He trudged to the rear of the patrol car and met the girl standing in
the door with a pair of folded plastic morgue bags in her hands.
Behind her, Clay could see the body of the woman on the surgical
table, an array of tubes and probes leading to plasma drip bottles and
other equipment racked out over the table.
"How is she?"
"Not good," Kelly replied. "Skull fracture, ruptured spleen, broken
ribs and double leg fractures. I've already called for an ambulance."
Ferguson nodded, took the bags from her and waded back through the
foam.
The four troopers worked in the silence of the deserted traffic lane.
A hundred yards away, traffic was moving steadily in the slow white
lane. Three-quarters of a mile to the south, fast and ultra high
traffic sped at its normal pace in the blue and yellow lanes.
Westbound green was still being rerouted into the slower white lane,
around the scene of the accident. It was now twenty-six minutes since
Car 56 had received the accident call. The light snow flurries had
turned to a steady fall of thick wet flakes, melting as they hit on
the warm pavement but beginning to coat the pitiful flotsam of the
accident.
The troopers finished the gruesome task of getting the bodies into the
morgue sacks and laid beside the dispensary ramp for the ambulance to
pick up with the surviving victim. Car 119's MSO had joined Kelly in
Beulah's dispensary to give what help she might. The four patrol
troopers began the grim task of probing the scattered wreckage for
other possible victims, personal possessions and identification. They
were stacking a small pile of hand luggage when the long, low bulk of
the ambulance swung out of the police lane and rolled to a stop.
Longer than the patrol cars but without the non-medical emergency
facilities, the ambulance was in reality a mobile hospital. A full,
scrubbed-up surgical team was waiting in the main operating room even
as the ramps opened and the techs headed for Car 56. The team had been
briefed by radio on the condition of the patient; had read the full
recordings of the diagnostician; and were watching transmitted pulse
and respiration graphs on their own screens while the transfer was
being made.
The two women MSOs had unlocked the surgical table in Beulah's
dispensary and a plastic tent covered not only the table and the
patient, but also the plasma and Regen racks overhead. The entire
table and rig slid down the ramp onto a motor-driven dolly from the
ambulance. Without delay, it wheeled across the open few feet of
pavement into the ambulance and to the surgery room. The techs locked
the table into place in the other vehicle and left the surgery. From a
storage compartment, they wheeled out a fresh patrol dispensary table
and rack and placed it in Kelly's miniature surgery. The dead went
into the morgue aboard the ambulance, the ramp closed and the
ambulance swung around and headed across the traffic lanes to
eastbound NAT-26 and Philadelphia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account