The police had the man in cuffs. Wrists behind his back, arms twisted high between his shoulder blades. He cursed them.
“Behave,” said the female officer.
Blood ran down his face. Thick, opaque over his neck, it soaked his shirt collar.
“Hey doc, how long?” called out the male officer. They were in the hallway, waiting to have their prisoner registered at the front desk.
“Lot of people here. Up to the triage nurse,” I said, not breaking stride. Wait your turn, I thought.
The officers, one short man, one tall woman, were speaking to the emergency triage nurse. I knew what they would be saying: We’re short staffed tonight, we’re stretched thin, tons of calls, help us get this done. The nurse would be saying: We’ve got chest pains, belly pains that have been waiting for hours. The police wanted to get in quick. In and out. Feet are built to move and standing is more tiring.
Volumes were rising at this time just after dinner, a few hours before midnight. We speak of volume as numbers of patients, the way they fill our fixed space. It is also the volume of noise that we actually hear. The crying of the child, the belligerence of drunkenness, the thin whine of a failed suicide. The noise and presence fills the waiting room, a condensation of the city’s private screaming made public.
Several minutes later the triage nurse asked me, “Doctor Fitzgerald, can you see this patient?”
“The one with the cops? You want me to see him first?”
“He’ll be a quickie,” she said. “He’s in the quiet room.”
The quiet room—our euphemism for the screaming, struggling, calm-down-or-we-tie-you-down room; also the actual name of the room.
The two police were standing outside the wired safety glass door, which could be locked and unlocked from a control at the central desk. Inside that room was a panic button on the wall that triggered a silent alarm. “Got a live one for you, doc,” said the male officer, badge 1483.
“Glad he’s alive,” I said. Through the glass, I could see the man twisting on the stretcher. “This your prisoner? You got him in quick.”
“Thanks for seeing us fast,” said the male officer. “We only got three cars on the road.”
“We’ve got thirty in the waiting room,” I said. “Funny night.”
“Well, you’ve got to know how to laugh,” said the female officer, badge 6982.
Police stand and talk and lean on things as if they belong anywhere. For most people, there’s a distinction between a place that is theirs and one they are visiting. Cops—you see them with their sidearms jutting out, their elbows resting on diner counters, parked in no-parking zones, using the staff washrooms in the hospital. Their hats hold in their hair, tidy.
“Tell me about your man here,” I said. The bed rattled as he lunged though held down by cuffs.
“Not much to tell,” said the male officer. “Fell, cut his head open. We need him fixed.” Some fall. Forehead split open, bleeding a red curtain. He shouted obscenities, shook his head. Not even a scrape on his hands. People put their hands in front of them when they fall.
“Fell, huh? Clumsy guy,” I said.
“Eli has very poor coordination,” said officer 6982. “What made him so clumsy?”
“You see, Eli is a bad man, and we find that many such people are accident prone,” said officer 1483.
The game is supposed to go like this. The police give the precis: Look doc, this guy did such-and-such, and we caught him, and now this-and-that has happened so we brought him to hospital. Maybe they say what they think the diagnosis will be. The officers usually imply what they think should happen to the prisoner. They can’t say it outright—’course, you’re the doctor, they must say in conclusion, as per protocol. Then the physician can respond to this play: Well, officers, I need to do test A, procedure B, and check for problem C. If A turns up normal, B works out well, and C is absent, I’ll pronounce your prisoner, my patient, healthy and you’re good to go. All with a wink and a nod.
I was irritated that these officers seemed to want to play a modified version of the game: You do your thing and we’ll do ours. This is sometimes the case with more serious charges, and all the more reason for me to play carefully. Cops and robbers and doctors. It’s a game where mostly everyone can be happy if we all play nice. The police are surprisingly kind to the prisoners, as long as they’re docile. They treat them like younger siblings, showing them where to sit and filling in forms for them. Just like an older brother, the police turn nasty in an instant if the prisoner becomes difficult. You better settle down. Benevolence and cruelty are separated only by a veneer of whim which, in medicine, we understand.
I opened the door, went in. His smell grabbed me and twisted my stomach so I had to force down the urge to vomit.
“Hi Eli,” I said.
“Get me out of these,” he said.
“I’m Dr. Fitzgerald, the emergency doctor. What happened?”
“They’re fuckin’ nuts. Get me out.”
