Devil's Playground Read Free

freeway shoulder, their wide-eyed occupants coalesced in several groups, some talking, some staring silently, all hoping to see something gruesome no doubt.
    She slipped on her leather jacket, stuffed her strawberry blonde ponytail beneath the collar, and tugged the zipper up to her chin to block the cold desert wind. She saw Charlie standing near one of the fire trucks, talking with Fire Chief Manny Orosco. She shoved her hands in her pockets and headed in their direction.
    “Sam.” Charlie Walker nodded to her as she approached.
    “Charlie. Manny. Jesus, what a mess. What happened?”
    “Big rig crossed the median and hit a car head on and exploded. The Camaro,” he yanked his head toward the overturned car, “and the wagon over there got lucky.”
    “How many killed?”
    “Whoever is in the car under the rig for sure. Two kids in the Camaro and the driver of the rig were taken to the hospital.”
    “The driver survived?” Sam looked at the molten mass, which continued to steam and spit, its heat puncturing the cold night air, warming her 200 feet away.
    “Thrown from the cab. Or jumped. Found him about fifty yards from the wreck. Banged up pretty good. Unconscious. Smelled like a whiskey bottle.”
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “Why don’t you get over to the hospital and see what you can find out from the kids and the driver, if he wakes up. I’ll see that the family in the station wagon are taken care of and be along in a few minutes. Not much more I can do here.”
    *
    Dr. Caitlin Roberts’ head had been on the pillow for a half hour when the phone rang. This year’s flu bug had turned her usually busy office into a nightmare and she did not escape the sniffling hordes until after 7 p.m. Hospital rounds took another two hours. People were always sicker around holidays, especially Christmas, and she had twice the usual number of hospitalized patients to see. Home at 9:30, she wolfed down a tuna sandwich while talking with her husband Ray and her son Ray, Jr. Then a hot shower, a welcome soft pillow, and warm comforter.
    She glanced at the clock, 10:30, hoping the call was a wrong number. No such luck.
    Ten minutes later, she turned into Mercer Community Hospital’s parking lot, greeted by flashing red lights from the two ambulances, idling on the Emergency Department’s receiving ramp.
    Sitting along I-40 and being the only hospital for fifty miles, Mercer Community inherited several dozen major accident victims each year, despite being poorly equipped to handle such cases. Seemed like most of them fell into Cat's lap.
    “What’s the story, Rosa?” Cat asked as the automatic doors to the ER hissed open.
    Rosa Gomez, the ER head nurse for longer than anyone could remember, led her to the trauma room. “It’s a bad one, this time. Dude trashed his big rig.”
    Cat absorbed the scene before her. A large man of about 50 and over 250 pounds lay on the stretcher; a respiratory tech squeezed an Ambu bag, inflating the man’s lungs rhythmically. One arm, strapped to an arm board, hung off the stretcher and received fluid through IV tubing. Sue Tilden, one of the nurses, struggled to place a second IV line in the other arm. Cat glanced at the cardiac monitor above the stretcher where a series of electric blips raced across the screen. Heart rate 130 per minute, but steady.
    “What’s his BP?” Cat asked as she began her examination.
    “80 over 50,” Rosa said.
    The massive man, gray and mottled, splotched with blue-black ecchymoses and bloody abrasions, showed no response to the needle being jabbed into his arm or the tube in his throat. Dark blood, dirt, and gravel covered his chest, legs, and shredded clothing. His pupils, dilated to two oily pools, did not respond to the penlight Cat aimed at them.
    She probed and examined his neck without removing the stabilizing cervical collar that the paramedics had placed on him at the scene. Better to wait until X-rays were done before moving his neck.