Death Glitch Read Online Free PDF Page B

accident at the Spaghetti Bowl,” a much older nurse answered.
    She couldn’t leave with them standing there, not dressed the way she was. And she couldn’t turn her back and walk away either. She was wearing scrubs and though she had no name tag around her neck, she looked like a doctor. All she could do was stand and wait till the casualties arrived, then make her way out of the hospital during the confusion.
    She heard sirens. Any minute the ER was going to be a beehive of activity. She couldn’t stand around unnoticed. She’d be required to do something. She looked around, headed for the restrooms. She’d hide out in the women’s till it was safe for her to make her exit.
    Inside the restroom, she picked a stall, went in, closed the door, sat on the toilet to wait and her mind went straight to the fact that not only was she not dead, but she wasn’t old anymore. This was impossible. How could such a thing have happened? God, aliens, a youth ray turned on her by some genius scientist? Whatever, it couldn’t last, could it?
    She closed her eyes, watched psychedelic images swirl around on the inside of her eyelids. Reds and greens and blues like she’d never seen before. Was she on drugs? Was this whole thing an hallucination? Whatever it was, she had to figure it out.
    And she had to get ahold of Amy and warn her about Lila Booth. Maybe she already had, but maybe Amy hadn’t been at that ball last night.
    Was it only last night? Or had she been in some kind of suspended animation? No, it wasn’t that. She’d been in the hospital morgue, that she knew for sure. And there was only one reason she’d’ve been there with a toe tag. She’d been dead.
    Thinking about it was giving her a headache. She had to do something. It was time to go. She got off the toilet. She’d be home soon, then she could figure it all out.
    When she left the restroom, she was confronted with orderly chaos. Everybody seemed to be busy saving lives, doing what doctors and nurses did in an emergency. She started for the exit.
    “ Where’s Dr. Shaffer!” the young intern Izzy had seen earlier shouted. “If he doesn’t get here quick we’re gonna lose this one.”
    “ What is it?” an older doctor, one Izzy didn’t know, one who looked like he had a foot in the grave, said.
    “ Look at this X-ray, she’s got a bullet in her heart.” She was sweating bullets. “It’s beyond me.”
    “ Me too,” the old guy said.
    “ Shaffer’s halfway between here and Carson City,” a woman in black said, black skirt, black blouse. “He’s twenty minutes away.”
    “ Shit,” Izzy muttered. Then, “I’m a heart surgeon, maybe I can help.” She moved passed them. The patient was a young woman, she was on her side, nude from the waist up. There was an entrance would in her back, no exit would. “Let me see that.” She snatched the CXR out of the intern’s hands, looked at the chest X-ray. “Double shit.”
    “ Who are you?” the older doctor, named Irwin Shaw, according to his nametag, said.
    “ I’m going to need an OR,” Izzy said. “OR 3 would be good.” She gave the older guy a look. “You any good?”
    “ Who’s asking?” His hands were shaking.
    “ You shouldn’t be here.” She recognized the symptoms. He was a drunk in need of a drink. “I don’t want you anywhere near my OR.”
    “ How about you?” She turned to the intern. “Who are you and have you ever assisted in open heart surgery?”
    “ Kathy Wells, and yes, I’ve assisted Dr. Shaffer several times.”
    “ If you’re good enough for Aaron, you’re good enough for me,” Izzy said.
    “ Wait a minute!” Shaw said.
    “ I don’t have a minute.” Izzy turned to the woman in black. “You must be Aaron’s right hand woman, Belinda Quinn, right?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ Fine, get me a perfusionist, an anesthesiologist, the best two surgical nurses you can muster up and get them all into OR 3.”
    “ I don’t know, Dr. Shaffer will be here in twenty