out of the room she asked Tanner what he thought about the girl:

"Looks like a classic cry for help," Tanner said, "except her feet are filthy, there's a load of dirt under her fingernails, and she's malnourished. She acts like 'little miss rich-kid' but I'd lay odds she's alone and on the street, maybe a runaway. I'd call Social Services right off the bat." The resident nodded and made notes before she walked in to meet the girl. A little later they rolled the girl down to psychiatry; she waved at Tanner when she saw him and he smiled, waved at her while he wondered when and where The Big Mistake had caught her.

It was like a law of physics with kids like her. The Big Mistake came for them out of the blue, caught them unawares and left them compromised for life, alone now to struggle with the consequences. Loneliness hit the force multiplier of guilt and then the long slide down into the shadows began, and once you landed in the darkness you finally realized just how much trouble you were really in, and how impossibly alone The Big Mistake had left you. Slit wrists and fentanyl overdoses hit these kids hard.

"Gunshot wound inbound," came the crackling voice from the overhead speaker. "Paramedics advise five minutes out."

Tanner was the senior resident on the floor. Two first-years surgical residents and a gaggle of interns hovered expectantly, watching and waiting for him to say something. An emergency medicine doc was hustling down from the cafeteria. The oldest resident, Doris Tayloe, a woman who'd graduated from med school on her 48th birthday, looked ready to go:

"Right. Doris, go get the trays set up and ready to go, would you? Take a couple of interns with you, and tell 'em to tuck in their goddamn scrubs this time! And trust your nurses!" He was tired of finding loose hairs on his sterile field; heads would roll soon if he saw another sloppy intern walking around with their scrubs not tucked-in!

He got on the phone, called the doctor advising the paramedics in the field: "What do they have?" he wanted to know.

"Six year old African-American male, at least two gunshot wounds, one in the gut, one looks like it got the femoral artery. They've got trousers on the kid."

"Right, have you notified vascular?"

"Yeah. Collins is finishing up a chest, he'll be down as soon as he can. I called your chief, too. She's on the way."

"Right. Thanks."

"Okay, they're turning in now. Seeya..."

Tanner hung up the phone, walked down to Trauma One and filled in the team. Everything looked ready.

He saw the ambulance screech to a stop and back in to the loading bay, two patrol cars roared in and pulled raggedly into spaces marked Police Only. Mannie Hernandez jumped out of one, another officer he didn't recognize followed.

Orderlies got the ambulance doors and firemen helped pull the gurney out; one of the paramedics was bagging the kid, another held IVs overhead as they rolled the kid into the ER:

"Go to One!" Tanner called out; he saw the emergency medicine doc running down the corridor. "Thank goodness for small favors," he said as he followed the gurney into the room.

Orderlies and nurses began cutting away the kid's clothes; Tanner saw the boy's eyes roll back in his head and moved to the kid's gut. "It's a fucking mess in there," he heard one of the paramedics say. "Must have been a .357 or something, maybe a 41 mag; there's a big fucking exit wound where his right kidney used to be..."

Tanner started calling orders, supervising the residents and nurses, letting them do their jobs while he did his. "Okay, I can palpate the aorta; it feels intact — good pressure — the renal might be okay too but I kinda doubt it — Doris, let's roll him... I wanna have a look at that exit wound before we take the cuffs off his legs — sheez, what a mess! — Somebody call for a gas-passer — the renal is intact but I can feel bullet fragments all around his kidney — goddamn hollow-points! Has anyone called Urology...?"

He heard, in the periphery of his mind, Mannie out in the hall, and then an hysterical woman screaming, probably the kid's mother, probably taking all Mannie's strength to keep her out of here, then — "get a cut-down and lets get those cuffs off, I'm gonna go in and clamp off the femoral..."

"But it'll retract..." one of the interns commented.

"No shit, Sherlock!" the emergency medicine doc said angrily. "Now get the fuck out of here and go read a comic book!"

Tanner palpated the inner thigh, thought he felt pressure and made an incision from the scrotum down his thigh about eight inches. There wasn't much fat, not much muscle, either; he stuck his finger into the shattered tissue, felt the artery, felt it pulsing lightly. "It's just... still mostly intact... oh, no! Clamp!" he shouted. He felt the clamp slap in his left hand and guided it down to the deteriorating artery; he got it on the first try. "Got it! Shit, there're bone frags everywhere — better call ortho, somebody!"

