The Last Surgeon

CHAPTER 6

Mike Campbell, wide-eyed and beyond reason, bellowed and thrashed at invisible enemies as he charged from the examining room toward the front of the RV. Eddie Thompson, a hundred pounds heavier than the addict, rose to block his path, and was thrown aside like a child, stumbling against the table and down to the floor, sending coffee spraying from the mugs of the other two students.

Janus Fielding, moving with surprising quickness, reactively filled the spot vacated by Thompson, leaving Phillip MacCandliss exposed to the brunt of Campbell’s onslaught. The claims evaluator, caught in the passenger-side stairwell, was slammed backward against the door with enough force to snap the latch and fling it open. Helpless, he disappeared into the pelting rain, landing on his back in the mire of Jasper Yeo’s Dependable Used Autos sales lot. Campbell, naked from the waist up, stepped off the bottom stair and onto MacCandliss’s belly, falling heavily next to him in the mud. Then he scrambled to his feet and lurched off toward the busy five-way intersection.

By the time Nick had taken the antidotes for overdoses of narcotics and Valium from Junie, Campbell was out of the van. Thank God she had taken the precaution of a bulky wrap around the IV, Nick thought. Thank that same God they had found a vein at the man’s wrist-one of the best spots to protect a line. If he could catch Campbell, there was a good chance that Junie’s maneuver might end up saving the man’s life.

Eddie Thompson was awkwardly trying to return to his feet when Nick sprinted past. Two more strides and he was at the stairwell. Beyond the doorway, MacCandliss had managed to get unsteadily to one knee. Focused on Campbell, Nick leaped off the bottom step like a hurdler.

The scene ahead of Nick unfolded in slow motion. Campbell, still moving forward in a bizarre, uneven gait, was stumbling from side to side like a prizefighter about to go down for the count.

But he did not go down.

Instead, he stepped off the curb and into traffic. Nick, closing the gap between them rapidly, saw the bus that was barreling through the rain toward Campbell from the right. His instantaneous estimation told him that his patient was better than even money to be dead in a matter of seconds. But his mind’s eye had locked on to something else as well-Sarah, coming from the OR, moving unaware across the path of a careening pickup truck, whose driver had no intention of stopping. The image of her being slammed in the midsection by the pickup froze him at the curb for what seemed an eternity.

Suddenly, he broke free of the paralyzing image. With no real plan, fully expecting to be killed, he charged into the street. Campbell was just about in the location between the headlights where Sarah had been when she was hit, but there was still a gap between the man and the massive bumper of the bus.

As he dashed across the road, Nick glanced to his right enough to see that the driver had spotted them and begun to react. She instinctively pulled the wheel to her left, just as Nick launched himself at Campbell, catching the half-naked addict by the waist. The two men pitched face-forward onto the rain-soaked tarmac and slid ahead half a dozen feet, past the speeding bus and into the next lane of traffic.

Brakes and tires screeching, the bus rose up on the driver’s side wheels as it skidded sideways. For several terrible seconds, it hovered motionless, the front and rear wheels on the right side well off the road, its full length now at a right angle from the direction in which it had been headed.

Nick’s chin snapped against the pavement and instantly split open. Dazed, he still managed to hold on to the two syringes. The SUV that had been following behind the bus spun out, with its passenger side wheels also lifting off the road. It smacked against the rear end of the bus. The impact kept both vehicles upright, and sent them skidding away from the two prone figures.

Nick rolled Campbell over. The addict was unconscious now, breathing slowly and sonorously. Drops of blood from Nick’s chin landed on the man’s chest and were instantly washed away by the pelting rain. On all sides, cars had managed to stop, forming a cordon around the two men.

Campbell’s respirations were getting shallower and more widely spaced. It was possible the problem was internal bleeding and not a drug overdose, but as things were, in this spot, one condition was treatable, one was not. Nick doubted the man was getting effective ventilation, which meant the four-minute clock of brain death had started. Something had to be done. First, though, he had to get some air into Campbell’s lungs. The addict’s pulse was faint, and no more than twenty beats a minute. Tilting Campbell’s head back, Nick closed off the man’s nose and administered several mouth-to-mouth breaths.

The bus driver and a passenger had hit the street and were charging across to them. Many others were closing in as well, a number of them with open umbrellas. Nick took the syringe of Narcan and fixed it into the IV. The slight flow of blood from the end of the plastic cannula told him the line hadn’t clotted off, or worse, been pulled out of the vein.

“Hey, what are you doing?” an onlooker called out.

Suppressing any number of snide responses, Nick emptied the Narcan and then the flumazenil into Campbell.

“I’m a doctor from the medical van over there,” Nick said. “I need someone to grab his ankles and help me bring him back to our clinic. Keep your hands on his pant legs and away from that wound.”

It was Eddie Thompson, breathless from his sprint across the street, who took the addict by the armpits and snatched him up as easily as the crazed man had knocked him down just a few minutes before.

“Just take care of that IV,” Nick said, pressing his sleeve against his chin. “Sorry about your bus, ma’am. That was a hell of a piece of driving. I’ll tell your boss.”