“I am Dr. Fitzgerald,” I repeated. In medicine we pretend that our names may be enough to control a situation. “Breathe,” I said. I sat on the edge of the stretcher, next to Eli’s cuffed ankle. Always sit down with the patient, I was taught. It makes it seem like you’ve spent more time and that you care. In a chair, on the stretcher. If you give this impression (this is the subtext) then the patients will do what you say and leave quickly. I liked the stretcher, since sitting on the edge of the bed is what everyone’s parents once did. Where is it sore, dear? “Speak–slowly. How–did–you–cut–your–head?” Speaking slowly and loudly transcends both agitation and language barriers. Another clinical pearl.
“Set-up. It was a set-up.” He pulled and rattled at the metal bands tight on both wrists.
It was nauseating to breathe, with the closed-in smell of piss and sweet-sour human stench. I pulled on gloves, flexed and extended my fingers so that the latex was tight on my skin.
“Pain anywhere?” I asked. I felt inside Eli’s split-open forehead, ran my finger over the warm smoothness of skull. It was a straight gash from the hairline to the top of the nose. The blood flowed hot, an anxious stream. A man can bleed to death from the scalp, but not the forehead. Cuts in the face look worse than they are. I explored with my finger, to feel for smashed fragments of bone.
“Shit man, stop that,” said Eli. He swung his head. “They say you’re clumsy.”
“Fuckin’ cops playin’ drums with my head say I’m a killer gonna make me pay some shit.” Eli kicked against the cuffs on his ankles, which rang out on the stretcher’s chrome frame. I stood.
“Fine bitch cop there, huh?” said Eli. He winked at the female officer through the window. Her expression did not change, but she enclosed her right fist in her left hand while looking at Eli.
I left the room, took a big breath of clean air. The clatter of Eli’s rage drifted through the wire-strung windows. The child in the next stall was crying.
“What’s the deal here?” I said to the two police, who were leaning on the nurses’ counter.
“We need him fixed,” said officer 6982. “Right,” I said, and did not move.
“That’s the deal,” said officer 1483. He turned toward the quiet room and smiled at Eli. Officer 1483 had a fresh haircut. The nape of his neck was raw from a razor.
“And his head split open? Like that when you got him?”
“Fell. And banged his head getting into the cruiser,” said officer 1483. “Already filled out an incident report.”
“Did he pass out?” “Nope.”
“Vomit?”
“Nah.”
“Something about being a killer,” I said.
“When you’re done, we’ll take him to the station,” said officer 6982. “Get him out of your hair.”
Cops. They want to get seen first. Put them at the front of the line but then they won’t talk. None of my business, they figure. They were responsible for his legal ailments, but I was now liable for his medical misdemeanours. It would be awkward for me at the inquest if the Crown said, Doctor, tell us a little more about the head injury that led to Mr. Eli’s demise. The police records state that all circumstances were explained to you. The doc holding the chart last has to explain everything.
Maybe Eli needed to see a psychiatrist—a name after mine on the chart. Was Eli psychotic? Could be. I’d better find out. Police inquests are tedious, nitpicky, and it’s lonely being the only physician on the stand. I went back into the room, into the thick piss smell. His pants were dark. Can’t blame a man for that when he’s scared and cuffed. Acid—that’s what it must smell like inside a pelvis.
“Listen to—”
“Get me out doc get me out I gotta get out.” “Shut up. Listen to—”
“Ya fucking, you’re not a doctor, ya fuck.”
Now both of us shouting: “Listen to me. I am your “Last month I’m minding my own business, this guy doctor. Are you hearing voices? Are you seeing things comes up he says he’s gonna shoot my dog unless I give that other people don’t see? Is someone out to get you? him some names. See, I love my dog, she’s all I got, and Are you receiving radio or telephone messages? Do you I don’t got the names he wanted so things got a little want to hurt someone? Do you have a psychiatrist? outta hand and anyhow how’s I to know he’s a cop? He What medications are you taking? Do you feel that hit me first, sucker punch. I hit him back. Betcha he’s people are plotting against you, out to get you, that banging that bitch cop there. Fuckers they said my there’s a conspiracy of some kind?”
time’s up now they got me.”
Then both of us stopped talking. In the sudden quiet, I stepped back and wrote in the chart for a little while. Then, “What can I do for you, Eli?”
Eli paused to consider his situation, and then said, “Why don’t you suck my cock?”
I tried to breathe shallow, but the urine smell was so insistent I thought I could taste it. Outside the window, the officers watched and grinned. The female officer said something to the male officer, who laughed. When he saw me looking, he turned the other way.
