Hours later, must be at least five or six hours later, all six members of the Anderssen family were in stable condition. Mom had gone to surgery to repair her knee, and was currently in orthopedics to have her femur and wrist casted. Dad had been released after a series of x-rays and a CT scan; he would have some really colorful bruises later, but he would be fine. He was bouncing back and forth between his wife and his children. Both Dominique and Frankie were fine, and were being held overnight for observation. Jenny -- and her approximately six-month-old fetus -- were both stable. They were being watched to make sure that the fetus hadn't been harmed either by the force of the seatbelt against her belly or the impact of the crash itself. Apparently, there was also some small chance that the crash might cause her to deliver prematurely, even though the baby is pretty well protected in the fluid against things like that. It never hurts to be careful. Dad had been told earlier about his daughter's pregnancy, and I was real glad not to be in the room when that happened. I'd seen other cops -- probably detectives from the way they were dressed, including Detective Ellison from this morning -- in the waiting room talking with Dad and some other family members about the crash.

Was it only this morning?

Doctor Cunningham looked positively wilted when we finished the final bits of paperwork and charts that had to be done before making our escape. She was pale, a bit wan, and lines of fatigue were clearly written on her face. I probably didn't look much better with wisps of hair trailing from my formerly neat braid.

"Good." She turned to me. "Now we can go home."

"I'll walk you out."

She grinned; the woman's not stupid, she knew I was doing it for the extra tape. I was nearly at the end of this one anyway. We passed Rick, Julie, and the others, waiting for me, and they looked as tired as I felt. Our day at the hospital might be over, but we had plenty of work to do yet.

To get some end-of-shift footage, I got some tape of Doctor Cunningham leaving the hospital, and walking back to her car in the parking garage. She waved at me while pulling out of her parking space and I returned the gesture. After all, I might not ever see her again, depending how many shifts I continued to take here and which ones, and how her schedule changed over the next few days.

As she drove away in her little car, I relaxed and took a long deep breath. The walk back to where my cohorts were waiting took no time at all, or so it seemed. Finally.

The day was over.

Ignoring most of the trip back to the hotel is easy enough; I was too tired to care much about what the city looks like. That's Laura's job. You'd think walking around with a camcorder on your shoulder was easy, but it was all more complicated than it looked. I had only so many rolls of tape to use per day, and there's lots of stuff going on at any given time that I might want to follow up on and record. After picking a path, you had to hope like hell that your trail leads to warm waters, bright skies, and interesting footage. Intuition and adrenaline drove a good deal of it, going with your gut as to what felt right.

I spent most of the drive back admiring Chandra's jewelry and thinking about what might be ahead of us tomorrow. At any rate, I was thinking up a plan. Surely, Detectives Sandburg and Ellison were home...

"--What did you say the computer would do?" Jesus Christ on a jumped-up crutch! They were still working... when are they going to sleep! No wonder Ellison sounded a bit confused, but so am I. This was like entering the theater in the middle of the movie.

"There's something freaky going on at the pharmacy, right? Something wonky with the word processing?"

"Wonky?"

"Weird, you know. British slang." There had to be a shrug or a nod-and-shrug in there somewhere. "Anyway, I'm making a database of pharmacy orders written by all the people who've received threats during the times of the negligence suits. The program will especially pay attention to the more common drugs, the ones that could have street value."

"Sounds good, but how long will it take?"

"Well, Cascade General's records master must be a pack rat from way back because he saves everything. See this?" A pause during which Sandburg must have been waving something around.

"A computer disc?"

"Not just a computer disc, Jim, this is a zip disc." He sounded absolutely pleased, like a cat sneaking the cream off the top of the milk bottle. "And here's more of them. Pharmacy downloaded all their records each month into a zip disc and stored them, just in case the information was ever needed. So did Patient Records with their charts."

"Like in case of a negligence suit."

"Exactly, man. They seriously believed in being careful. Now, the program won't tell us anything else but if there's a correlation there, the computer should be able to find it for us." A pause. "We already know that the people receiving the threats were nervous."

"Of course they were, but more so than you'd expect."