Tanner stood, looked at the monitors: the kid was holding his own but the screaming in the corridor was getting out of control.

"Mannie! Bring her in here, now!"

"You sure, man!"

"Bring her in!"

A black woman, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty, thundered into the room; she shuddered to a stop when she saw her baby boy. She started wailing big time when his reality slapped her in the face.

"Ma'am," Tanner said gently, "I need you to be quiet, and I want you to listen to me, alright?!"

The woman struggled to control herself.

"Ma'am, I need you to listen to me...okay?"

She calmed noticeably when she looked at Tanner, as if she took comfort from the strength behind his voice.

"Awright, doctor, I'm listenin'."

"We've got a lot of the bleeding under control. Your boy's stable right now. Now, do you believe in God?"

"Yessir, doctor, I sure do."

"Alright. I want you to go to the chapel with Officer Hernandez and get down on your knees and start prayin'! You here me? You stop prayin' when I come and tell you too. You hear me! Your boy needs you to do that, okay?"

"Yessir," she said. "Thank you, doctor." She had somewhere to focus her strength now, and backed quietly from the room.

In the sudden quiet, Tanner hoped, things would go smoothly, then maybe things would start looking good...and prayer sure wasn't going to hurt anything right about now.

+++++

The man was huge. His bald head just barely cleared the automatic sliding doors when they slid opened for him, and he must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. His black skin glistened with sweat; he was wearing ragged denim overalls and old work-boots caked with dried mud, and nothing else: his bare chest appeared to be solid muscle, his arms too. He was looking for his step-son; the kid had taken twenty dollars from his wallet and that had, apparently, been the last straw...because he'd felt something inside snap and give way after that...

He saw his wife standing outside a little chapel, a cop between him and her. He took out the pistol in his overalls and aimed, shot once at the cop. The noise was overwhelming in the closed corridor; people started screaming and running for cover, interns ducked behind counters while the cop fell over, slid down to the floor, blood coming from his mouth and nose.

The woman turned, saw her husband and ran into the trauma room, tried to hide from him there.

The man followed her, walked into the trauma room, saw his wife hiding behind a doctor...or was the doctor trying to shield her, protect her...he couldn't tell...but really, it didn't matter now...

He fired once, then again and again, his eyes burning pyres of blind fury.

Nurses and doctors flattened against the wall, tried to get out of the line of fire, then they heard another gunshot, this time from behind the man, then another and another. Brain was exposed on the left side of the big man's head as he stared into the darkness, his eyes lifeless now, the fires all burnt out of them as he fell away.

Doug Tanner lay on the floor, bleeding; he saw Mannie across the room on the floor, blood pooling under his head; he tried to move, to help him — but he couldn't. The world grew light and distant, and as he felt himself falling into cold light he wondered what came next.

+++++

He woke up, recognized an ICU nurse and wanted to ask her what she was doing in the ER. He tried to talk but couldn't, tried to swallow but again he simply could not. He felt a wave of panic, knew he was the patient but had no idea how he'd gotten here. Then a nurse was overhead, looking down at him...

"Doug? Doug, you were shot, down in the ER. Neck wound. There's a drain in now; that's why you can't talk..."

He heard her talking, heard her say something about his mouth and tape and everything was going to be fine... and then he felt himself drifting off again...

++++++

He felt his head lifting, heard a motor whirring away under the bed; he opened his eyes, saw doctors looking at his neck and talking. The room was dark, but he could tell the curtains were drawn and only faint sunlight was seeping through. Wind and rain were pelting the glass, and for some reason that just didn't make any sense at all.

"Oh, hey Doug. You awake enough to talk?" one of the doctors said.

"Yeah," he croaked. His throat hurt like hell.

"Good! The vocal cords are fine! I think we can take out the drain, Bill." Tanner ignored them...

...because he saw Macy behind them; she looked anxious and moved close when the doctors left a moment later. He watched as she started crying, as she began shaking uncontrollably. He reached out and took her hand. "How are you doing," he asked her.

"How am I doing? Me? Oh God, Doug!" He felt her head on his chest, smelled her hair, felt her body shake as tears convulsed...

"Hey, Pachuco!"

"Mannie?"

He felt Macy stand, saw her turn and look at the cop as he wheeled in.

"Hey, amigo, brought you some donuts..."