“You’re right,” I said to Eli. “They really are fuckers—just like you.”
I went into the hallway. “What’s so funny?”
“Talking about something else,” said officer 6982, smiling.
“You seem to think me and your prisoner are pretty funny.” Cops, backwards garbagemen, always bringing in the trash. “There’s something I don’t understand here.”
“You should watch yourself,” officer 6982 said.
“That a threat?” I asked. If these cops wouldn’t play the game right, I’d look for a new game. I wasn’t going to be the last doc signing the chart.
“Watch yourself with Eli,” she said. “He’s quick. Watch yourself.”
“And he’s mentally ill. We’ll keep him here.”
“Whaddya mean?” she asked, her voice now less relaxed. “We gotta get him back and book him.”
“After our psychiatrist sees him.”
“When’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning.” It was ten at night. “What makes you think he’s nuts?”
“Eli told me about someone threatening to shoot his dog, trying to get information from him, punching him,” I said, and felt the first nervousness of enjoying this. “It’s funny, he said it was a cop. That would be coercion, police brutality. Can’t be true. So, Eli must be paranoid. Psychotic.”
“You can’t believe these things,” she said.
“Not for a second, but I have to document what he told me, right here on the medical record,” I said. I showed her the chart on which I had transcribed Eli’s statements. “Must be delusions, poor Eli. He must be imagining the police punching him and so forth. Although I guess he’s not psychotic if it’s all true. You know anything about this stuff?”
“Can’t say,” she said.
“‘Course not. Mental illness. Tragic. He needs help. I’ll fix his cut after we scan his head.” I was looking forward to finishing my shift, to saying goodbye to the officers as I left. They would be here all night unless someone relieved them. We all have our quiet ways of asserting ourselves.
Two hours later.
The CT scan showed no intracerebral blood, but an old broken nose. Eli was quiet. The officers had already called the station and requested relief, but no one had arrived. They were no longer jovial, but they still wore their blue-banded caps and sat up straight. I put on a surgical mask to breathe through.
“We’re gonna fix you now,” I said as I wheeled the suture cart into the quiet room. I scrubbed Eli’s face and the side of his head with saline-soaked gauze. I poured salt water over his head through curses.
Eli said, “Fuck off.”
“Listen to me carefully. Have you ever seen a psychiatrist?”
“No ya fuckin’—howdya like my face, huh, doc?” With the jellied blood washed away, I could see the cut was four centimetres long. A forehead bleeds more than you would think for that length.
“I got a good face?”
“You hearing voices?” I couldn’t tell him to act psychotic. “Seeing things that other people don’t see?” But a little fishing never hurt.
“Ya better fuckin’ make it look good.”
“Anyone out to get you?” With the otoscope I peered inside his ears. No blood behind the drums. The cut had a neat, straight edge. “You want to look good? Better hold still.” This fish needed bait. “Eli, I’m worried about your mental health. Crazy people have to stay in hospital.”
I drew lidocaine into the syringe. The anaesthetic swirled into the graduated barrel. I flicked with my finger, clearing the bubbles toward the needle, and expelled the air like a sneeze with a quick motion of the plunger.
“I don’t want it to hurt,” he said. “It’s gonna hurt.”
“I’m hearing fuckin’ spooky voices and seeing pink dinosaurs and shit,” said Eli. He began to giggle.
“Thought so.”
“I don’t wanna feel nothin’, man.”
“It’s gonna sting when I freeze you. You won’t feel it when I’m stitching.”
The syringe was between my index and middle fingers. My thumb was on the plunger. With my other hand, I held open the end of the cut. I slipped the needle under the edge of skin, and my thumb eased down on the plunger. The tissue swelled and turned white at the injection.
Eli swung his head. “Hey that fuckin’ hurts.”
I held the syringe pointed into the air the way a cowboy raises his pistol to fire a warning shot.
“Don’t move,” I said. Sharps were open, syringes and needles. A physician should be morally opposed to cutting himself, I was taught. These instruments were for piercing patients, opening their skin. Sudden movements cause accidents, and it is a sinful violence to cut oneself. “Be absolutely still, Eli.”
“Yo. It hurts.”
“It’ll hurt more if you move. One more chance, then the officers hold you.” I didn’t look up. I could feel the police watching through the window. Enjoying the show. I didn’t want to need them. One more try. Again, I slipped the steel sliver through the edge of the cut, ran it under the skin’s surface. Again, upon injection, he bucked. “All right, we’ll get your friends in here.”
