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“He’ll be in soon.”
He shook his head, detonating land mines of pain inside it. “I want to see himnow.”
“He’s still in the OR, working on other casualties of the shooting.”
Calder opened his mouth to speak but closed it quickly. A second wave of nausea came on strong. He gulped down the bitter fluid that filled his mouth. “How many were there?”
“I don’t have that information.”
She was lying, but he lacked the strength to accuse her. “Did some die?”
“I’ll bring you a ginger ale. If that doesn’t help with the nausea, we can give you something for it.”
Her avoidance was answer enough. People had died.
She left by flipping back a flimsy curtain that ineffectually separated his bed from those of other patients. It was a busy place. Staff were going about their duties, carrying this, pushing that. One was wheeling around a mop bucket like a dance partner. Another went past with a rattling cart on squeaky wheels. A young woman in scrubs jogged past, her expression intense. A desk phone rang incessantly, but no one answered it. Outside his range of vision, someone of indeterminate age and gender cried out in either anguish or pain.
He must be having a nightmare. The scenario was too bizarre to be real. People like Calder Hudson didn’t getgunshotat acounty fair. People like him didn’t even go to county fairs.
But as he settled his head onto the pillow and closed his eyes against the brutal overhead light, he acknowledged that it was all too real.
Other than the headache, he wasn’t in actual pain, although he knew he would be when the anesthesia wore off and they reduced the dosage of pain medication.
For now his left arm and hand were blessedly numb and too heavy to move, and, in any case, he was disinclined, and slightly fearful, even to try. Cindy had assured him that he wasn’t paralyzed, that he was going to be all right, but could he trust that? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to panic him.
But he was alive.
He could so easily be dead.
He could have died. Today.
Pressure began mounting deep inside his chest and continued to intensify until he feared his sternum would crack open from the strain. His throat grew tight and achy. Random but graphic recollections flashed across his mind’s eye.
He made a fist of his right hand to keep it from trembling. Tears leaked from the corners of his closed eyes and rolled down his temples. Against his most stubborn will to withhold it, a sob erupted from between his lips.
“Mr. Hudson?”
Calder hadn’t realized that he’d fallen asleep, so waking came as a mild surprise. He hadn’t intended to sleep.Must be the medications, he thought.
Or maybe his brain had simply done him a favor by shutting down so he wouldn’t have to dwell on the mass shooting, which somehow, by a trick of fate, he had survived when others hadn’t.
He didn’t want to contemplate the miracle of why he had beaten the odds. That question was too intricate and complicated for him to deal with right now. If ever.
“Mr. Hudson?”
Unable to put it off any longer, he blinked open his eyes.
The man gazing down at him said, “I’m Dr. Montgomery, chief of the trauma unit here. I treated you in the ER, but I doubt you remember that. Later, I oversaw the surgery on your arm, although others on the team did most of the work. How are you doing?”
The scrubs he was wearing were fresh, so he hadn’t come directly from an operating room, but he appeared to have spent long, hard hours in one. He looked very tired. His thinning hair had threads of gray in it, and Calder took comfort in learning that the doctor who’d been in charge of his care wasn’t a newbie.
“Dumb question, huh?” Montgomery smiled wryly. “Under the circumstances, how are you doing?”
Calder cleared his throat. “What about my arm?”
“The bullet entered here.” He indicated a point an inch or so above the crook of Calder’s elbow. “It dinged your humerus and exited out the back just beneath your shoulder. It missed the joint, for which you can be grateful.
“All the bone splinters were tweezed out. A vascular surgeon repaired one major blood vessel and restored the blood supply to your lower arm and hand. As gunshot wounds go, you got off lucky. What worried us most was your head injury.”
