Extinction (51 page)

There had been a few errors, to
say the least, but nothing life-threatening so far. A few cases of projectile
vomiting, runny noses that seemed to come from a never-ending sinus waterfall,
unconsciousness, and one minor case of very ill-timed uncontrollable and
unrelenting flatulence. Bryce’s mother always came to his defense, though, and
pointed out that even with some odd side effects, everything he had set out to
cure was in fact, cured.

As Bryce stood in front of his
father, he straightened up and walked in a slow circle around his sister and
tried to act like an intern presenting a patient to their attending physician. “Sir,
the patient is a five-year-old human female. Chief complaint consisting of
chronic allergies of unknown origin. The patient’s history seems to indicate
having recently moved to a new colony that is heavily populated with Trizites.
There might be a connection to her allergies and a Trizite-centric material, possibly
in the food or other commonplace item in the community.

“Using this assumption along with
the patient’s past history of allergies, I formulated a homeopathic mixture
including some local flora and herbs along with a traditional set of
human-based allergy remedies. The patient has responded well and most of her
symptoms have subsided with a only few left that are significantly diminished.”

Bryce’s father looked at him and
he could tell that his father was trying hard to stay mad or at least look as
if he was. “You still haven’t explained why she’s purple. Another one of your
unexpected side effects?”

Bryce tried to look wounded by
the question. “Side effects? I don’t think I know what you mean, Doctor.” The
look he received from his father made him quickly add, “Not a side effect, sir.
The patient has been upset for the last week or so because her Trizite
classmates can change some of their facial coloring almost at will. Some of the
compounds in the Trizite diet are directly linked to their pigment abilities. I
simply added a few local elements that I thought would give the patient a
slight tinge of color to her face.” Bryce looked at his purple sister and waved
his hand up and down her body. “I might have miscalculated the end results.
Just a little. Sir.”

Maya jumped up and down as she
realized that her big brother had purposely turned her purple, as a gift to
her. She jumped on to his chest and wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Thank
you, thank you, thank you! How long will I be purple? Can you make me different
colors? Can you make my friends different colors?”

“No, he certainly may not turn
your friends different colors.” Their father now looked at the two embracing
siblings. He smiled; it was pretty great to have two kids who actually got a
long so well. “Bryce, get your baseball uniform on. We need to get going if
we’re going to get you to practice before it starts.”

Bryce lowered his sister to the
ground and just smiled before he ran out of the room. He knew that he had just
barely dodged a lot of grounding from his father, possibly worse. As he left
the room, Maya jumped into her father’s arms and started to talk about school
and what she was going to wear tomorrow to show off her new color. Bryce came
back just a few moments later and his sister was still babbling away. She was
set down and then father and son left together, all trespasses forgot for the
time being.

As they left the driveway, his
father mentioned that they would have to stop by the hospital on the way to the
baseball field. His father had left his wallet in his locker and wanted to pick
it up because he was going to be off for the next four days. Bryce was fine
with the detour; he loved the hospital and they still had plenty of time to get
to practice. They arrived a short time later and Bryce went in to the building
with his father, saying hi to all of his father’s coworkers as they passed.

When they were just about to the
locker room, Doctor Wilson walked up to Bryce’s father. “Hey, Trevor!”

Bryce’s dad turned to look at his
colleague and friend. “I can’t, Tim. I’ve got Bryce with me and I need to get
him to his baseball practice.”

Tim looked at Bryce and then back
to his father. “Look, Trevor, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t an absolute
emergency.” Trevor looked at him sideways. “Okay, I would ask, but this is
different.”

“Tim, this is an
emergency
room.
Newsflash—everything is an emergency. My son is more important to me
than strangers I don’t know.”

Tim looked a little shocked to
hear the statement that almost everyone thought but there had always been an
unwritten rule that it was never to be spoken aloud: the patients weren’t the
most important things in the world. Tim looked at Bryce before addressing
Trevor again. “You’re right, absolutely. Here’s the deal, though, we have a
family of five that will be here in about”—he looked at his watch—“thirty
seconds now. They all have major multiple stab wounds. We have the surgery
department alerted and they are busy getting teams together for each patient
along with getting the operating rooms ready. We just need you to help
stabilize one of the patients until surgery comes down to grab him.

