Of all the things that were happening, Ethan should have expected it. He should have expected to see patients lined along all benches, the gurneys lining the halls. The few doctors, nurses, and emergency personnel rushing from patient to patient. In doorways, he could see an odd number of officers. Not nearly enough for the crowd amassed in the waiting room, though. Someone was shouting somewhere, and suddenly there was a loud cry down the hall. He swallowed and steeled himself so he wouldn’t turn around to leave. There was a reason he became a coroner. This was insanity.
As he pushed forward, past agitated and fearful family members and patients, he caught glimpses of some of the injuries. He assumed many came from riots– with busted lips and noses, scrapped up heads and oddly held limbs. A man sat apart from the others, his wife holding his arm as he doubled over. Ethan didn’t know where to start, so he kept walking. There was no one at the front desk, but a nurse hovering nearby caught his arm. She resonated a frantic kind of desperation.
“Dr. Avrams, thank god. Dr. Reyes is short-staffed in the Emergency Room, do you mind? No need to sign in, we’re taking whoever we could get.” He didn’t remember her name. So, he just nodded– a little stunned by the sensory overload of it all.
“Sure, I’ll–” She released him then went back to trying to calm a woman who was now openly sobbing. He went in the direction he knew the Emergency Room to be and was almost run over by a gurney as it was shoved forcefully past him. Ethan followed at a jog now and once he got past the doors he was hit with a wave of all-out hell. It was somehow worse than the waiting room.
“I need sutures, stat!” A doctor screamed, they weren’t hollering anymore, they were screaming above all of the patients desperate shouts, above the groans of pain from the innocents.
“I need a gurney over here!” Another doctor yelled, Dr. Edwards, if Amelia were being specific. She was one of hers, fearless and adamant that she would stay, even when she’d pleaded that she leave. Edwards had a beautiful family at home, a loving wife, and a baby boy. They needed her. They would need her even more as this continued.
Amelia could not listen to any of their pleas. Instead, she was slaving away over a patient who’d had to wait a tragically long time to see them, bleeding rapidly. Why no one had brought him to her sooner would torment her for hours under different circumstances. The man had lost a quarter of his blood, and she was pumping one of their last bags into him. Slowly, his colour was returning to his face, although he had yet to return to consciousness. There was no one from neuro left to check out his skull where a nasty cut lay. He’d smashed it hard, apparently, after someone had attacked him and taken off his hand.
The last step of care was to sew his skin back together without the finger. It was all the mercy that she could afford to give him. She was a doctor, not a surgeon, and he had lost his finger in the chaos. Slowly, she thread the needle through his flesh, careful not to lose focus while listening to the screams. And just like that, she’d done all that she could for him.
She left the hallway that the man lay in, laying a sign on his bed that read ‘CHECK AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE!’ and made her way back into the main room of the ER. There she saw Ethan, and relief flooded her. Another doctor. More importantly, a friend. She was bloody, her eyes reddened from the long hours and tears she’d shed over the patients she’d lost. The death count was too high.
“Ethan!” She called, crossing the room carefully, avoiding the gurneys rushing by and antsy, terrified patients. She wrapped her arms around him without hesitation, needing a moments relief, and then pulled away. Time to give the report. “We’re wildly understaffed, people are getting angry, demanding care and we’re running low on supplies. There was one guy in the east hallway who’s been stabbed and bitten. He hasn’t lost any limbs, but he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s our next patient. I’ll need you to work on the bite while I work on the stab wound.” Amelia paused, looking him over. No wounds, no signs of being attacked. “Are you okay?”
