Chapter One
"Mercy ER, this is Medic Twelve with Code Three traffic."
The voice, choppy with static and backed by a wailing
siren, came over Mercy Hospital's paramedic radio, from an
ambulance out on the San Francisco streets. Code Three
meant that it was racing toward the hospital as fast as
the night allowed.
The Mobile Intensive Care nurse monitoring the radio
leaned closer and pressed the talk button on the handset.
"Medic Twelve, this is Mercy ER," she said. "Go ahead."
Carroll Monks walked across the Emergency Room and stood
beside her, listening.
"Mercy ER, we're bringing you a young white female, age
approximately twenty-five. She's unconscious, with almost
no blood pressure. She does have a very weak femoral
pulse, but no radial pulses. Ah, hold on a second, Mercy."
Monks heard the driver yell something to his partner in
the ambulance's rear. His words and the reply were lost in
noise.
The driver's voice came back on. "We haven't been able to
start an IV. We can't find any veins. Repeat, she does not
have an IV running. She has respiratory depression and we
are oxygenating her."
The nurse said, "Medic Twelve, do you have any history on
her?"
"Negative, Mercy, not much. She was in an apartment,
alone. Looks like she's had a recent surgery, probably her
breasts. We found some Valium, but we don't think it's an
overdose."
"Who called her in?"
"She managed to call 911. We got sent by City Triage."
Monks took the microphone from the nurse, and said, "Any
signs of massive bleeding?"
"There's some vomit with blood in it," the driver rasped
through the static. "But not massive."
"Nothing from the surgery? Other external wounds? Blood
around the apartment, or in the bathroom?"
"Negative, Mercy," the driver said again.
Monks's mind started tracking a flow chart of
probabilities, for a young woman who was bleeding badly,
with the blood staying inside her. None of them were good.
The nurse watched him questioningly, a look asking if he
wanted any more information. He shook his head, giving her
instructions as he handed her the microphone.
"Take her directly to the trauma room, Medic Twelve," she
said.
"Roger, Mercy. ETA is six minutes."
Monks turned back to the ER and the next pressing task --
organizing who was going to need to be where, during the
next half hour. Screws had been tightening in his head all
night, and this had the feel of being the most severe one
yet.
It was 3:51, an early Friday morning in July. San
Francisco was going through a heat wave, with temperatures
that had hovered in the nineties for the past several
days. The usual cooling sea breezes and evening fog were
gone, driven off the coast by hot winds that swept through
the Central Valley like blasts from a furnace. Inland, the
thermometer had been topping 110.
But inland, they were used to it. Here, the leaden air and
damp armpits and gummy asphalt underfoot were like a
sudden sneaky enemy, one that worked just below the level
of consciousness. Monks could sense it in faces --
tension, friction, as if a layer of social lubrication had
been eroded by the heat. People were rubbing too close
together, and the ER had been simmering hotter as the
hours passed. It was amazing how many human beings were
up, about, and in need of medical help, all through the
night.
He had just left the bedside of a seventeen-year-old girl
who was giving birth to her third baby, a process she had
started some twenty minutes earlier in her boyfriend's
car. Staff were trying to get her sent to OB, but OB was
busy, and the on-call obstetrician was not yet available.
It looked like the youngster was going to appear in the ER
any minute now.
In the next bed, a fat middle-aged man was doing his best
to die of a heart attack. They had shot him full of clot-
busting drugs and shocked him back to life three times,
but the monitor kept quavering in the danger zone. This
was tying up two nurses and the other ER physician on
duty. A cardiologist was supposed to be on the way to take
him to the Cath Lab, but cardiology was busy, too.
The knife wound in Bed Five was coming around without
complications, but during the past minutes, his voice had
risen from querulous to strident and he was becoming
combative. The SFPD cops who had brought him were gone,
back on the streets to deal with their own hot night.
Hospital Security would probably have to be called to put
him in restraints, but Security had their hands full right
now in the lobby. One uniformed officer was moving
uneasily among the crowd of at least twenty, while another
flanked the desk where the triage nurse worked to separate
out the most gravely ill and injured. Many were in pain,
most had been waiting a long time, and there was a
volatile racial mix of young black and Hispanic males,
with girlfriends or wives who looked at least as tough as
the men. Monks had been peripherally aware of a lot of
restless movement on the other side of the lobby's glass
doors -- bobbing heads and strutting bodies, a dizzying
collage that made him think of a huge, many-limbed beast
about to fall into a frenzy and tear itself apart.
And now an ambulance was on its way, bringing a woman in
critical condition. At least, Monks thought, this would
bring more uniforms. It might help stabilize the tense
crowd.
He stepped to the main desk. "Call City Dispatch Center,"
he said. "Tell them we're going on diversion."
Leah Horvitz, the charge nurse, nodded and reached for the
phone. Leah was a fiercely competent veteran, uncowed by
any situation Monks had ever seen. But even she looked
relieved ...