I opened the door. They sat there grinning. “Come on in here. Hold your boy.”
“Like we said, we just want him fixed,” said officer 1483. “This sure is getting complicated.”
The two officers clattered into the room, pulled on thick blue latex gloves, snapping them at the wrists.
“One at the head, one on the legs,” I said.
Then it was a tumbling, struggling effort as Eli flailed and kicked. Restraining people is an ironic task. The more you restrain them the more they resist and the harder you must hold them still, strap them in, beat them down until a certain point is reached, until there’s no point resisting. Once they know who’s boss, it’s done. Like breaking a horse, I was taught. A show of force is best. A hand on each limb—make them see who’s in charge, because then they won’t resist anymore. More limb jerking. Eli cursed, grabbed, pushed, and through this the officers shouted at him until they got him down. Now I was on him with the needle, injecting. Mostly for show now. The record would not state that I hadn’t provided anaesthesia. I jabbed the needle in a few times as Eli bucked his head. I tossed sterile drapes over him, over the hands of the female officer who gripped his head securely between both palms and out- stretched fingers. Now the thread and needle; the thorn in my needle driver. The sewing is easy, it’s getting the head to hold still that is difficult. The needle pierced skin, the black line pulled through, a one-handed knot. I couldn’t tell whether he felt it or not, with all the roaring and thrashing. Maybe he really was psychotic. Then a flashing surge of movement, and the drape shook off as Eli lunged quickly and officer 6982 jumped back. There was red on the back of my hand, and wetness, and a gash in my glove from the new cut.
Upon seeing it, I felt the pain. It was a bloody hurt that dripped into the fingers of the glove.
“You piece of shit,” I said to Eli. My tired annoyance was suddenly eclipsed by panic, my heart pounding, pushing the blood from the back of my hand.
“Told you to watch yourself,” said officer 6982.
I ripped off my glove. “Why’d you let go?” I said, my own blood hot and running.
“Slipped.”
“Your boy too strong for you? Get a good hold of him.” I pointed the needle at her. She didn’t know that needles are our pistols, because she calmly put on new blue latex gloves, and then the leather gloves that flopped out of her back pocket. I stuck my hand in the sink, and poured a litre of saline over it. I told myself to slow my breathing.
“Too quick for you,” said Eli with a giggle.
Officer 6982 grabbed his head from underneath and at the sides, pinched his ears under her thumbs.
“Time to fix you, Eli,” I said. I poured another litre of saline over my hand, tossed the empty plastic bottle into the corner of the room, and flexed my fingers. No tendon damage. Just skinned. I pulled on fresh gloves, then a second pair over the first. Breathing hard.
I reached over to the suture cart and grabbed a stapler. Usually we staple scalps and sometimes legs. It’s less accurate, and when the staples come out they leave little marks like train tracks. I squeezed Eli’s forehead, not paying attention to the alignment. Thunk thunk, in went the staples. The male officer forced down Eli’s knees as he bucked at the hips. Thunk thunk.
“Aw fuck! That hurts, man.”
“Shut up, you piece of shit,” I whispered. I leaned the sharp corner of my elbow on his sternum. This leaves no bruises, and we use the pain of this spot to wake the comatose. I rolled my elbow over his chest, could see the blood smudging over my gloved hand. Thunk thunk, I put in a few extra just for the sting. “Don’t bite the doctor.” My fingers were sticky with blood inside the glove.
“Didn’t mean to bite you, man,” Eli laughed. “Trynna taste that sweet police meat.”
“Watch your mouth,” said officer 6982.
Had Eli been trying to bite the cop, or me? It’s hard to know what occurs mentally in a lunge, in a movement. Maybe the motivations of an instant are most true. Did officer 6982 feel him slip, or did she let go? Did she sense he was going for a bite, and then pull herself out of the way? Had he intended me instead of her? Did motive matter now that my skin was ripped open? Anger needs to lay blame.
“Who ya trying to bite?” said officer 1483 from where he leaned over the knees.
“Yummy yummy,” said Eli. His shirt had been pulled open in the struggle, and his belly shook as he laughed. Eli wiggled his tongue at the female officer. I saw her forearms flex as she compressed the sides of his head. Her expression did not change.
“Aiee!” said Eli, squeezing his eyes together.
Thunk thunk.
