Ben Taub Hospital
Texas Medical Center
4:30pm
The ride felt like forever as if time stood still, frozen in that moment of agony of waiting. Sounds of siren's wailing, the smell of blood, human blood. It is scent no one can forget, the smell of human organs still alive and pulsing. So much warmth of life against the cold steel in the ambulance.
And then it ended, with the patients being tossed from their vehicles and wheeled into the emergency room where doctors, residents, and nurses swarmed over them like ants upon the wounded. Another language echoed in the rooms, curtains separating one tragedy from another.
Amy pushed away the other doctors who wanted to swarm over her so she could hover over Carlos, holding his hand, speaking to him and giving him a friendly voice to lean on while he went through the ordeal, the bullet's extraction.
If you've ever smelled an open wound, it is a unique smell that a cadaver cannot give you. There's a tinge to it that just invades your nose and leaves a metallic taste on your tongue. Its almost intoxicating until you realize that you're smelling human mortality.
Will Matthews lay there in the cold hospital, covered with harsh white cotton, servicable but the hospital linen never seems to warm, always seems to take on a cold quality. And the smell of industrial strength detergent never leaves it. Tubes are hooked up to his body and he does not regain consciousness.
Doctors approach Mike with severe faces that can express only pity. They tell him that his father is critical, that the next few hours, perhaps day will tell him if his father lives. The bullet, they say, punctured his stomach...and a shot in the stomach is usually fatal. They say his father is lucky that the bullet did not puncture his intestines which would have released enough toxins into the abdominal cavity that they would not have been able to save him. They only wait now to see if the bleeding will stop, the destruction of part of the mesentary, the network of tiny capillaries that supply blood to the abdomen's organs has been damaged. Now it remains to be seen if it will repair itself or fail.
Carlos, having been shot in the chest just below the clavicle has been cleared. Lucky for him, that it managed to miss everything major. The doctors want to keep him overnight, but the shot was clean and the damage easily controlled. (Healed 3 hit points). He is sitting on the a spare bed, readying to exit the emergency room with Amy.
A police officer is waiting outside the emergency room for the both of you to take down your statements and question you.
OOC: CARLOS, MIKE what would you like to do?
