looking man in place. Blood soaked the gurney, streaming from a gash in his chest. With each scream, blood spurted from his mouth.
“Can’t you give him something to quiet him down? Man, he’s strong,” one of the uniformed police officers shouted to Salinas, as he wiped sweat and blood from his own face with his shirtsleeve.
Dr. Salinas looked up at the officer. Blood stood in beads on the doctor’s glasses and his face. The front of his shirt and coat were covered with blood. He started to say something to the senior ER resident but decided against it. Instead, he went back to work on what had become HBV victim number six.
Now the shock/trauma unit of the ER had only one responsibility and that was to control the bleeding caused by the penetrating wound.
“Let’s move it,” Salinas ordered. The ER team pushed their way into positions around the table. Each had their own job as trays of needles, sponges, forceps and knives were shifted into place. Clamps were used to control the bleeding. A dozen hands inserted catheters and tubes. They all were working to stabilize a man who was only known as John Doe.
“Sponge,” Salinas said, as he probed the wound.
The ER resident stepped back and watched as a nurse pushed a catheter up the man’s urethra and into the bladder while another drew blood for testing. “Get me a pressure,” he called. Electrical leads were clamped to patches and taped to his chest at the same time blood pressure cuffs were wrapped around both arms. The monitor quickly indicated that the blood pressure was continuing to fall. Dr. Smith, the ER resident, paused, watching the monitors, his black head glistening under the bright light as perspiration beaded on his forehead. Then he placed his stethoscope on John Doe’s chest.
“Suction…STAT! He’s got a sucking chest wound.”
A nurse moved to the head of the table with a plastic tube and turned on the suction. Smith threaded the tube to the back of John Doe’s throat. Shelby was uncomfortably aware of the sucking sound as red foam spewed from the man’s mouth.
A male nurse moved a tray from the wall next to the ER table. Smith looked at the tray and nodded. The nurse peeled off the sterile cover, then took the man’s head in both hands, extending the neck as Dr. Smith guided a breathing tube into the trachea. As soon as Smith stepped back, a respiratory therapist attached a bag and started to ventilate the man by forcing air into his lungs.
“Pulse?” Salinas said.
“130.”
“Pressure?”
“In a nose dive. We’re out of control.”
“Hang a liter of Ringer’s and Dextran and get some blood started, STAT.”
Bloody foam gurgled from the gaping hole in the man’s chest as Smith worked the wound. Salinas examined the trauma to the head. Salinas had put a face shield on but now asked one of the nurses to remove it. “I can’t see because of the blood,” he said. “Wash my glasses and give me another hood.”
“Michelangelo,” the man screamed. Everybody heard the piercing cry. Then the man went still, very still. The silence of the room was sudden and crushing. For a split second everyone stood paralyzed by it.
“Hood,” Salinas said as he snapped on a new pair of gloves and fingered the head wound. Shelby could hear crushed bones as Salinas pushed his finger around the wound. He thought the head looked out of shape and resembled a shapeless, semi-fluid lump. Salinas shook his head and there was a sloshing sound when he pulled his finger from the caved-in skull. “Get an x-ray over here. Let’s get a shot of both the head and chest now that he’s still.”
Despite all the gore he had seen in his career, Shelby felt queasy and gripped the wall for support. Someone bumped by him, pushing a portable x-ray machine. Suddenly a shrill alarm sounded. He looked up at the ECG monitor and saw the tracings were straight.
A nurse turned to Dr. Salinas and asked, “Want me to call a code?”
“No, it’s too late. He’s gone.”
The X-ray technician moved the portable machine back against the wall. Everyone seemed to stop at once. Slowly, they moved away from the table. Shelby looked at his watch, 9:30 a.m. Almost an hour, and it was over.
Everybody stood there a moment. Then they went about cleaning up the room, and preparing the body for the morgue. They all knew it wouldn’t be long before the next trauma victim came through the sliding glass doors at Ben Taub.
Shelby realized he was not breathing and had to suddenly gasp for a breath. Sometimes I wish I’d been an accountant. He felt the tension in his legs. His feet seemed on fire.
He started to leave the room when he sensed a sudden stir behind him. He heard the beep of the monitor, not steady, not loud, but definitely a beep. He turned around, looking at the blood-splattered men and women as they stood, almost in awe, staring at the monitor.
“HBV,” Smith said. “It just isn’t possible. This is not only baffling, it’s downright eerie.”
Chapter 3
Shelby walked to the first chair he saw in the ER waiting room and flopped down with a heavy thud. He closed his eyes, but still the pictures and sounds of Trauma Room One raged in his head. He realized that now there were six victims. They only had IDs on three of them, no links, no suspects, and they’re not even dead.
He looked at his watch. It was 10:03 a.m. I’d better call the assistant chief, let him know what’s going on before he reads it in the paper.
“Captain.” It was Esquivel. “Here’s the guy’s identification. I got it from one of the uniforms who brought him in.” He handed Shelby a bloody billfold, then sat in a chair next to him. “Seems that this Klaus, that’s his name, Karl Klaus, was driving to work. Want to guess where he works?”
Shelby glanced up from the sticky leather. Esquivel had a look on his face that told him Klaus worked at the Johnson Space Center.
“By any chance, does he work at NASA?”
“You got it, Astronaut City. The blues told me Klaus was driving south on the Gulf Freeway near the Hobby exit. Howard Street, I think they said. He just went cuckoo. The witnesses said Klaus was talking on a cell phone when he slid to a stop, sideways on the freeway, and jumped out of the car, ripping at his clothes.
“One of the witnesses, a Mrs. Robertson, said Klaus threw his cell phone over the median fence and pulled his pants off just a second or two before he was smacked by a kid in a red Corvette. The blues said the Vette took about ten to twelve thousand in damage from the impact.
“Klaus rolled over the top of the Vette and was hit by a pickup, then splattered back into the Vette. Now get this, Klaus then got up and ran across the interstate, where he climbed about halfway over the median fence before he fell. It took the EMS crew and three of our boys to control this wacko.”
Shelby said, “Get a subpoena. I want to know who Klaus was talking to. Get on it, and also we’ll want the phone records on the second victim, Soto. Didn’t you say he was on the phone when he tripped out?”
“That’s right.”
After Esquivel hurried away to make arrangements for phone