“I’m done.” I threw the stapler across the room, clanging into the trash can. I peeled off my gloves and opened another bottle of saline, poured it in a steady stream. It ran clear onto the translucent flesh of my hand, and red streaming down into the sink. “Send in one of the nurses, will you?”
The police left. A nurse entered.
“Fiona, can you draw blood for hepatitis B and C, and HIV 1 and 2.”
Fiona was calm. She told Eli she was going to take some blood. I stood with my cut hand on his forearm, in case he bucked. He flinched as the needle plunged under his skin. Dry. She rolled the skin under her white latex fingers. Blood bears the curse of human malice. This life fluid may conceal destruction, the way words and thoughts can kill unseen. Within blood the idea of death can flow. The blood from Eli’s forehead had stopped, and now we sought to pull it from his arm.
“He doesn’t have much left here,” said Fiona, probing the network of old punctures and thickened scars for a suitable vessel. Eli tried to pull his arm away. I dug in my nails and he stopped moving, Fiona readjusted. Then the gush. The vacuum in the tube pulled up his blood squirting thin, safe, within the sealed glass walls. Fiona left the room with the blood in the tubes, like little glass torpedoes.
On my wrist were two jagged abrasions adjacent to my metal watchband, leaking red. The skin was peeled back, but not deep. Was it teeth? The cuff of my lab coat was ripped sideways. Did his teeth tear the coat? Was it teeth through the coat cutting my wrist? Or was it teeth pulling my watch, with the rungs of the watch-band scraping my skin off? I removed the watch, turned it over. The watch was perfect, unmarked. The human bite is the dirtiest, the most foul, and destined for infection. Worse than dogs or cats, because the human mouth is full of filth.
I sat down on the edge of the stretcher where Eli was handcuffed. He was tired from his efforts and lay quietly, eyes open, breathing hard. The staples in his fore- head were haphazard and excessive in number. The wound did not bleed anymore.
“Eli. Why did you do that?” Until now, I had been mostly interested in creating clean paperwork, deriving a mild pleasure from inconveniencing the police. This no longer felt like quite enough, and I knew that I would feel cheated if I left it at that.
“Yo man, they fucked with me.”
“Did I fuck with you?” I said softly. Now, I told myself, let it go if Eli makes a nice apology. The right apology. I made a deal—Fitz, you’ll be nice now for the right apology, if he says something close to begging.
Eli shrugged.
“Is that what you say after you bite someone?” I asked in a very sweet way, knowing now that there would be no apology.
“Go to fucking hell.”
“Open your mouth.”
He half-opened his mouth, and I didn’t see any blood. None from him, none from me. With a tongue depressor I lifted his lips, the way you lift the lips to see a horse’s teeth. Gums intact. Saliva, though. Saliva, clear and innocent, but sometimes it carries infections and curses like the words it lubricates. I was angry at Eli for taking a bite, I was angry at officer 6982 for letting go, or slipping, or losing whatever balance lies between a head held and released. I darted the stick further into his mouth, gagged him hard—against the tongue only so as to leave no marks—and let him retch, grunting against the tongue depressor for a while, until I started to feel better.
“You’re going with the police now.” I turned away.
“Hey, I’m seeing shit. Dancing elephants and shit.”
“Never heard you say it.”
I plucked the suture off the tray and dropped it into the sharps disposal box. I placed the forceps and needle driver in the silver k-basin. Officers 6982 and 1483 stood outside the room, wrote on their pads. Eli watched them. No one’s eyes were on the quiet room. I placed the scissors on the stretcher within reach of Eli’s cuffed right hand. The evil of blood is like a malevolent thought. Once it touches, the very suspicion of its presence causes it to grow, to distort motive and action, and to propagate its own dark, spreading reach. Then I wrapped the light blue covers over the rest of the tray and picked it up, left the room. Eli’s right hand lay on his side away from the window, and could not be seen from where the officers sat.
Outside the room, eight charts on the rack. Last time I checked we were three hours behind. I pressed gauze onto my cut.
“Sorry I lost my grip there,” said officer 6982.
The child in the next room was still crying, the sound of a child who knows he’s being ignored. The fact of being ignored made the waiting painful.
“Need some stitches, doc?” said the male officer, smiling. I felt the anger rising inside me—a heat that filled my chest. I exhaled. I felt the relief of justification about the scissors. I wrote in the chart that after being bitten, I had closed the patient’s laceration with staples, and that the wound edges were well apposed.