"That could be because they're not ex-Army Rangers with covert ops experience." Whoa, remind me to stay on Ellison's good side. Maybe the mini-mike isn't such a good idea after all... "None of the clerks were nervous but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. We don't know why they were targeted, either."

"Right now, let's go with our working theory that it has something to do with a negligence suit. It fits with the fact that the threats accuse murder."

"And that means something."

"I'm sure of it."

"That car accident was nasty, man." The voice tuned me back into the conversation that had been going on around me. Nick sounded relatively disgusted by the whole thing, and that itself told me plenty. We've seen lots of MVAs, watched the firefighters and other rescue personnel wield their tools to cut victims out of twisted wreckage, and done it all without breaking a sweat. "The guy driving the pick-up was plastered, completely gone. He had liquor bottles and enough beer cans to make up at least a couple six-packs in his back seat." He made a snorting sound of vaguely repressed anger mixed with perverse satisfaction. "You could smell the booze even over the blood."

The guy driving the pick-up had died. Now Nick's attitude made a little more sense to me; his mom was killed by a drunk driver nearly five years ago. It's more difficult for him to remain objective than it is for the rest of us, and I can understand how he feels.

"Besides that accident, guys, I didn't have anything too interesting today," I told them without the slightest bit of apology. Short of hiring some three-toed shmuck to blow up a building, there wasn't anything I could do about the lack of excitement in the ER. Trouble was, we wouldn't be real likely to get good footage from the inside of a prison cell, except for America's Most Wanted. "A hysterical woman, a guy with a parasitical infection--"

"What kind?" Geoff wanted to know.

"Scabies." He grimaced; the man has an unhealthy fascination with bugs of all kinds, even things like dust mites and fleas. I think he's just getting experience in making documentaries so that he can go direct for Animal Planet about bugs and other insects.

So far, the only ones having any excitement in this job are Geoff, Nick, and Laura. Riding with paramedics is fun because you not only go to average trauma calls but you might also get called to cover fires in case a firefighter is injured. While no one wants to see anyone hurt, watching people battle a raging dragon is thrilling. In spite of this utter lack of decent footage -- maybe it will run as a typical day, and at least I'd met my detective quota -- we still need to stick to procedures.

Time flies when you're bored. Three hours into reviewing my footage of the day leaves me wishing I'd started five hours ago. My canisters were numbered, so right now I was just listing all the cases so that the editors will be better able to piece the Cascade episode together. In addition, I had to cross-reference all of them with the consent documents that Chandra gathered, so that all our bases were covered. Later, my list will be combined with Rick's and Julie's, and that mega-list will be cross-referenced with the mega-list Nick and Geoff are making of their paramedic coverage. Then, those two lists will be cross-referenced with Chandra's list of consent documents. Those cases that score on all three lists will be in the running for actual use by the editors.

Thank God we get paid for the time spent on paperwork.

Scooby Doo and the gang of meddling kids were busily solving a mystery revolving around a guy in a rubber mask, but it was the only thing we can agree on entertainment-wise. I know, six out of seven working with video and laptops, and all of us shuffling reams of paper around, and we had the television on? Sue us, we used to be grad students; a mere two inputs to the brain does not a single output make.

Room service, however, does get us much closer to output. Good orange beef, moo goo gai pan, and house fried rice make me happy, and the oolong tea practically made me delirious. Grad students live on caffeine, as well as stress and learning to multi-task. All this fun and room service, too. "Rick, pass me an egg roll." Honestly, we had enough food to feed an army, but each room had a refrigerator so we could finish it up tomorrow. Scooby gave way to the local news, which ordinarily would interest me not a whit -- except to critique the anchors -- but for the fact that Detective Ellison and his delicious partner Detective Gorgeous are on film.

An egg roll landed on my plate, and I glanced away from the TV to where Rick was grinning. "Excuse my fingers," he said.

"I wouldn't excuse any part of you, but thanks for the egg roll anyway." Ellison was saying something or other about making headway on a 'serious harassment case involving serious injuries'. Another lovely man, captioned as Captain Simon Banks of Major Crime, put in his two cents about how his best people are on it. When they gave way to Commissioner Mathews getting ready to give a press conference about whatever it was going on that demanded a press conference, I changed the channel.

