Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“Okay, Doctor.” He hit pause , freezing the image: George Clooney’s fingernail, rimed with dirt, marking a spot on Mark Wahlberg’s left chest midway between the notch of Wahlberg’s clavicle and between the second and third rib. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

It was near dawn. Fort Benning’s ER had finally quieted down, though not before two ambulances had rolled in: a motorcyclist, who’d lost an argument with a semi, and the semi’s driver. The driver had whiplash, which wasn’t going to kill him, but chest pain because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, so when he hit the brakes, he’d kept moving forward—those pesky laws of motion at work again—and smacked his sternum into the steering column. So, that might kill him, if there was bleeding within the pericardium. The driver was up in the ICU and someone’s else problem now .

As for the motorcyclist: even properly geared-up, few make out well when their Hog barrels into a semi at ninety miles an hour. Make like Mad Max without a helmet, and a motorcyclist’s chances of making it to the ER alive become diminishingly small.

Their guy had been one of the latter, something the EMTs failed to mention. Although they’d been bagging the guy in the ambulance, perhaps the EMTs felt that the white cloth draped over the cyclist’s head was a hint.

Whatever the case, ten seconds into the resuscitation, John studied that white cloth, noticed there wasn’t much of a nose bump—or, come to think of it, much of a forehead bump—and thought, Hunh . That’s when he lifted the corner of that sheet for a peek.

Which kinda put a different complexion on things. When he thought about it later, he figured the only way the EMTs had gotten a breathing tube down this guy’s throat was because the chin was, pretty much, the only recognizable landmark. Everything else was, well…

So, that kind of night.

Head cocked, Roni studied the still of Clooney’s finger on Walhberg’s chest. “You mean, besides the fact that a tension pneumothorax sometimes doesn’t happen for days and then only if, say, a piece of bone from an undiagnosed rib fracture punctures the lung?” She shrugged. “Wrong placement. Clooney should’ve put the needle in at the fifth intercostal, not midclavicular at the second.”

“Well done, Doctor.” He started up the movie again. “Honestly, you’d think Clooney being on ER at the same time they were making this would’ve taught him something.”