Read Online The Donors by Jeffrey Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

agony echoed silently in his mind instead. He looked in vain for any outlet.
    â€œThat’s a good piece. Put that in some saline.”
    â€œThere you are.”
    â€œRight here?”
    â€œThat’s it, right next to the first cut.”
    Pressure on his thigh again. This time more to the inside. The horrible whirring sound.
    Please, stop! For god’s sake, not again!
    The vacuous screams inside his head were followed again by the pressure and then by the sharp, ripping up the inside of his thigh and the terrible burning.
    â€œAnother good one.”
    â€œMan, he’s really bleeding.”
    â€œGet some epi-soaked sponges on the site.”
    â€œWant me to hold pressure?”
    â€œGuess you better.”
    A hand pressed roughly right where his leg burned . His pain ratcheted up two notches, the beeping boomed louder, and Steve felt sure that his brain would explode if he couldn’t move immediately. But only his chest moved, outside of his control, with each HISS of the breathing machine.
    â€œHere’s the epi.”
    He heard a sound, like the pump of a squirt bottle, and then a cool wetness on his thigh. For a second it soothed the pain, but then the fire rose in intensity, and the room went black. Steve drifted. The voices around him became faint, the beeping softer and softer and softer…
    Â 
    *  *  *
    Â 
    Jason looked at the clock for the tenth time in eight minutes. His almost feverish desire to get out of the ER did nothing to make the damn thing go any faster. He stood next to the patient board and scribbled a final few notes in the last two charts of patients with pending items. He repeatedly looked down the hall for his relief; the infamous Dr. Dietrich. Jason didn’t know if it was a desire to see (and maybe talk to) Jenny or his nearly desperate need to check on Nathan that drove his manic desire.
    There was something very different about Nathan, something they shared other than scars. The afternoon had been tough on their new friendship (or whatever it was). It had been easy to talk Sheila Katzen, the General Surgery third year resident on the burn service, into letting him do Nathan’s debridement. Hell, Sheila didn’t want to do it any more than he did. Scraping and scrubbing dead skin off someone held no glamour or glory, and anyone who didn’t feel agony when that patient was a crying child should probably not be allowed to mingle in a civilized society.
    You couldn’t give enough Morphine to make the pain go away without stopping their breathing. All you could do was hope that the little bit of Versed you gave would keep the little guy from remembering why he should hate you.
    But Nathan had been a real trooper. He sobbed almost silently as Jason removed the dead skin on the sensitive palm of his hand and up the side of his index finger. Jason tried to talk to him at first, searched for consoling words, but it felt ridiculous. He finally tried to just finish as quickly as possible.
    The hand itself looked remarkably good and could probably have a skin graft in another day or so (during which Nathan would get to have general anesthesia—thank god). When he finished he realized he had cried more than Nathan. He had nearly burst when his new buddy looked up at him between sobs and said, “Thanks for taking care of me, Jason.”
    Jason looked again at the painfully slow clock and his gaze caught Dietrich coming up the hallway from the magnetized doors. He walked slowly and whispered something to a pretty girl in scrubs, who looked familiar—someone from X-Ray, he thought. She blushed and glanced at her own feet, then put a hand on Dietrich’s chest to push him away. The push held an intimacy that made it clear she had not shunned him earlier. Jason chuckled and shook his head.
    â€œHey there, big guy,” Dietrich said as he breezed up beside him. “How’s the nut house?”
    â€œAbout average.” Jason