Dawsey| Above the clouds

4

There's a loud alarm coming from somewhere, and Will is called. He have to run away. Jimmy and the other paramedic takes me to the room and I get to switch bed to a hospital one. I lean down, and this bed is way more comfortable than the other one and I understand and accept that. The woman and Jimmy leaves the room and are met by a nurse or doctor outside, I don't know which because there's a wall in my way.

Connor Rhodes comes in, or Dr. Connor Rhodes to be accurate. He sit down on a chair with wheels and roll over to me.

"Lieutenant Casey" He say and start helping me to take my jacket of. He also take my oxygen mask of.

"So what are you doing here taking care of small wounds?" I ask.

"All ER docs' are busy at the moment" He reply.

He remove the packing I have over my wound, Rhodes look at it for a quick moment. He clean it and then grab a needle and thread, or whatever they call it. At first when the needle goes through my skin I twitch of pain but the three stitches after that doesn't hurt at all. After the final stitch he place a bandage over it to cover it up.

"Okay, let's see" Rhodes say and put a stethoscope from the back of his neck and over his shoulders.

With his help I take of my grey CFD t–shirt and it reveals a bunch of bruises, blue-purple-green looking stains all over my back. He put my shirt in the pile where I have my helmet and jacket. He put the stethoscope in his ears and put the little round piece on my chest, it's cold, very cold. He doesn't look concerned but neither does he look happy. His expression is zero, dead, nothing.

"Lean forward" He say.

painfully I lean forward, he place the cold bit on my back.

"Give me some deep breaths" He say.

I try to give him deep and long breaths but every time, I start to cough. When I take a deep breath they first get choppy and dry, after that I start to cough.

"Okay, calm down and try to slow down your breathing" He say.

The result is unchanged. I know I got some serious smoke inhalation but was it really that bad? Thoughts fly around in my head, what if something serous happened back there.

"You can lean down, and I'm gonna' prepare BMP which will reveal the change of pH in your blood" He say.

I don't know why he want to know that, but it obviously has its meaning, I just don't know it because I'm not a doctor. But one thing I do know is that when you start doing tests, everything's not alright.

"Is everything okay?" I ask worried.

"Yeah, you have a quite serious smoke inhalation and it looks like we're going to put you on what I call light oxygen treatment" He say "It means you'll have to stay here overnight with a nasal cannula with oxygen and you'll be back on track tomorrow" He says when he realized I didn't quite understand the first part.

Rhodes has now prepared the shot and cleaned my arm. He inject the needle in my arm and pull out some blood.

"You'll get the result in an hour" He say.