Mules

By R.J. Wehner

Shock/Trauma, Shock/Trauma! was the sound blasting out of the over head speaker. Bob Simons awakes shaking his head to clear the fog. Arising from the on-call bed he runs out the door of the room down to the stair well at the end of the hallway. Rushing down the three flights of stairs two at a time he opens the door into the hospital emergency room hallway.

Room three! Hurry Bob! came the yell from the ER nurse. We have a child that was shot and beaten. He has airway problems! Rushing into the room Bob sees a small black male lying on the ER cart. The trauma resident was rushing around trying to establish an IV line. The childs head was a mess. His brother has beaten him, or so it was said, because he had taken his records. After incubating the boy and assisting him to breath, Bob noted that the mother was not wailing and crying like a mother should when their child is hurt. That is strange, he thought.

The mystery continues when a few nights later another child is brought to the ER with similar injuries and dies. At autopsy they found bags of drugs and surprisingly jewels! But, when Bob checked into the whole situation the drugs seemed to be gone along with the jewels. When Bob went to the morgue to check on the results of the autopsy he discovered that bodies without intestines had been brought into the morgue the same nights as the children.

Bob asked Sally a surgical resident friend if she had observed similar things about the whole picture. Sally had also seen kids coming in hurt and die. Together they go to the local police and were told to leave it alone that they had the whole drug thing under control. Of course they did not leave it alone and both become involved in an international drug and jewel smuggling ring. There was a big black car that seemed to follow them where ever they went. One night, Bob finds one of their friends as a Jane Doe in the morgue while he was investigating the mystery of the children and the gutless bodies. It gave chills to both Sally and Bob. Were they about to be the next victims?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467091312

R.J. Wehner

            R.J. Wehner is a nurse anesthetist (CRNA), retired from the U.S. Army.  A Vietnam veteran, he has traveled extensively with the military.  He currently makes his home in San Antonio where he operates a pain management clinic for several local physicians.  He enjoys woodworking, horses, and his three grandchildren, Tristan, Courtney, Tyler.  Although this is his first published novel, he has been working on the craft of fiction for years.  He is planning a second novel.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I had just lay down in the call room and was drifting off into that depth of sleep where you can see the dream as all color and the sounds seem to blast you shockingly awake. Shock-trauma emergency room. Shock-trauma emergency room! A sound over the past few years that I had come to hate. It could only mean that either another member of the local Knife and Gun Club was being cared for in the emergency room or two vehicles tried to control the same space at the same time. The next pages over the loud speaker told the whole story: Anesthesia to the emergency room. Surgical resident to the emergency room. I rolled out of bed and headed down the hall. At the stairwell door, Mary the trauma surgeon was just opening the door. Look’s like a local club member had a fight with his ‘brother.’ Preliminary report from the ER shows maybe a long night in the OR. He has a gunshot to the abdomen and one through the right femur. The ER’s got two good lines going but you better knock him out and paralyze him so we can get a look at his abdomen. We’ll do a belly tap first just to be sure. Mary had said all of this while we were running down the three flights of stairs to the first floor where the emergency room was located in the rear of the hospital.

I had seen a lot of trauma in the six years I had worked here but this was especially bad. Not only had he been shot, he also had been severely beaten with a baseball bat.

Get that other line in this patient. Where the hell is anesthesia? We need the patient intubated so we can take him to X-ray and see how much damage that bat did to his brain. His mother said that his brother didn’t mean to beat and shoot him but he wouldn’t let him use his records. Christ, did you ever see a ten year old look this bad? The whole ER crew was working fast to secure IV lines and get life-saving blood into the boy. Where the hell is anesthesia? yelled John, one of the surgical residents.

I’m right here, John. What the hell are you yelling about?

We need the kid’s airway secured. Look at him; he’s vomited all over everything. Do something! Mary says that we have to tap his abdomen and probably take him to the OR. I don’t know though; the gunshot to the abdomen looks like a side-to-side and just under the skin. I think his main problem will be his head. If you ever get that endotracheal tube in we’ll get to X-ray and see how much work we have to do tonight.

After giving the boy a muscle relaxant I placed the breathing tube into his windpipe. The intubation was easy. I don’t know why the trauma ER doc had trouble.

Just then the ER nurse stuck her head in the door and said that another trauma was on the way. This time it was an auto accident. That trauma we did take to the operating room and worked for the rest of the night putting back together what the auto had torn apart.

As I was running to the other trauma room I noticed the mother of the boy in the trauma room waiting area just sitting and whimpering slightly, not really crying. She was looking around to see if anyone was watching. I thought that was odd but I had other things to think about at the time.