"Right!" He looked at Mannie, then at Macy: "Try and save me at least one, will you Macy. That man is a donut fiend. He'll snatch 'em right off your plate...right out of your mouth, even..."

Everyone laughed at that, even if the truth did hurt a little.

"What about the kid, Mannie? Did he make it?"

"Yeah, sure did, his mom too."

Doug Tanner smiled when he heard that, but Mannie decided against telling him about the two nurses who hadn't made it. He'd hear about it all that soon enough.

+++++

A year later the economy was rebounding and Macy was flying again. She wanted to try the whole baby thing again too, only this time with Tanner, and despite all the very real risks she'd face he'd agreed. Maybe because he understood her better now, her strengths and hopes and dreams, and beyond the love he felt for her there was a fair measure of respect. Motherhood was a force of nature, after all, yet he also had grown very protective of her, though for a while he assumed that went along with the whole fatherhood thing...

"You know," he told her one evening, "all those pressurization cycles can't be good for you."

"Is there anything about it in your textbooks?"

"Rudimentary stuff, kiddo, like limit flying after six months. I can't find squat about ectopic risks, but it just feels wrong to me."

"Wrong? Like how?"

"Like it scares me."

"Scares you? Now that I did not expect."

"Macy, there's no certainty here...I mean the odds are you'll have a normal pregnancy, but..."

"Doug, show me anything concerning pregnancy and childbirth that's risk free...!"

"Okay, point taken, but..."

"There are no buts, Doug. Either I carry to term..."

"Or you don't."

She saw the look in his eyes, knew what he felt. He was scared of losing her for good this time, that she'd bleed out and there'd be nothing he could do to save her. Everything had happened so fast, and once the bleed had begun in earnest she'd literally almost run out the clock. It had been that close, but he'd always kept that part of the story from her and she had begun to wonder why.

"I wonder if it means something, ya know?" she said as she looked at him.

"Like what?"

"Like...maybe I'm not supposed to have children."

This was terra incognita for her, and the sudden change he saw was startling. "What makes you say that, Mace?"

"Just a feeling, I guess. Lurking around somewhere. Like in the shadows, maybe."

"We could adopt, ya know?"

She looked away, wiped a tear as sudden implications washed over her doubt. "Or I could just keep flying, Doug. Stay on the pill and just work away the years."

He shook his head. "That's not a real option, Macy. Not if being a mom means that much to you."

"What about you, Doug? What does it mean to you?"

"I just don't want anything to happen to you, Mace. I guess I have a hard time seeing past that."

She shook her head. "That's not good enough, Doug. If you don't want this at least as much as I do, I can't see this ending well."

She seemed distant after that conversation, and one evening about a week later—when he returned to the boat after work—he found she'd taken all her belongings and had simply gone. She left behind not one thing, not even a note of explanation. He learned some time later that she'd moved to Chicago and was flying out of O'Hare and as unpredictable as her actions might have seemed at the time, for some reason a part of him understood. She'd decided he probably wasn't good father material because he'd always been too wrapped up in work, and he thought that maybe it really was like his own father had told him once upon a time: he was too focused on dealing with other people's problems to ever take care of his own.

So, maybe his old man had been right all along; maybe he'd always been that way? Who knows...maybe he'd always be too self-absorbed, but what if this was the price he'd have to pay to see into other people so clearly...?

+++++

He began to see patterns in the chaos. Simple things, like violent crime increased when times were tough. That Thursday nights were the worst because that was the day before payday and family arguments almost always revolved around money. He talked to Mannie about these things, too. Like...did violent crime increase around the time of the full moon? Turns out it did, yet that was almost counter-intuitive. Shouldn't crime go up when the moon was dark?

Tanner began compiling statistics after that. His curiosity engaged now, he'd wrap up each shift by going over the socio-economic backgrounds of his patients, and he soon began to see into these events with new insight. The poorer you were the more likely you were to be shot or stabbed. Same if you were African American, except you were much more likely to die in the ER if you were black. Affluent white girls were most often seen in the ER for drug overdoses and attempted suicide. Most white people, generally speaking, ended up in the ER after being in an automobile accident or having a heart attack, while most blacks involved in auto accidents were pedestrians run down at night. At first he looked at some of these conclusions suspiciously, like there were racist undertones in these findings—but then he had to shake that off because raw numbers tell a truth all their own.