Rusty sat in the hallway with his arm around Gina Buffalino and let her cry against his chest. There was a time when he would have felt exceedingly uncomfortable about sitting this way with a girl who was barely seventeen, but times had changed. You only had to look at this hallway—lit now with hissing Coleman lanterns instead of by fluorescents shining calmly down from the paneled ceiling—to know that times had changed. His hospital had become an arcade of shadows.
'Not your fault,' he said. 'Not your fault, not mine, not even his. He didn't ask to have diabetes.'
Although, God knew, there were people who coexisted with it for years. People who took care of themselves. Jimmy, a semi-hermit who had lived by himself out on the God Creek Road, had not been one of those. When he had finally driven himself in to the Health Center—last Thursday, this had been—he hadn't even been able to get out of his car, just kept honking until Ginny came out to see who it was and what was wrong. When Rusty got the old fellow's pants off, he had observed a flabby right leg that had turned a cold, dead blue. Even if everything had gone right with Jimmy, the nerve damage probably would have been irreversible.
'Don't hurt at all, Doc,' Jimmy had assured Ron Haskell just before slipping into a coma. He had been in and out of consciousness ever since, the leg getting worse, Rusty putting off the amputation even though he knew it had to come if Jimmy were to have any chance at all.
When the power went out, the IVs feeding antibiotics to Jimmy and two other patients continued to drip, but the flowmeters stopped, making it impossible to fine-tune the amounts. Worse, Jimmy's cardiac monitor and respirator failed. Rusty disconnected the respirator, put a valve mask over the old man's face, and gave Gina a refresher course on how to use the Ambu bag. She was good with it, and very faithful, but around six o'clock, Jimmy had died anyway.
Now she was inconsolable.
She lifted her tear-streaked face from his chest and said, 'Did I give him too much? Too little? Did I choke him and kill him?'
'No. Jimmy was probably going to die anyway, and this way he's spared a very nasty amputation.'
'I don't think I can do this anymore,' she said, beginning to weep again. 'It's too scary. It's awful now.'
Rusty didn't know how to respond to this, but he didn't have to. 'You'll be okay,' a raspy, plugged-up voice said. 'You have to be, hon, because we need you.'
It was Ginny Tomlinson, walking slowly up the hallway toward them.
'You shouldn't be on your feet,' Rusty said.
'Probably not,' Ginny agreed, and sat down on Gina's other side with a sigh of relief. Her taped nose and the adhesive strips running beneath her eyes made her look like a hockey goalie after a difficult game.'But I'm back on duty, just the same.'
'Maybe tomorrow—' Rusty began.
'No, now.' She took Gina's hand. 'And so are you, hon. Back in nursing school, this tough old RN had a saying: "You can quit when the blood dries and the rodeo's over.'"
'What if I make a mistake?' Gina whispered.
'Everybody does. The trick is to make as few as possible. And I'll help you.You and Harriet both. So what do you say?'
Gina gazed doubtfully at Ginny's swollen face, the damage accented by an old pair of spectacles Ginny had found somewhere. 'Are you sure you're up to it, Ms Tomlinson?'
'You help me, I help you. Ginny and Gina, the Fighting Females.' She raised her fist. Managing a little smile, Gina tapped Ginny's knuckles with her own.
'That's all very hot shit and rah-rah,' Rusty said,'but if you start to feel faint, find a bed and lie down for a while. Orders from Dr Rusty'
Ginny winced as the smile her lips were trying on pulled at the wings of her nose. 'Never mind a bed, I'll just hosey Ron Haskell's old couch in the lounge.'
Rusty s cell phone rang. He waved the women away. They talked as they went, Gina with an arm around Ginny's waist.
'Hello, this is Eric,' he said.
'This is Eric's wife,' a subdued voice said. 'She called to apologize to Eric'
Rusty walked into a vacant examining room and closed the door. 'No apology necessary,' he said… although he wasn't sure that was true. 'Heat of the moment. Have they let him go?' This seemed to him a perfectly reasonable question, given the Barbie he was coming to know.
.'I'd rather not discuss it on the phone. Can you come to the house, honey? Please? We need to talk.'
Rusty supposed he could, actually. He'd had one critical patient, whoj had simplified his professional life considerably by dying. And while he was relieved to be on speaking terms again with the woman he loved, he didn't like the new caution he heard in her voice.
'I can,' he said, 'but not for long. Ginny's back on her feet, but if I don't monitor her, she'll overdo. Dinner?'
'Yes.' She sounded relieved. Rusty was glad. 'I'll thaw some of the thicken soup. We better eat as much of the frozen stuff as we can jwhile "we've still got the power to keep it good.'
