Nemo Resideo

Part 10

Lakeshore Hospital's emergency room was swarmed with people. Patients and their relatives, nurses, doctors and at least a dozen paramedics all gathered around and clogged up the tight space of the central admission area. Phones buzzed vigorously, to be answered in clipped and cryptic messages that only the staff could make sense of. Questions, orders, and patient-related information as well as files were passed along or bellowed over the incessant murmur to be heard by whomever it concerned with the recipients hurrying off in one direction or another to take care of the masses in need of medical attention.

Cause of the upheaval were a shooting in the Near South Side and a multiple pile-up involving a transit bus on Lakeshore Drive brought on by the dreadful road conditions, which had kept the hospital busy with an influx of patients all morning on top of the usual madness in the brutal Chicago winter months. While the most critical cases had been handled at this point, leaving just the milder ones to be dealt with, the ER staff was still only beginning to get the situation under control.

Amidst the organized chaos, there was one lone figure who couldn't be bothered with the flurry of activity around him, though. Hunched over one of the computers mounted to the admission desk, Dr. Arata was deeply immersed in the medical records of his patient, starting by working his way through the file Lakeshore Hospital had accumulated on him over the years as he waited for the VA medical center to grant him access to their records on former Army Ranger Sergeant Jay Halstead.

Despite Nurse Isabel mentioning earlier that the detective was a frequent flyer, David hadn't expected the young man's file to be so massive. The sheer number of visits to the ER in just the last two years were impressive – and quite concerning too. Over a dozen incidents requiring ambulatory treatment for numerous sprains, a few stitches here and there and other seemingly insignificant injuries, and four hospitalizations for concussions, fractures, a stab wound, and a gunshot wound just under six months ago. Chicago was a dangerous city, even more dangerous for first responders trying to protect its citizens, there was no denying that, but even for an officer of the law, the kid seemed a bit too injury prone, a certain reckless streak evident in that.

The injuries sustained in the recent years weren't pertinent to his current ailments though, and neither did they provide the surgeon with answers to the burning questions regarding the back injury Halstead had incurred overseas. It became obvious rather quickly that those answers wouldn't be found in Lakeshore's archives, so as soon as the mail came through, he abandoned those in favor of the records forwarded by the VA. Some of the files were copies from hospital stays in Afghanistan. About a handful from Kabul and Kandahar listed treatment for smoke inhalation, second-degree burns, dehydration and malnourishment, a heat stroke, a bullet graze to the leg, a few other minor injuries. Injuries that weren't life-threatening but outlined the life of a soldier who had not just seen an awful lot of action but had experienced firsthand all the kinds of unpleasantries and horrors war had to offer.

Nothing, however, fleshed out just how harrowing his patient's deployment really must have been as the reports from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the military hospital in Germany that most American soldiers were flown to when crucially harmed whilst fighting on the frontlines. Caught in an IED explosion that had killed an entire convoy of army rangers and left only a handful, including one Sergeant Jay Halstead on the brink of death, David's patient had been brought to LRMC as soon as he'd been stable enough for transport. The kid had spent two and a half months in the medical facility, the first of which he'd been in a medically induced coma to give his body time to heal, followed by another two weeks of drifting in an out of consciousness only to wake up paralyzed from the waist down.

Apart from that, the list of injuries was long, covering almost every inch of his body, every type of injury imaginable – from a concussion to retrograde amnesia, from torn ligaments to dislocations and fractured bones, from soft tissue damage, burns and penetrating shrapnel wounds to internal as well as spinal injuries. The list of records of the multitude of diagnostic procedures, surgical and therapeutic measures taken to keep a gravely wounded soldier alive, to treat and eventually rehabilitate him was even longer, requiring the expertise of specialists from all kinds of medical fields. Dr. Arata was mostly interested in one of them, but to find what he was looking for, the sections that were crucial to his patient's current predicament, he was forced to skim through the many pages and leave out other equally as interesting parts explaining some of the kid's psychological and behavioral characteristics and responses. But reading the rest of the file would have to wait.