Undone Read Online Free PDF Page B

under her head, a cervical collar keeping her neck in line. The side of her face was caked in dirt and blood; electrical tape hung from her cheek, sticking to her dark hair. Her mouth was open, lips cut and bleeding. The sheet they had covered her with was pulled down and the side of her breast gaped open in a wound so deep that bright yellow fat was showing.
    “Ma’am?” Will asked. “Are you aware of your condition?”
    “Move away,” Sara ordered, pushing him back harder than she intended. He flailed, momentarily losing his balance. Sara did not care. She had seen the small digital recorder he had in his hand and did not like what he was doing.
    Sara put on a pair of gloves as she knelt down, telling the woman, “I’m Dr. Linton. You’re at Grady Hospital. We’re going to take care of you.”
    “Help… help… help…” the woman chanted, her body shivering so hard the metal gurney rattled. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, unfocused. She was painfully thin, her skin flaky and dry. “Help…”
    Sara stroked back her hair as gently as she could. “We’ve got a lot of people here and we’re all going to help you. You just hang on for me, okay? You’re safe now.” Sara stood, lightly resting her hand on the woman’s shoulder to let her know she was not alone. Two more nurses were in the room, awaiting orders. “Somebody give me the rundown.”
    She had directed her request toward the uniformed emergency medical techs, but the man across from her started talking, delivering in rapid staccato the woman’s vitals and the triage performed en route. He was dressed in street clothes that were covered in blood. Probably the bystander who had given aid at the scene. “Penetrating wound between eleventh and twelfth ribs. Open fractures right arm and leg. Blunt force trauma to the head. She was unconscious when we arrived, but she gained consciousness when I started working on her. We couldn’t get her flat on her back,” he explained, his voice filling with panic. “She kept screaming. We had to get her in the bus, so we just strapped her down. I don’t know what’s wrong with… I don’t know what—”
    He gulped back a sob. His anguish was contagious. The air felt charged with adrenaline; understandably so, considering the state of the victim. Sara felt a moment of panic herself, unable to take in the damage inflicted on the body, the multiple wounds, the obvious signs of torture. More than one person in the room had tears in their eyes.
    Sara made her voice as calm as possible, trying to bring the hysteria down to a manageable level. She dismissed the EMTs and the bystander by saying, “Thank you, gentlemen. You did everything you could just to get her here. Let’s clear the room now so that we have space to keep helping her.” She told Mary, “Start an IV and prep a central line just in case.” She told another nurse, “Get portable X-ray in here, call CT and get the surgical on-call.” And said to another, “Blood gas, tox screen, CMP, CBC, and a coag panel.”
    Carefully, Sara pressed the stethoscope to the woman’s back, trying not to concentrate on the burn marks and crisscrossed slices in the flesh. She listened to the woman’s lungs, feeling the sharp outline of ribs against her fingers. Breath sounds were equal, but not as strong as Sara would’ve liked, probably because of the massive amount of morphine they had given her in the ambulance. Panic often blurred the line between helping and hindering.
    Sara knelt down again. The woman’s eyes were still open, her teeth still chattering. Sara told her, “If you have any trouble breathing, let me know, and I’ll help you immediately. All right? Can you do that?” There was no response, but Sara kept talking to her anyway, announcing every step of the way what she was doing and why. “I’m checking your airway to make sure you can keep breathing,” she said, gently pressing into the jaw. The woman’s teeth were reddish pink,