Emergency Room by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page A

this college — with the expectation of being shot on the street. You were there to study literature and philosophy and chemistry and find a boyfriend.
    Diana could not remember the girl’s name. It was something odd. Something she would not personally give a daughter of hers.
    “Wait wait wait wait wait,” said one of the cops to the Attending Surgeon. “You maybe got the shooter here in Bed Two, and his victims here in One and Three. Let’s make real sure bed two here isn’t still armed.”
    The surgeon thought that was a great idea and stepped back while the cops double-checked.
    “It’s always the way,” said one resident to another. “The shooters hardly even nick each other, they have such lousy aim, but they manage to get the bystander just fine.”
    Diana was close enough to see the resident cut the clothes off the nineteen-year-old. Supposedly he was the shooter, but if so he had also been shot. A gunshot wound, she saw now, was a hole. A black-looking thing with no spread to it. Not very threatening, really. Diana was amazed.
    The victim was quite proud, looking down at his hole as if it were a prize in an Olympic festival. “This is my fourth,” he said. “I been here three times already this year.” How amazing, thought Diana. He can talk even with a hole in his chest. How come all the air isn’t racing out of his lungs? How come he’s not drenched with blood?
    “How we gonna keep you alive, you keep behaving like this, kid?” said Steven, the male nurse.
    The boy laughed. Keeping alive did not seem to be a priority with him.
    “It isn’t funny,” said the doctor. “What about your mother? Your family? They happy that you live like this?”
    “They probably on they way over,” the boy said, laughing again. “Better than TV, you know.”
    Diana wanted to see everything. Her eyes bounced back and forth, as if this were a tennis match, not an ER.
    The team changed places, now rolling the girl onto her side, so they could work on both the entrance and the exit wound. They used the sheet to turn her, like a cloth spatula under a human pancake. They had cut away all her clothing. There was something dreadful about her nakedness, as if her body had become the lawful property of the trauma team.
    The Attending frowned over the nineteen-year-old. “What’s this wound on the back of your neck, kid?” The boys had refused to identify themselves, so they could not be called anything except “kid.”
    “I dunno.”
    The doctor prodded gently. “Kid. Is this a knife wound up here?”
    “Could be.”
    “You got a knife wound and a gunshot wound? What kind of life you got here, kid?”
    The boy smiled with satisfaction. “Exciting.”
    “And possibly over with!” snapped the Attending. “Roll the fourteen-year-old back into the hall,” he said to Diana. “He’s hardly scratched; we can get to him anytime.”
    Diana shoved the stretcher. Stretchers were much heavier than you expected them to be, and much harder to maneuver. They didn’t like to roll in a straight line, but always aimed for IV poles and visitors’ legs. Panting, Diana got the stretcher into the hall and shoved it against a wall between two drunks.
    Two cops took over. “Who shot you?” they said to the kid. They were writing in very tiny notebooks. Diana didn’t have small enough handwriting to use anything that little. Maybe it was a special police skill. Writing in miniature.
    “Huh? Who shot me?” said the fourteen-year-old. “I dunno. I din’ see nothing.”
    “That guy in Bed Two shot you?”
    “Huh? I dunno. I jest walkin’ by.”
    “Kid, you got shot. You gotta tell us who did it.”
    “Can’t. Din’ see nothing.”
    “What was it about?”
    “I dunno. I jest walkin’ by.”
    “You dealing drugs?”
    “What you mean? Me? I still in junior high.”
    “Yeah, and are you dealing?”
    “Nah, man, I get straight A’s. I be home studyin’.” He couldn’t keep a straight face during this and giggled