The Odds (12 page)

“What’s up?”

“Wondered if I could use your computer.”

“I just want to finish my golf game.”

“Okay. Finish it.” Joel would rather go to the library, but on Saturday it closes early. This is the best bet.

Russell hits a few more balls. Joel watches a ball roll slowly toward the hole on the screen, then go in. “Yay,” Russell calls out. “I can do this game. This is a game I’m good at. So, you want a turn?”

“I was going to look up some other stuff.”

Joel’s friend moves off the chair reluctantly and plops onto his bed. “Like what?”

“Just stuff my sister needs for a project she’s doing.”

“Like what?”

“Guns. Kinds of guns.”

“What kind of project?”

“Something she’s doing for school. A report.”

“Cool.”

Joel pounds keys as fast as he can, almost cursing with impatience. He kills time looking at guns, waiting to transition to
gunshot wounds
. If only Russell would be called to dinner and leave him alone for a few minutes. He opens the candy bar and breaks off a bite for himself. The gun he handed to Nick is possibly a .45, or no, a 9 mm. He thinks, the latter picture is the weapon that made the wound.

“Cool gun.”

Joel grunts.

“You taking notes?”

Joel points to his head. “Memory. You got anything good to eat downstairs?”

“Cheese and crackers. My mom gets mad when I eat before dinner, but maybe I can get some.” He slides off the bed, hesitates, and finally leaves the room.

As fast as he can, Joel types in
GSW compound fracture
. A bunch of pictures comes up, but he’s going through sites as fast as he can. He tries,
treatment
. And
shin
, then
tibia
.

It is the tibia, and it is broken—and he has set it, but not firmly enough. Now he studies the text of medical journals and other sites.

Neuropraxic, paresthesias
. New words come at him, words he likes. His heart pounds as he reads on. He has done right. He was right.

Russell comes up with some crackers and cheese and a couple of cartons of juice. “She’s mad,” he says. “I took these anyway.”

The part of the candy bar Joel ate has awakened his hunger. He grabs handfuls of crackers and cheese, eating, going so fast on the Internet highway that Russell, who wants to be interested, can’t catch up.

   IN THE WOMEN’S ROOM AT the hospital, Meg splashes cold water over her face, extracts a comb from her backpack. Her breath is still ragged from rushing. She mustn’t look like someone who’s been scrambling around in the weeds all day. Her light brown hair is shoulder length and straight, her bangs long. She looks … ordinary. She takes a deep breath and walks out and down the hall to Emergency.

“I’m here to talk to someone about my research project,” she explains at the intake desk. “I need to do an interview with a trauma doctor. Physician.”

The receptionist rakes up some incredulity. She’s a black woman with severely straightened hair, very orderly, and she says, with affront, “This is an emergency room!”

“That’s what I’m supposed to write about. Trauma units. Specifically, treatment of gunshot wounds.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you talk to the doctors. They’re busy.”

“It’s important. It’s for the nationals of the science fair, a big prize.” She says all this while scrambling to put together a story. “It’s the project I proposed as a finalist. All the teachers approved it. They told me this hospital was famous for trauma.” She catches her breath, opens her notebook as if that will help to persuade this woman.

“Where do you go to school?”

“Allegheny,” she says quietly. “Is there a nurse I could talk to?”

“Please sit in the waiting room.”

Meg hesitates, but decides to risk it. Is the receptionist calling the police? She tries to watch what the woman does as she chooses a green plastic chair, like all the other chairs, this one away from people who appear to be sniffling and coughing. Most of the other people waiting look really sick. Some are reading magazines, some looking at the TV, but most stare ahead or clutch an arm or hold out a bum leg that has something wrong with it. If the police come for her, she will have to tell the truth. But her heart squeezes to imagine Laurie and Susannah looking shocked as other, different, police come to take them away.

People look at her curiously. No parent, no visible illness, just a kid with a backpack. She almost gets up, almost leaves.

Finally a nurse sits down beside her. This nurse is a solid blonde with a skeptical smile. “This is a school assignment?” she asks.

“It’s for a science fair. A contest. There’s a … a prize. Two hundred dollars. I think my project is pretty good.”