“Bad stuff happens,” I said, looking up. “You guys see it all the time. I’ve got to get a bandage. Then I need to speak to one of you.”
At the nursing station, the father of the child in the next stall asked how long for the tests to come back. They paged me in the resuscitation room to reassess two patients, and announced overhead that there was a call for me on line six from a pharmacist. I gestured to Fiona, stepped into the drug dispensing room, and sat among the racks and drawers.
“How’s your wrist?” asked Fiona.
“It’s nothing. A scrape.” I tried to sound convincing. “We have to send mine, too.” I rolled up my sleeve.
The Potential HIV Exposure kits were in paper bags on the left. Lots of pills. Yellow and black ones. Red and white ones. They made everyone so sick that no one ever finished taking the full course of precautionary antiretrovirals. My sleeve was up, and Fiona’s white latexed fingers directed the cool sharp rush of the needle. Seeing my own blood flow freely and thick, the texture of boiled milk, lulled me for a moment. I sat still. She pulled out the syringe with a quick withdrawal that was like the same pain in reverse. This blood wouldn’t show anything. This was innocence blood, to show I was clean today in case I seroconverted later. My disability policy would pay for occupational HIV, but not if I got it a month previously from a hooker.
“Make sure it’s labelled properly, Fiona. It’s insurance blood.”
“You okay?” she asked. “You better start the pills.” “No. No. Low risk, just a scratch. Maybe my watch, maybe not even his teeth.”
“The pills make you sick, don’t they? But he’s got tracks all over.”
“Sick like anything. I feel sick enough.” I remembered his puncture-scarred arms, his smell of life in decay. “Maybe I should take the prophylaxis. Yeah, sign one out to me. Tell resusc I’m going to be a minute. Ask that woman officer to come in.” I took one of the paper bags, shoved it in a pocket.
In the dispensing room there was a soft light that glowed from under the edges of the cupboards. This was to make it easier to count pills. I liked this room. You could see everything you needed to see. There was a knock.
The woman officer said, “Hi doc. Problem?”
“No problem. You know what? I don’t think he’s so crazy. He can go with you tonight.”
“But what about . . .” she said, unsure how to phrase her concern.
“What, about coercion and police brutality, all that stuff? About that stuff?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I wrote here in the chart that his account of the events changed from time to time and was inconsistent.” I showed it the officer. “I’m sure a judge would find you more credible than your prisoner. If he has the chance to tell a judge.”
“I’m sorry about the mess.”
“The bite,” I said. I smiled. “Like you said, gotta watch yourself. We both work with occupational hazards.”
“All the time.”
“About his head, I guess he fell on the car door, huh? That’s what I’ll write down, that he fell on the door of the cruiser while he was getting in. Clumsy.”
“That’s exactly what we wrote. Exactly what happened.”
“You know what else? You may not have noticed this yet, but he’s got multiple bruises on his limbs and torso. He was flailing around at some point. Hurt himself.”
“No, I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, here’s what I saw. He’s moving all four limbs well. No broken bones or anything, no cuts except for the one on the head where we fixed him. But there’s a lot of bruising that you may not have noticed yet. Multiple bruises consistent with accidental injury. That’s what I’m writing in the chart. What was that ‘yummy yummy’ nonsense anyhow?”
“I really couldn’t say, doctor.”
“Eli needs to learn respect for the police. I’m going to discharge him to your custody.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Just my job. ’Night, officer.”
They took him out. Eli swore and stumbled. Maybe it would happen just down the street, in this precinct anyhow. He might bolt outside the hospital, or there were a lot of quiet corners where he might try to escape, and they would have to take him into custody again, teach some respect. I went into the quiet room. It stank. The scissors were gone, and what can you say about that? So many things happen at once. A doctor could lose track of one small, sharp object, and an agitated patient could easily grab a little pair of scissors.
I went to the bathroom, took the small handful of pills that would reduce my probability of seroconverting if I had actually been exposed to HIV and washed them down with handfuls of water. Soon my shift was over, and I signed over to the next physician.
As I drove away, I saw a speeding police cruiser with sirens on, blazing toward the hospital. There’re a lot of cruisers, like crackling fireflies in the night. The police bring in their prisoners when necessary, and the officers come themselves as patients when they’re hurt. I didn’t look to see the faces of the officers in that car.
Acknowledgements:
This piece was written by Vincent Lam and appeared in his short story collection, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (2006). It is reproduced here with permission from the publisher.