In The Blood

Odds

(Tim)

"Where are Ericha and Kelsey?" Adam asked, jogging up to join us.

    "I'm sorry, sir.  I am uncertain," Mary told him.

    "One of them, Ericha, is my wife," Adam said evenly.  "I want to know, no, I need to know, where my wife is."

    She spread her hands out.  "What do you want me to say?  I do not know the answer to your question."

    Adam answered that by starting to cry.  I slid my one good arm around him in a hug.

    "How is Rob?" Austin asked nervously as we started to walk down the hall.

    "Taking you to the doctors over his care," Mary said, pushing through heavy industrial doors and into the OR area itself.  We veered down a side hallway towards what appeared to be conference rooms.  "They will let you know how he is doing, how the surgery went, and what the next steps will be."

    "Next steps?" Austin asked.  "What's that mean?"

    "Well, regardless of the outcome, he can't stay in the OR forever," I pointed out.

    "I reckon not," he mumbled.

    " 'Steps' don't sound good," Chance whispered as we passed conference rooms G, F, E, and D.  " 'Care plan' would sound better."

    "Ugh," Adam groaned, looking sick to his stomach.

    "Semantics," I brushed over, though I saw where he was coming from.

    Mary knocked lightly on the door of conference room A.  "Doctors?"

    "You may come in.  We're—"  Something clunked.  "—ready?"

    "Oh crap," another voice said.

    Hearing 'ready', Mary opened the door and we found two doctors, a man and a woman, crawling around the floor under the conference table.  Both looked up at the four of us amongst two binders' worth of now loose paper.

    "Pardon us," the woman apologized, flipping an empty binder open and shut, two computer printouts now fluttering from the table above her down into her lap.

    "Just got to get—ow."  The man rubbed his head when he sat up straight under the table and bopped his head.

    "Really?" I asked, watching them move around.  Don't tell me these two operated on our precious commodity of a person.

    "Normally not clumsy," the woman tried to explain away.  She reached up and pushed on the table, making it rock back and forth.  "See?"

    "Uh-huh."  Austin was as unimpressed as I was.

    "Have a seat," the woman requested.  "Carefully."

    Nervously, we all slid chairs out and sat down, watching the doctors crawl around for a minute.

    "Missing pages twenty-nine through thirty one.  You got them, Betty?" the man asked, counting pages in his hand.

    She counted the pages in her hand.  "No... yes."  She extracted a couple from the middle of her stack and gave them to him.

    "OK, good deal."  He slipped them in order then inserted them in a folder in the binder.  Both stood up and restated themselves at the table, looking at us before extending his hand to us.  "Good morning.  I am Dr. James Long, the doctor presiding over Robert Lundquist's care."

    Care.  That sounded a bit better than Nurse Next-Steps.  "Tim Foust."  I shook his hand, followed by the others.

    "Austin Brown.  And he goes by Rob," Austin told him, earning a nod of understanding.