Last Surgeon by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

been following behind the bus spun out, with its passenger side wheels also lifting off the road. It smacked against the rear end of the bus. The impact kept both vehicles upright, and sent them skidding away from the two prone figures.
    Nick rolled Campbell over. The addict was unconscious now, breathing slowly and sonorously. Drops of blood from Nick’s chin landed on the man’s chest and were instantly washed away by the pelting rain. On all sides, cars had managed to stop, forming a cordon around the two men.
    Campbell’s respirations were getting shallower and more widely spaced. It was possible the problem was internal bleeding and not a drug overdose, but as things were, in this spot, one condition was treatable, one was not. Nick doubted the man was getting effective ventilation, which meant the four-minute clock of brain death had started. Something had to be done. First, though, he had to get some air into Campbell’s lungs. The addict’s pulse was faint, and no more than twenty beats a minute. Tilting Campbell’s head back, Nick closed off the man’s nose and administered several mouth-to-mouth breaths.
    The bus driver and a passenger had hit the street and were charging across to them. Many others were closing in as well, a number of them with open umbrellas. Nick took the syringe of Narcan and fixed it into the IV. The slight flow of blood from the end of the plastic cannula told him the line hadn’t clotted off, or worse, been pulled out of the vein.
    “Hey, what are you doing?” an onlooker called out.
    Suppressing any number of snide responses, Nick emptied the Narcan and then the flumazenil into Campbell.
    “I’m a doctor from the medical van over there,” Nick said. “I need someone to grab his ankles and help me bring him back to our clinic. Keep your hands on his pant legs and away from that wound.”
    It was Eddie Thompson, breathless from his sprint across the street, who took the addict by the armpits and snatched him up as easily as the crazed man had knocked him down just a few minutes before.
    “Just take care of that IV,” Nick said, pressing his sleeve against his chin. “Sorry about your bus, ma’am. That was a hell of a piece of driving. I’ll tell your boss.”

CHAPTER 7
    The scene as comatose Mike Campbell was carried to the aft examining room of the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit would most certainly not have made the final cut in any Norman Rockwell selection process. Everything in the RV was wet-either with rainwater, mud, coffee, or blood.
    Seated at their spots by the table, the two remaining students from Nick’s small class looked considerably more sanguine than Phillip MacCandliss, who was slouched in the driver’s chair, wrapped in a blanket that Junie had probably provided for him. His jaunty cap was gone, and his thinning, razor-cut hair was matted with mire. Janus Fielding stood to his right, leaning against the window, his expression appearing as if he might have dropped from the sky and landed in the Emerald City of Oz.
    Comfortable with Junie’s ability to handle this, or almost any other medical situation, Nick paused as he was about to head to the rear of the van.
    “Sorry about that,” he said to MacCandliss. “You okay?”
    “No, I’m not okay. Do I look okay?”
    “Nope. Now that you mention it, you don’t look okay at all. Sorry I asked.”
    “Mr. Fielding is taking mental notes on all this, Garrity. He’ll be filing a report on the bush league operation you two are running here. He knows, as do I, that every one of these unfortunate men and women would be better off in an emergency ward or a city-run clinic. I don’t think that even in the weakest ER in the city you would find a doctor chasing his patients out into the street. You could have gotten any number of people killed. And for what? To save that… that cave dweller.”
    “Well, we can talk about this another time. I’ve got to get back there and see what I can do for our