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Officer Down - Excerpt
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“She’s awake all right.”
A fat, tough nurse wraps something around my arm. As soon as another nurse messes with a bandage on my head, I’m certain I’m still not dead because dead people don’t throw up, and I’m about to. Florescent lights assault my eyes and a nauseous pink curtain surrounds half of the room. |
“I feel sick.” Having stated the obvious, I get a macaroni-shaped
dish placed conveniently on my sternum. So I’m in the hospital. I’d
rather be dead.
“Breathe,” the fat nurse says, putting her hand on my forehead like
she can actually stop my head from spinning. I have to say, it helps.
Next thing I know, she opens my gown, exposing my breasts to anyone
who cares to look as they pass by, and she listens to my heart. Her
shirt is patterned with a gaudy mix of lipstick tubes and cosmetic
brushes, and her complete disregard for vanity makes me wonder why
she chose it. “Vitals are stable, Cerita.”
Cerita nods and gets ready to stick a needle in my arm. “How old are
you, hun?”
“Thirty-two.”
“You look so young. I’d have guessed she was in her
twenties,” she says to the fat one as she flicks the syringe with her
middle finger.
“She ain’t had no babies to round her out,” the fat one
says.
“What happened?” I ask. I stretch my jaw and my mouth
feels like I swallowed flour.
“Your brain practically fell out of your head, girl,”
Cerita says, matter-of-fact. “Doctor stitched you up. Your hair’ll
hide the wound. Lucky you got so much hair.” I close my eyes so I
don’t have to watch her stick me. Guns, okay. Needles, no thanks.
“Lucky she’s got a hard head, too. That’s some
concussion,” the fat one says, looking at my x-ray in a backlit box.
So that part of my dream was true, but—
“What happened tonight?” is what I want to know.
“That’s what everyone outside’s waiting for you to wake
up and tell ‘em. You’re the most popular patient we had since...
since that second baseman in here last spring. Cerita, what was his
name? That Cub with the broken collar bone?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m a Sox fan,” Cerita says as she puts a
cotton swab over the needle and pulls it from my skin. “This’ll keep
the swelling down,” she says. Then she puts her gear in some kind of
plastic pail, a toolbox for all things injected, and prepares to leave.
“Is my partner here, in this hospital?” I ask. Cerita
stops. They look at each other like I’m asking to be a part of some
secret club.
“Tell that policeman he can come on in now,” the fat one
says to Cerita. “He’s been bugging me.” |
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