“What is it?”

“I need to show treatment of a GSW.”

The nurse raises her eyebrows. “You talk the talk.”

“Well, I’ve done the part I could do on paper,” Meg says. “I’ve done some research. I chose tibia. Broken bone. Compound fracture.”

The woman is amused, all right. “I like head wounds myself,” she says. “So much possibility for drama with the trauma. Lots of blood.”

“I thought a lower leg wound was kind of interesting. Not a lot of blood, I mean no danger of bleeding to death or any of that, but a broken bone and nerve trauma and an inability to walk and possible infection. I have to construct a dummy to show what happened.”

“What are you going to use?”

“Clothes stuffed with newspaper and a couple of sticks so I can show the broken bone.”

“Neat.”

“Here’s what I have so far. Wash the wound. I need to show how to do that. But what is the current … cleanser?”

“Water. Primarily water. We also use surgical cleansers.”

“What are they?”

“You know, professional products. Phisohex is one.”

“Phisohex.” Meg writes it down. “Do you have an empty container I could use? Or maybe something almost empty.”

“Can’t you just say the name of it?”

“Well, we act it out. And we show everything. We make a whole scene, kind of a stage set. Kind of like theater.”

“I see. I’ll go look. What else?”

Meg tries to speak quietly since two men across from her are watching her, listening to everything.

“Splint. Sticks at first.”

“No, no, mostly we get ’em into X-ray right away. Then we call our carpenters with the surgical nails.” The nurse smiles, pleased with her little joke.

“No. I forgot to explain. It’s an outdoor, outpost, amateur kind of thing. An accident, far from a hospital.”

“Oh. A hunting rifle, then. That’d pretty much blow the leg off.”

“Hmm,” Meg says. “No, that ruins my project. I didn’t want to blow the leg off. I mean, this is supposed to be an emergency procedure first. Hospital later. And a regular gun.”

“Handgun. But out camping?”

“Yeah … Couldn’t that happen?”

“Sure.”

“So, say it’s an accident and … there they are, two friends, with just about nothing to use and the wounded guy can’t move.”

“Well you can forget the Phisohex then until you get your victim to a hospital. And he would get a tetanus shot once you get there, too.”

“Okay.” Meg makes a pass at writing the part about tetanus. But she is dashed. X-rays and cleaning solution and tetanus vaccine she doesn’t have and can’t get. “And, what if …” Meg feels herself losing power fast. “What if the guys made a splint? Would it hold for a while?”

“Not really. Too tricky. We tend to nail the bone. Without that, a victim would have to lie still for a long time. Six weeks, no movement.”

“Couldn’t move at all?”

“Upper body very carefully. Major risk of reinjury. Mega-complications.”

She can feel sweat popping out on her forehead. Does the woman notice? “My brother and I saw a splint in a war movie,” she says. “Maybe it wasn’t realistic. I would have paid more attention if I’d known I was going to do a project. What about antibiotics?”

“If there’s infection, absolutely necessary. It’s done anyway as a matter of course, prophylactically, with an open wound. Prophylactically means—”

“Yes, I know. I’m definitely going to make infection a part of it. Fever. That’s more dramatic, I think. What kind of antibiotic is best?”

“Well, you’re out in the sticks.”

“Yes. Part one, anyway.”

“Anything you have. Irrigate the wound. Water is the best, believe it or not.
Copious irrigation
is the recommendation these days.” It’s what Joel said. He knew that already. The nurse continues, “It’s not the bullet that infects. That’s sterile. It’s whatever the bullet carries with it.”

“Material from the pants?”

“Right. Exactly. Once you get to the hospital, they’re going to administer penicillin G or clindamycin. Different docs, different drugs.”

Meg keeps making notes that the nurse reads over her shoulder.

“Usually six hundred milligrams a day for a week. At least. If the infection is already progressed, even more than that at first.”

She has done right, then, in giving him a heavy dose. “I see. I need samples.”

“We can’t give out samples.”

“Old outdated pills?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Not pharmaceuticals. For one thing, we don’t keep old pills around, honey. This is a hospital emergency room. Why are the pills so important?” The nurse leans back a few inches to direct a good long look at Meg’s face. “You could use a Contac capsule. Who’d know?”

