Until Then

Chapter 14

                 

CHAPTER 14

Quinn

I step through the double doors and out of the children's wing sometime after 2am. I don't feel like myself, more like the shell of a person making her way to the parking lot so I can go home and cry. I step on to the elevator and tell myself I have to keep it together until I get in my car. I'm grateful that I don't have to come back tomorrow since it's my scheduled day off. Losing any child is hard, but Joseph held a special place in my heart and seeing his bed empty would kill me, and seeing someone else in it might be even worse.

I'll be fine after I spend some time grieving. I like to light a candle and take a moment to remember them while I have the privacy of my own house. I'm not really paying attention when the doors of the elevator slide open on the first floor. I'm still standing inside when they start to close again. But then goose bumps rise along my skin and I sense this overwhelming urge to flee from the small space.

After regular business hours all staff have to exit through the emergency room since the main hospital doors will be locked. Normally I keep my head down and try to get through the chaotic area quickly, but tonight my head is up and my eyes are searching. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but I can sense that there is something important here for me to find.

I look to the right, down the long hallway used to take patients to the imaging center, then I turn my head the other way and I can see two patients in their beds with the drapes left slightly open. My feet keep moving until I'm almost to the large doors that will allow me to step into the waiting room and then out to may car. I hear the side doors open instead, the red lights of an ambulance and fire truck lighting up the ER from their position just outside the doors.

A boy and girl are trailing along side the gurney being pushed by the EMT. She looks shocked and I can see she's been crying, her make-up running down her cheeks. The boy on the other hand seems stoic. His jaw is tense and he's pressing forward as if getting the patient on the gurney help is the single most important thing in the world.

I'm frozen in place, watching the scene unfold in front of me. I can hear the doctors and nurses being prepped by the EMTs and learn that the boy that is unconscious on the gurney has overdosed on prescription medication. He looks so young, it's hard to imagine what could be going so wrong in his life that he'd need to escape it.

Doctor Vance steps up to the patient as they settle him into one of the small spaces. I can hear him speaking with the nurses, "It was Oxycodone. I prescribed it for him earlier." He moves the sheet so he can see the boy's thigh and I'm shocked to see the twisted flesh marring his skin.

Someone bumps into me from behind and I get jolted back into the moment realizing I'm standing right in the center of the walkway. I move over and when I look back up to the despairing sight of the young patient, I notice there is another figure standing watch over his care.

This time he isn't just a reflection on a shiny surface. The Marine watches the doctor and nurses working on the patient, all the while standing just beyond the scramble of bodies and supplies as the staff diligently try to stabilize him. His eyes lift to mine and I feel the connection powerfully in my gut. I rest a hand over my stomach as I feel drawn to him in a way I've never experienced before. I run through all the places we might have met, all the times my path could have crossed his, but I come up blank. It's like I know him and yet I don't.

When a toddler screams from a curtained off area near me I startle. My eyes flash from the curtain back to the Marine...but he's already gone.