Anywhere but Here (part 3)

            I was transferred from the gurney in the ambulance to a wheelchair.  The cuts to my face and head pulsed with pain.  A female EMT walked with the admissions nurse as she pushed me through the emergency room door.  The hospital was crowded.  I could see their faces as I was wheeled past them.  An old woman watched me.  Her face was loose and her eyes were deep black with pain.  She never took her gaze from me as the medic recited my vitals to the nurse.  A chorus of coughing and mumbles rippled from the room.  Several children clung to their mother in the far corner.  Another child began to cry from somewhere behind me as I was pushed through a second set of door.

     The next room was full of hospital beds and pink and grey curtains.  Several of the curtains were drawn, concealing other patients.  I was parked in an area near the wall next to the nurse’s station in the middle of the room and was strapped to a blood pressure machine.  The machine’s motor kicked on and the bag inflated tightly around my arm.  Crash carts and waist height rolling supply cabinets lined the room.  Every supply cabinet was topped with a jar of long stem swabs and handfuls of individually wrapped alcohol squares and gauze pads.  The room smelled of antiseptic.  Even a smeared orange mess of iodine on the floor near the waste bin seemed oddly sterile. 

     The last time I set foot in this place was the day I learned of the accident.  I arrived with Detective Winston and the other officer.  We entered through a non-descript door on the backside of the building.  A small sign by the door read ‘Morgue’.  The Detective held a white card up to a black box mounted below the sign.  A little red light quickly turned green and the locking mechanism clicked.  The other officer stepped forward and opened the door.  The Detective led me down a corridor.    The hall was well lit.  Tan glossy tile covered the bottom half of the walls on either side.  The tile was capped with a ten inch thick mahogany handrail that ran the entire length of the hall.  The top portion of the walls was papered and floral prints hung every fifteen feet were framed in correlating mahogany frames. 

     The hall was long and the tapping of our shoes on the hard floors filled the air.  The three of us walked silently inline, the Detective, me, and the officer.  A brandywine colored sign above us directed us to a small alcove to the right.  The Detective waved his white keycard over another black box, another light turned green, and the doors unlocked.  The doors opened to a little room.  A reception counter was immediately to the left as we entered and six empty waiting-room chairs filled the room opposite the counter.  Detective Winston signed a clipboard and rang a bell that was placed on the counter with instructions to sign in and ring the bell for service. 

     A woman with grey hair and round glasses pushed through a free swinging two way door behind the counter.

     “Ah, Hello George.” The woman addressed Detective Winston.  Her jowls shook as she talked.

     “Hey Alice, I brought the survivor of the vics from this morning’s head-on collision, out on I-8” the Detective replied. 

     “Oh, well then, take him to viewing room three and I will prep the bodies for identification.” She craned her neck to look around the detective’s thick body.  Her eye looked sympathetically at me,   “I am sorry for your loss dear.”  I nodded my head gently.  I found it hard to make eye contact with her. 

     “Follow me, son.” Detective Winston pushed the two way door open.  The woman stepped through first, I followed, then the officer, and finally the Detective.

     “Third door on the right.”  The officer instructed.  The door had a large black ‘3’ painted on it. 

     Room 3 was empty except for two black folding chairs, a small round table, and a box a facial tissues.  The far wall was mostly a large window into another room lined with stainless steel work tables, a sink, and a bedside table.  Large fluorescent light fixtures bathed the room in bright blue light.  I watched through the window as the woman began rolling beds into the room.  Each bed carried a white sheet covering a mysterious lump. 

     “This is more of a formality, son, so we can be sure those we found at the scene are who we think they are.” Detective Winston placed his hand on my shoulder the same way he had hours earlier at my home.  I stood staring through the window at the three beds, now lined up like cars in a parking lot.  The Detective nodded to the woman on the other side of the glass.  She folded the sheet down uncovering the largest of the three lumps.  I saw Lisa lying on the bed.  Her eyes stared up colorless and dim.  She was pale and stiff like a wax doll.  My knees buckled and I collapsed to the floor.  The officer quickly came to my side and helped me to one of the black folding chairs.  I could hardly think. I buried my face into my hands and sobbed.

     “That’s all we need.”  Detective Winston nodded again to the woman.  She recovered my wife’s face and in moments the bright blue fluorescent lights went dark.   

     Sitting in that hospital again, and thinking back on that day made my blood run cold.  I sat in the wheelchair against the wall.  The blood pressure machine ran through several cycles.  A young nurse with dark hair came and wheeled me to an area where a bed should be and pulled the curtain around.  She removed the gauze wraps from my arms and head.  I could see them in the small waste can, they were cover in blood.

     “Don’t worry,” she said, “It looks worse than it actually is.  You are really lucky.  Most of these are superficial cuts and will heal on their own.  You do, however, have a nasty gash over your eye and another ‘round the back here, but I am going to stitch ‘em right up.  Do you know when your last tetanus was?” the young nurse was standing in front of one of the rolling storage cabinets preparing several syringes.

     “I don’t know when my last tetanus was,” my own voice seemed strange. Those were the first words I had spoken to anyone in, what seemed like hours.  “Do you know what time it is?”

     “Half past six.” She said over her shoulder.  It was later than I thought.  The events of my day were foggy at best.  The nurse continued to stand over the cabinet working.  “After I am done, there is a Detective wanting to speak with you.” as the nurse spoke I notice the silhouette standing guard outside the curtain. 

     The young nurse cleaned the cuts on my arms and wrapped them from elbow to wrist in clean white bandages.  Before long the gashes, too, were sewn shut and covered with clean dressings.  When she finished she disappeared around the pink and grey cloth.  I was left alone again, in the wheelchair, secluded behind a curtain.