“I guess I was being too literal.”

The nurse looks toward the admission station and back to her. “I’m going to need your name.”

“Catherine,” she says, her middle name, not the largest lie in the world. She might be one of those people who prefers her middle name. And then “Charles” pops out, her father’s first name.

“I’m going to ask you a question. Do you have a boyfriend, maybe played rough, got himself in some kind of trouble?”

Meg’s breath quickens. “No.”

“If you know anyone who needs help, you must make that person come in, do you understand? We could be talking about something very serious here.”

Meg bites her lip hard. “Yes. But no, this is a project,” she insists, her voice light, whispery.

“I’ll see if I have anything you can use.”

The woman is gone for a quarter hour. The door to the inner workings of the emergency unit open and shut; each time Meg catches glimpses of men and women in white coats, sitting around, laughing. The nurse returns, walking swiftly. She hands over a virtually empty bottle of Phisohex, a card with pictures of six pills, and a sheaf of papers she’s taken off the computer. The tiny type at the top says they come from a trauma unit Web site.

   SOUND. HE IDENTIFIES CAR radios playing through open car windows far away, the crunch of tires on broken cement, closer, one set of footsteps going down the alley. Each time he hears a car, he thinks it might be another of Marko’s men come to find him.

Twice, he tries to stand up, thinking, I just need to get myself to the alley, flag someone for help; but his body rebels, shaking so badly that he falls back down.

The three houses behind him, the one belonging to the garage and those on either side, are boarded up, but there might be someone there. And that person might see him and pick up a phone. He studies the three yards, trying to determine how long the junk in each has been there, and he watches the windows for signs of life. Nothing changes at all, except the sounds.

When the sun begins to dip, he realizes it’s going to be cold soon. The ground is damp from the rain of two days ago. No. No, that was only yesterday.

He tries to work out how, when he gets to his car, he’s going to drive it. His right leg is useless, but there might be a way to prop the right leg up and move his left under it, working the pedals. He needs the kids for that, to figure it. They’re good at figuring.

Suddenly there is a noise of footsteps on dirt coming close. He tightens his grip on the gun.

To his surprise, the boy appears again and quickly dumps three things on the ground. Half a candy bar, cheese, a carton of juice. “Here,” the kid says. “Can’t do anything else yet. It’s too light out.” And he is gone.

The sight of the little bit of food next to him gives him unreasonable hope.

Eventually he hears sounds again, an organ? He realizes it’s the baseball game about to start up—a mile away, stadium sounds. He eats and tries to stand once more and can’t.

   CARL LISTENS TO THE RADIO. There is nothing on the news that tells him what he needs to know. Did anybody die when the three shots were fired?

Last night, after Nick let him go and he flew down the street, grabbing up his books from the pavement, he kept expecting to die, but he kept moving and made it to his hideout, where he rocked himself all night in the dark, waiting for the dawn. He shivered all night, too, and he cried most of it, but when morning came, he began his routine. Breakfast, seven to eight. Radio, eight to nine. From nine to ten, jogging in place. Then, ten to twelve, reading and working out problems. And making journal entries.

Lunch and then the same routine again. Then dinner, radio, jogging, reading and working for two more hours, and hopefully sleep soon with the help of valerian. Three chunks to the day. Three meals. Three physical workouts. Three work sessions.

He keeps changing stations, but there is nothing about what happened last night. He settles on music, popular songs, and plays the game of trying to be always a mini–split second ahead of the singer.
You said you love me but we all know a liar, I’m not sorry for the things I
— It was going to be
said
or
done
. Said.

He puts out two valerian waiting for night to fall.

Somehow he’s made it to evening of the first day. The radio is at the lowest volume he can tolerate. He continues to search for the news. When he finds it, he hears about auto accidents and Memorial Day festivities, but nothing about Nick or a murder just down the street.

Nick betrayed him, came after him— And yet, and yet Nick was the one who helped him get away. Carl goes over it, trying to figure it out. Nick emptied his pockets, but put back his key and his little bit of money. What was that about? He can’t figure it.