Ben Taub Hospital
Texas Medical Center
"Guess I should have read the fortune cookie sooner, " Carlos jokes, folding up the painkiller prescription and putting it in his pocket. "I just wonder how long this will take me out of my research. Who gets shot at two different times in their life and lives to tell about it?"
Carlos is just grateful he made it out fairly ok, grateful for friends, and grateful he wasn't sitting a few tables over where Mr. Mathews was. With as many bullets being sprayed around the resteraunt as there were, he's thankful more people weren't wounded. Still, Carlos berates himself for not getting a better look at the driver, or even doing anything except blathering on like an idiot and having flashbacks.
While he was lying in the hospital bed, Carlos remembered more of his incident as a kid. The subsequent days after he was shot were a blur. He'd wake up erratically from his medication, have a few brief minutes to see his mother, father, and/or tia. It was worse when he'd wake up and they'd be asleep. All the lights would be out and he would try to move his leg. It itched. Oh God, and sometimes it burned. But there was nothing there but a little stub of a leg four inches below his crotch. That was all they could save.
Damn Fifth Ward. Anywhere else and the ambulance would have gotten there sooner. He might have gotten to keep his leg. But everyone is too afraid. They probably drew straws to see who got the duty of picking up another corpse.
No. That was the bitterness coming back. I won't give into that again, he told himself, while he was lying there with a slow-drip catheter in his wrist and watching the feet scramble back and forth on the other side of the curtain.
"Well Amy, you wanted me to stop by the ER." Carlos smiles, trying to find the good in the situation. Having never been around the ER so up close before, he then does something Amy might chide him for later. He pulls a buisness card from his wallet and writes his cell number on the back. Moving over to Mathew's bed, he'll leave it with the man's personal effects.
If Mike is there, Carlos will try to speak to him. Otherwise, he'll head out to talk to the cop.