Chapter 2

By the time I got home I could hardly walk anymore. Usually after pulling an all-nighter I could hardly wait to hop into the sack. But my dog was jumping around trying to tell me he had to go. I let him out and sat at the kitchen table to read the morning paper. I tried to read the paper but just couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about that young body. I guess I was just getting old. Old hell! I was only thirty! Something about the boy that came in last night that bothered me. Why had this boy been beaten by his brother just because he wouldn’t let him use his records? Doesn’t sound just right, does it? Why didn’t the mother seem more upset? She cried a little, but most mothers cry a lot when their young children get hurt! The dog was barking at the door to be let in.

After showering I lay in bed wide-awake wondering about the boy and decided to check up on the case after a little sleep. I must have drifted off to sleep because I was awakened by a soft warm object next to me in the bed. Sally must have gotten off early. She gently began stroking my chest and then lower, lower. Reaching over I pulled her on top and began to run my fingers down her back. I kissed her neck, her face. She slid slowly down my body, kissing everywhere she could reach. She found a very erect person waiting at the end of the line for her. She licked up one side of the shaft and down the other. Sally was very good with everything she did. She took me in her mouth and raised me to new heights. I pulled her off and laid her on her back gently, and entered her warm passage. I could feel her constrict and relax her pelvic muscles. The sensation was almost more than I could stand. We made love for over an hour and then, both exhausted, lay in each others arms while we slept.

Chapter 3

The alarm clock said it was five p.m. I had intended to get up early and begin my investigation into why and what had happened to the little ten-year-old boy of last night. But Sally was a nice break from the rat race I had been on for the past two months. Sally was a new third-year surgical resident that I had met one night while on call. She had just transferred her residency from an upper New York State hospital to here for neurosurgery. We were both in the trauma room that night trying to save the life of a woman who had been shot five times by her live-in boyfriend. We had worked for over two hours but the woman still died. She had too many wounds and lost too much blood. I had asked Sally if she wanted a Coke and she said yes. We went to the vending machine room and I got two Cokes and a sweet roll.

Sally said, I don’t think I will ever get use to these killings.

No, I said. It seems no matter how hard or how long we work the results will always be the same. Sooner or later they come back for the last time.

Why do people treat each other that way? Sally said.

I don’t know, I responded.

Why can’t they just love each other? Sally had quietly stated.

Now that was a line that all of us had used more than once. I really don’t know, Sally, but I do know that it’s getting late and we both will be off duty in about two hours. Care to go breakfast?

Yes, I think I would. Where do you want to meet? she asked

Let’s go to the diner down the street.

Okay, I’ll meet you there about eight. See ya! she said.

Sally went back to the surgical ICU to make rounds with the on coming resident. I had to get back to the anesthesia office. Larry would be in soon and he always wanted a full report of what his anesthesia people did all night. Sally and I met for breakfast that day and have been good friends ever since. When she got the chance she would crash at my place and we would normally spend the day and night together. That was almost a year ago.

Chapter 4

From the sound of the water running I could tell that Sally was in the shower. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Sally was just stepping out of shower stall, drying herself off with one of those big towels. She looked delicious!

Sal, you want to take another shower? I asked. She looked at my pointing organ and stepped back into the shower. As I stepped in she turned the shower on to a nice warm flow. I reached for her softness. This woman I could spend the rest of my life with. But she still had years to go before she felt she could settle down. I kissed her eager lips, and caressed her back. I gently lifted her. Her legs opened and she wrapped them around my hips, slowly lowering herself onto my waiting member. We made love as if there would never be another time. We had always said that the shower was our clean sex habit.

Man, you sure can drain a lady! Sally said. I know I’ll be late for my surgical meeting but what the hell! Can we go again? I love clean sex! It had been such a long time for both of us that we had two more draining times before we finally came out of the water. It was a good thing that I had a large hot water heater!

Sally, did anyone tell you about the ten year boy who came in last night in the trauma room with a head injury? I asked.

Yeah, John mentioned about it in morning report. The boy died about eight this morning because of the damage to his brain. Evidently whoever did the job did a good one. The brain scan showed mush for the brain. Why do you ask?

Well, I just felt that maybe there was something else there. The mother didn’t seem to act right. I mean, mothers cry and carry on sometimes requiring, sedation and etc. But this one didn’t seem that upset about the whole thing. I mean she cried but that was it. Just cried! More whimpering than real crying. Plus she seemed to be looking around as if to see if anyone was watching. I wonder if it was really his real mother? I said.