“We’ve only got two trauma
surgeons on right now. I’m sure we can handle it without you but it will be
smoother with you. I’ll give you the worst of the five to make sure yours gets
taken to the OR first and then you can get out of here. Twenty minutes tops,
but you know in this situation we’re really hoping for less than ten minutes
before they get hauled to surgery.”

Trevor looked at Bryce, who just
shrugged. “A whole family was stabbed; we should help them. It’s all right, Dad;
you already said I was more important so you don’t have to feel guilty. Besides,
I may be more important to you than the patients, but the patients are more
important to me than baseball.”

“You’re just saying that to get
out of trouble for turning your sister purple.”

Tim said, “What?!”

Bryce, smiling from ear to ear,
answered his father, “Maybe. But seriously, Dad, not really. Let’s help.”

“Okay, Tim, let’s go.” Looking
down to Bryce, who was keeping in step with the adults, “Do you want to watch
or wait at the nurse’s station?”

Perplexing question for Bryce. He
was at the point that girls were starting to get very interesting and grown
women were even more interesting. On top of that, the nurses seemed to adore
him and he was guaranteed a lot of hugs and kisses from them. On the other
hand, with five simultaneous traumas, most of the nurses would probably be busy
so he’d be stuck playing a game on a terminal or something, by himself most
likely. “I’ll go with you, Dad.”

“Sounds good to me. And remember,
if one of the new interns messes up an IV, you need to jump in there and get it
yourself to make them feel bad.” It was a fun game that Bryce and his dad
played on the interns, something along the lines of, “See what you just screwed
up? Now watch the twelve-year-old kid do it just right. Hey, no crying in the
ER.”

As they approached the trauma
bay, Bryce saw that along with the ambulances that were arriving there were
also several police vehicles. Cops usually showed up when there was an assault
of some sort but he hadn’t seen this many before. As the first gurney made its
way in, there were four cops surrounding it.

Tim looked at Trevor. “I think
that one is yours. The telemetry from the paramedics said the father was in the
worst condition. That looks like him.”

“Copy that.” Looking down at his
son, he said, “There’s a lot of blood, Bryce; you know the drill. Gown up and
put on all the protection possible: gloves, mask, goggles, everything.”

“Yes, sir.” Bryce ran ahead and
started pulling all of the protective gear from the dispensers on the side of
the wall next to the trauma room. One intern passed by him and started to enter
the trauma room without stopping. Bryce yelled at him, “Hey you! Yeah, new kid.
You want Shirka Herpes or Mulvarian Hepatitis?! Put on your gown and stuff
before you go in to that bloodbath.”

The intern stopped and looked
around him to see whether the kid was seriously addressing him. One of the
nurses stopped at the dispensers and gave Bryce a quick hug and kiss before
addressing the intern, “He’s right. Our safety comes before their treatment.”

The intern slowly joined the two
putting on their safety gear and then the three walked in the room, followed
shortly after by Bryce’s father. He looked at the people already at work and
then the officers who stood nearby. “I understand you gentlemen have a job to
do, but so do we. We need a little more room to work. Please, back up just a
hair to the red line we have outlining the gurney. Also, blood can shoot quite
a distance—there are disposable goggles on the wall outside this room. You’re more
than welcome to grab some along with gloves, just in case.”

The sergeant in the group looked
down to the red line on the floor. “Move back, boys; give Doc some room.
Jenkins, go get four safety glasses and some gloves for all of us.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Trevor saw
his team doing what they were trained to do; they needed very little direction
from him in these sorts of cases. “I don’t think he’ll be able to talk to you,
sir. His throat is fairly well damaged. Someone did quite a number on him.”

