The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,1

in her arms.

There were no tears shed.

“She’s not going to die, is she?” Martha asked.

“Not today,” the nurse responded.

Agnes couldn’t speak. She was dazed, still more in shock than in pain. White cotton bandages were fastened around her wrists, tight enough to both staunch the bleeding and absorb it. Staring up at the rectangular fluorescent ceiling lights that passed one after another, Agnes felt as if she were speeding down a runway, about to take off—for where exactly was anybody’s guess.

Once she arrived in the trauma area, the scene grew even more frantic, as the ER doctors and nurses fussed over her, lifting her onto a bed, attaching the various monitors, inserting an IV, checking her vitals. She had the sensation of walking into a surprise birthday party—everything seemed to be going on for her, but without her.

Dr. Moss grabbed her right wrist, unwrapped the bandages, and turned it firmly into the light above his head to peer at the bloody crevice. He did the same with her left wrist and recited his observations to the nurse at his side for the record. Agnes, now slightly more responsive, managed to look away.

“Two-inch vertical wounds on each wrist,” he dictated. “Laceration of skin, vein, subcutaneous vessels, and ligament tissue. More than a cry for help going on here,” he said, noting the severity and location of the gashes and looking her directly in the eyes. “Opening your veins in the bathtub—old-school.”

A transfusion was started and she began to come to, slowly. She watched wearily, transfixed, as some stranger’s blood dripped into her body, and she wondered if she’d be changed by it. This certainly wasn’t a heart transplant, but the blood inside her heart would not be entirely her own.

Agnes started to moan and then became somewhat combative.

“Not a cry for help,” she said, indicating she knew full well what she was doing. “Let me go.”

“You’re lucky your mom was around,” he advised.

Agnes mustered a slight eye-roll.

After a short while, she heard the snap of the doctor removing his latex glove.

“Stitch her up,” he ordered. “And send her up to Psych for an eval after she’s fully transfused and . . . stable.”

“To Dr. Frey?” the nurse asked.

“He’s still up there? At this hour?”

“It’s Halloween, isn’t it?” she groused. “Just him and a skeleton crew.”

“That’s dedication,” Moss observed.

“Maybe, but I think he likes it up there.”

“He’s got some of the worst of the worst in that ward. I’m not sure he has a choice.”

Agnes overheard and couldn’t get the image out of her head of a Mad Monster Party going on up there. And if they were waiting for her to “stabilize,” they would be waiting a hell of a lot longer than even the poor uninsured souls in the waiting room seeking treatment.

“Another body outlasting the mind,” Dr. Moss said under his breath as he stepped behind the next curtain to assist with a CPR case, already well underway. Agnes was feeling more herself and she selfishly welcomed the tumult, if only to distract her from her own problems for a minute. She offered her wrist to the physician’s assistant and tuned into the commotion next to her, like the unwelcome music blaring from a car stereo outside her apartment window on a hot summer night.

13 “Seventeen-year-old female,” the EMT shouted, as she continued compressions. “Suspected drowning.”

The bony, blue-lipped girl in front of the intern was lifeless and turning whiter shades of pale with each passing second. He tried to examine her nails, but they were already painted blue.

“In the river?” the intern asked.

“On the street,” the EMT offered, drawing raised eyebrows from everyone in the room. “Facedown in a pothole.”

“She’s in full arrest. Defib.”

After several rounds of computer-assisted shocks were applied to her chest and rib cage, the tattooed teen bounced, spasmed, and came to.

“Bag her!” a nurse ordered.

Before they could get the intubation tube down her throat, she started coughing and spewing dirty water on the surgical gowns of her caretakers until some spittle ran down her chin. She might even have vomited if she had eaten anything that day. Tinted by her smeared red lipstick, the gravelly discharge left her looking bloody and muddy. Some murky runoff dripped down her underfed abdomen and collected in her belly button, flooding the innie and causing her steel ball barbell piercing to look more like a diving board, one end bobbing slightly up and down.

An IV was started; labs were drawn and sent off for testing.

“What’s your name?” the nurse