"Nancy Kress - Stinger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

counties. тАЬLots of violent trauma. I can smell it.тАЭ
The younger nurse smiled nervously. It was her
first night ever in Emergency.
тАЬTheyтАЩll all be outside, escaping the heat.
Drinking and fighting and shooting each other. Like
they do every hot summer night. You mark my
words, Rachel.тАЭ
Rachel turned away. There was something in the
older womanтАЩs use of тАЬtheyтАЭ and тАЬthemтАЭ that the
young girl didnтАЩt like. SomethingтАж well, a little
racist?
She told herself not to judge too hastily. Manners
in the East were just different from the small town
in Ohio where sheтАЩd grown up and gone to nursing
school. People here just talked rougher, didnтАЩt
consider as much what they said. Just a regional
difference. That was probably all it was.
By nine oтАЩclock, two hours after her shift had
begun, Rachel still hadnтАЩt seen any trauma due to
violence. A car accident, minor abrasions only. An
infected compound femoral fracture. An elderly
phlebitis, a woman in labor, a little kid who had
fallen off a fence and needed six stitches. A man
brought in falling-down drunk, his speech slurred.
An average night.
Just after nine, the ambulance shrieked up. The
charge nurse got off the phone. тАЬAll right, people,
residentтАЩs on his way down. Two strokesтАФ not one
but two, count тАШemтАФwithin a few minutes of each
other at an AA meeting. Both severe.тАЭ She talked
rapidly, organizing the response duties. The
resident rushed in from the corridor.
For the rest of her life, the next half hour
remained a blur to Rachel. No matter how hard she
tried, she couldnтАЩt recall any details. Apparently she
did everything she was told to, and did it right,
because nobody yelled at her afterward. She must
have assisted with the CT scans to determine if the
strokes were ischemic or hemorrhagic, must have
administered the tPA, must have hooked the
patients to acute-care monitors. But she couldnтАЩt
remember what she had done, or how, or in what
order.
She only remembered the patients. A young
woman in her twenties, with a ring in her nose and
corn-rowed braids. A man in a clerical collar. He
died; she slipped into a deep coma. And the
falling-down drunk, it turned out later, had no
alcohol at all in his blood. TheyтАЩd just assumed he
had, from his behavior and his stinking clothing