The Unexpected Hero

“Uh-oh,” Krissie said humorously as her dad rose from his chair.

He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Call me if you need protection.”

“Oh, go on,” Marge laughed. “It’s nothing like that.”

Nate disappeared through the sliding glass door, closing it pointedly behind him.

Marge looked at Krissie as if drinking in every detail. “I know you wrote and called all the time while you were away. But I’m a mother, and I can tell there was a lot you weren’t saying.”

“Mom…”

Marge shook her head and patted her hand. “Nate says I shouldn’t ask, and he would know. I just want you to know that if you ever need to talk, I’m here.”

“I’ve always known that.” But Krissie felt her throat tighten anyway, and she had to swallow hard.

“And if you feel it’s something only your dad would understand, well, he’s here, too.”

“I know…” Krissie could hardly talk around the sudden lump in her throat. Marge left her chair to come wrap her arms tightly around her daughter. All of a sudden, Krissie felt like a small child again, when all the comfort in the world could be found within the arms of her mother, with her head on her mother’s breast. Comfort and safety.

“I can only imagine,” Marge murmured. “I can only imagine. But you’ll heal now. I know you will.”

“I’m healing already,” Krissie managed, her voice thick.

“Yes, you are. I knew it when you decided to come home.”

Marge squeezed her hard then let go. As if reading a signal, Nate returned with a plate of raw burgers.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he said jovially. “ ‘Cuz I’m cooking for four.”

Marge resumed her seat, raising a brow. “He’s always looking for an excuse to get a second burger.”

“Well, if you’d let me have them more often, I wouldn’t need to resort to tricks!”

Krissie laughed, feeling the intense emotions begin to subside, allowing her to breathe and swallow again. “I love you guys,” she said.

Her answer came in unison, “We love you, too.”

When Krissie arrived at the hospital just before seven, she realized the auto accident must have been a serious one. Police cars and two ambulances stood at the emergency room entrance, and the medevac helicopter was on the pad not far away. Even as she walked across the parking lot, she saw her sister Wendy emerge alongside a gurney headed for the helicopter, an IV bag swinging in the breeze. The rotors were powering up even before the gurney reached the chopper.

Taking a chance, she entered by way of the E.R. and was collared immediately by David. “We need you here,” he said briskly. “Have someone call the ward and tell the charge nurse not to leave.”

“What happened?”

“Three-car pileup. One of them was a van with a family of five.”

Krissie nodded and took off. She called the ward herself to advise them she’d be late, then tore to the changing room to pull on scrubs and booties. Back out in the E.R. controlled chaos reigned. To a practiced eye, it was clear that everything was functioning as it should, even though they were shorthanded, but to the uneducated, it probably looked like total uproar.

“In here.” David motioned her into a cubicle and she found a child of maybe eight or nine on the gurney inside. He was unconscious, but breathing normally. David bent over him, ignoring the blood, and began to listen to chest sounds, then to palpate.

“I don’t see any wounds,” he said. “Do you?”

Krissie immediately stepped in and began to check the small body from head to toe. “Head gash,” she said. “Already stopped bleeding. Maybe two stitches, nothing major.”

“Got it.”

She kept working her way downward, checking limbs, searching every inch of skin. “Nothing else. Either he bled heavily for a while or it’s someone else’s blood.”

David finished putting two sutures in the scalp wound. “Check BP again, make sure it’s not falling.”

She pressed the button on the automatic blood pressure machine and watched the cuff inflate then release. “Good BP,” she said, scanning the readout.

“Good. Send him on to X-ray. No way to tell what’s broken, but make sure they do a good job on the head.”

But before they could take him away, David stopped them and looked at the boy’s abdomen again. What he saw made him pause. “Seat belt.”

Krissie stepped closer and watched David trace the faint outline of an emerging bruise. As soon as she saw it, she turned back to the BP monitor and took another reading. “Steady,” she said. But as she turned back to David, she saw the worry in his eyes. They both knew what a seat belt could do in an accident: ruptured spleen, other organ damage from sudden pressure. The damage might be small right now, too small to detect with palpation, but if allowed to go untreated, it could become a death sentence.

“You go with him,” David told her. “Monitor constantly. But we need those X-rays.”

“Yes, doctor.”

So, keeping the child hooked up to his IV, and with the blood pressure monitor tucked onto the bed with him, Krissie helped push the gurney to X-ray. “What’s his name?” she called over her shoulder.

David shook his head. “No names yet.”

“Tell the cops I need to know.”

“I will.” He was already moving on to the next patient. A woman suddenly screamed, but not even that woke the boy.

“Poor little tyke,” said the orderly helping her to push the gurney. For the first time, Krissie looked up and saw Charlie Waters.

“Oh, hi, Charlie. Sorry, I was focused on the boy.”

He nodded. “Everyone is focused right now.”

Two X-ray technicians were already waiting. Krissie insisted on remaining at the boy’s bedside, so she donned a lead apron. As they moved his little body around so they could get an unobstructed view of every bone in his body, she found herself grateful that, for now at least, he remained unconscious. If any of those bones were broken, this would have been hell on earth for him, and he’d already been through quite enough.

A radiologist had been called in, and he began examining the X-rays as they developed, before the entire set was even taken. Krissie kept checking the blood pressure, and every few minutes, palpated the child’s abdomen. No sign that it was hardening, even though the seat-belt bruise was becoming more apparent.

The radiologist joined her before they were even done. “He needs to be transported,” he said. “There’s a compression fracture in his left skull. It’s not deep, not something you’d probably find by touch, but he needs an MRI stat.”

That was all Krissie needed to hear. Small hospital, no MRI available. It was one of those things you dealt with here. “Call down to E.R. and tell Dr. Marcus, will you? We’ll get him out as fast as we can.”

The radiologist nodded and waved them on their way. Another gurney, holding a moaning man, was already waiting in line.

By the time they returned to the emergency room, another helicopter was landing, this one from a neighboring county. The boy was rushed on board, along with a woman who seemed to be wavering in and out of consciousness. Instructions were given, then Krissie, Charlie and David stood back as the helicopter lifted to the sky.

“God,” said David, “some days I hate being at a small hospital.”