The sergeant got a disgusted look
on his face. “I’m not waiting here for a statement or suspect description, not
this time. He is the suspect. Those are self-inflicted wounds.”

“All of them? Are you sure?”
Bryce’s dad was working on the man’s throat and trying to make a better
surgical airway for him. The number of stab wounds all over his body made it
seem impossible to believe that he had done it all to himself.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Bystanders
witnessed most of it and we have video feed from the bank security camera. They
streamed the video to me while we were on our way here.” The sergeant took a
deep breath. “He walked out from the bank after having an argument with the
teller about a problem with his account. He pulled out a hunting knife and
started to go back in. His wife tried to stop him so he began stabbing her. The
kids got out of the car and were yelling and screaming at him and he turned on
them next. After he stabbed everyone multiple times, he began stabbing himself.
When the first patrol unit arrived on scene, he tried to slit his own throat.
It doesn’t look like he did too good of a job of it, though.”

“He did better than you think.”
Trevor was now probing deep into the anatomy of the man’s neck and throat. “He
cut one carotid and there are three separate lacerations to his trachea. I can
fix it, though.”

“Don’t try too hard, Doc. No one
would blame you if you happened to ‘slip’ or maybe just didn’t do a great job
this one time.” The sergeant received nods of affirmation from his fellow
officers.

Without taking his eyes off the
patient, Trevor replied without emotion, “I can’t imagine ever doing anything
to harm my family like he did, but it’s not my job to judge or punish. My job
is to fix.”

Bryce was pulling down a suture
kit and advanced airway tray for his father. “My dad isn’t the Grim Reaper, sir.
He doesn’t take lives—he saves them.”

“Oh, uh, hey there, kid. I didn’t
see you standing there. Sorry about that.” The sergeant was stammering a little
as he tasted the leather from the sole of his shoe that was now firmly planted
in his own mouth.

“Don’t worry about it. I hear all
sorts of things when I help my dad.” Bryce looked at one of the officers in the
middle. “And Sergeant…”

“Yeah, kid?”

“You might want to catch Jenkins;
he’s about to pass out.” Thump. “Sorry, too late.”

Eight minutes after the patient
came through the ambulance bay doors, a surgical team came and grabbed the
gurney and whisked him away to the operating room. Trevor took his son to the
basin sink and helped him remove all of his protective gear and then they both
washed up. Holding Bryce’s hand, they walked out of the ER after Trevor made
sure to tell the charge nurse that he’d dictate the chart from home later
tonight after the kids were in bed.

“See, dad,” Bryce looked at his
watch, “we’ll only be a few minutes late and we helped someone.”

Speaking thoughts that should
have been kept private, Trevor sighed. “Yeah, sometimes the people I help don’t
make me feel good about what I do.”

Bryce stopped dead in his tracks
and pulled his father to a stop. “Dad. You are not the Reaper. That’s someone
else’s job. No matter how bad that man is, I bet his kids still love him.
Someone, somewhere must still love him. You helped them, not him. Isn’t that
what you’ve always told me?”

“I love you, son.” He gave Bryce
a quick hug. “I knew I kept you around for some reason.”

Five weeks later, Bryce was
laying on the living room floor trying to stay awake for the end of the movie.
When the credits started to roll, his father stood and told him to go get ready
for bed then come back so they could review one patient chart together before
bed. Bryce completed his tasks and hurried back; patient charts had taken the
place of bedtime stories for the past few years and he always enjoyed them.

When Bryce returned, he found his
father leaning forward in his chair, face buried in his hands, obviously
crying. Bryce had only seen his father cry after the birth of his sister and he
knew that these sobs were a completely different kind. He gently touched his
father’s shoulder and was about to ask what was wrong when the picture on the
TV caught his eye. It was the man they had worked on together, the man who had
stabbed his family.

Bryce didn’t recognize him when
the news initially reported on the event weeks ago. His driver’s license photos
and family photos they showed looked so different from the bloodied man they
had saved in the trauma room. But after seeing his face all over the news for
weeks, Bryce immediately recognized the man being reported on.