You know, John and Mary both said something to that effect this morning, Sally said.

Since this was a coroner’s case did they get an autopsy today? I asked.

Yes, I think John said that they were going to do it about noon today because the police wanted the information as soon as possible. That’s funny too. Because usually the cops could care less when they get information. They are so overworked that the cases are backed up for them. Why do you ask, Bob?

Well, I thought all this strange too so I’m going to look into it. You know how I like to play Dick Tracy.

Oh wow, I’ve got to get out of here, Sally exclaimed. I got that meeting at six tonight and since we took an extra long shower I see that I am very late! Dr. Frank said if I’m late anymore he’d make me repeat my third year. Oh well, I’ll have that cute redhead nurse sit on his lap again. That always makes him feel better. See ya later I hope!

Sally had been dressing as we spoke. It was after seven when she left. I had to be at work by eleven p.m. so I cleaned up the place a little and went down to my favorite eating place.

Chapter 5

I had liked to investigate unusual things ever since nursing school and then it followed me into anesthesia school. One time during my anesthesia training I had discovered that one staff anesthetist seemed to use an abnormal amount of narcotics whenever she was on call. Especially when she was on call alone. I began my investigation into her practice by pulling her anesthesia records from the files and comparing what she had signed out in the way of narcotics and what she actually had listed on the anesthesia records. It seemed that only a third of the narcotic was for the patient. The rest was for her. I gave the results of my investigation to the chief of the anesthesia training program and to my amazement they simply permitted her to quietly leave. The last I heard she was working in anesthesia across town. That was five years ago. Rumor has it that she had killed one patient and was being sued by three others. I had been told to finish my anesthesia education and not make waves.

I was finishing up my steak at Carol’s Diner when it dawned on me that the boy and his family could have been into the trafficking of drugs or something else illegal. The boy might have withheld either money or items from the big guy. But why shoot and beat the kid? Theory would say that they had tried to beat the truth out of him and probably shot him in anger because he would not tell what he had done with the drugs or items. But why side-to-side in the abdomen?

It was a little after nine p.m. by the time I returned home. I had just about enough time to relax a bit before I had to hit the hard road of saving lives and stamping out disease.

Chapter 6

When I arrived at work it was to find the 3-11 crew deep into trauma. The person on the operating room table had tried to drive his motorcycle in the same space as a truck and the truck won. Bill was at the head of the table as I walked in to relieve him for the night.

Man oh man, am I ever glad to see you! We’ve done nothing but work, work, work around here tonight! I thought this shit never came in on the evening shift. Well, tonight I was wrong! This guy is about thirty-four and from what we got out of his stomach he had been drinking for quite a while before he got onto his bike. I did a rapid intubation on him but I still think that he aspirated some of that beer he’d been drinking. The endtitle CO2 monitor been running around fifty-two and I’ve been hyperventilating him as best I can but his bronchospasm doesn’t seem to want to break. We’ve only been here a little over an hour now but we still have his right femur, left hip, and possibly do burr holes on him. We had done a splenectomy right off and now they are doing a hemicolectomy. He has multiple holes in his small intestine and that big one in the colon. They have to finish exploring the rest of his abdomen. I’ve given six liters of ringers lactate, twelve units of packed red cells, and we’ve got six units of fresh frozen plasma thawing out in the lab. I think before you’re done you’ll need that plus a twelve-pack of platelets. I’ve been running him on Pavulon and oxygen because his pressure has been so low. Here is some narcotic in case you get a pressure that says he’s alive or can feel anything. I’ve got to get out of here! Sorry, Bob, but I’m beat!

I took over control of the case as Bill walked, or, as it looked from my viewpoint, dragged his way from the room. The patient on the table was not doing well at all. His pressure was hovering about eighty-eight systolic even with all the fluid. I didn’t think that Bill was vigorous enough in his fluid replacement from the chart that I had quickly perused. The patient had lost more than the twelve units of blood that Bill had replaced. John and Sally were the surgical resident team working on the patient and Mary was their staff.

Sal, John, what’s going on down there? I asked. I’m having some trouble keeping a pressure. Is there some other bleeding point down there that you missed? I asked.

Wait a minute, Bob, I’ve just about got this bleeding here stopped, John said.

As they finished what they were operating on I pushed more fluid and asked the circulating nurse to please ask the blood bank if they had at least twelve more units of blood and where the fresh frozen plasmas were.

"Bob, I think that this guy has a retroperitoneal bleed—looks like the kidney. Let me look