Making sure I saw, Rick shot me an indignant look but ruined the effect by snickering, and returned his attention to his own plate. Shrimp with some sort of vegetables and lobster sauce, I think, plus fried rice and steamed dumplings. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Nick and Jules weren't feeding each other wontons but the gooey expressions on their faces told me they were definitely thinking about it anyway, completing yet another step in the mating dance. Their music's only been playing for the past five years, as we've watched them move around each other but pretended not to notice. I'm the one sitting at the bar, harassing the band.

Laura's wishing she'd made some other dinner selection; she kept giving Chandra's plate glances. Got to admit, whatever it is, it didn't look half-bad. What Chandra and Geoff were thinking, I didn't know, but I suspected that if they were not already doing the horizontal hustle, they would be soon. At the very least, they'll be dating.

"Annie?"

I answered Geoff with a vague sort of interrogatory noise. "Hmm?"

"Take a look at this clip and tell me what you see." He handed over his laptop and I obligingly called up the clip in question. A shot of a hallway, big deal. Geoff must have caught my expression because he apparently felt the need to explain himself. "I wanted to get an interior shot of one of the halls leading to the stairways... since that girl is pregnant, we might catch her delivery on tape."

"Take the elevator."

"You're so helpful, Rick."

Vasquez reaches up and tips an imaginary cowboy hat, a Latino John Wayne. "Jes' tryin' to do my job, ma'am." His accent's not bad for a Hawaiian boy, and he does a great job of mocking my high-northeastern slanders of the English language.

I turned my attention back to the laptop, wondering what it is that Geoff thinks I should be able to see. "What is it I should be seeing that I'm not?" Mentally, I have to double-check my own syntax to make sure it makes sense since, even though I understand it, the others might not. Reaching over, he understood what I was asking and entered a command to continue playing. Then, his hand went up and trailed through his hair, making little blond spikes like waves during a storm.

Seconds tick away on the film counter and still nothing caught my attention until Geoff reached over again and froze the action. "There," he said, pointing at a shadow on the wall. "That."

"A shadow?"

He nodded, looking away from me and over my shoulder at some atrocious piece of artwork. "There was no one in that hallway when I filmed that shot... and it's in the wrong place to be my shadow."

This was not something I wanted to think about. I'd grown up on ghost stories, living with a centuries-old cemetery down the road and an allegedly haunted house up the road, plus a haunted bridge in town. Having a shadow I couldn't explain away made nervous trickles go up my spine and back down again, just for kicks.

"Don't worry about it," says Rick, resident skeptic. At least he's able to break the silence that's fallen over our little group. "This is going to be an easy assignment. Two more days, and we're out of here."

"Easy?" Nevertheless, I appreciated his willingness to rally the troops. That comment I'd overheard about Cascade being the most dangerous city in America just wouldn't leave me. Something bad was going to happen, and I could almost feel the pressure building. "I think you're full of poi."

"I think you've been watching too much Scooby Doo."

With that personal and clearly wrong editorial -- he knows damn well that I hold a personal best of fourteen straight hours of Scooby and the gang -- supper ends and the work-party breaks up so that we can all go to our respective beds and pleasant dreams. A fairly early night, as it's only two in the morning.

Morning comes too soon, though I can only tell it's morning because the clock says so and because the incessant ringing in my ear isn't the jingle bells of one of my more risque daydreams but rather the desk clerk with our 8:30 am wakeup call.

The clock might be lying. It's happened before, I don't care that power outages were involved.

Hell, the desk clerk might be lying. Look at that blackness outside... there's no way as Carter made little liver pills that it's morning. Someone put coffee under my nose, and that was enough. Teasing someone with coffee should be illegal, especially at this ungodly hour of the day. Nice dreams last night, mostly. Some of them involved Detective Gorgeous doing tremendously lovely things that we won't go into because they'd likely get me arrested. For some reason, I also suffered through a dream about catapulting popcorn at Rick, which he tried to catch in a baseball glove.

If that means anything, I don't want to know what it is. The in-depth interviews would probably cause massive psychological damage to my already peculiar psyche. Hey, I trained as a psychologist before I indulged my creative side in video production, and you know what they say about shrinks of all degrees.

We spent the rest of the morning -- after Julie and Laura foraged for breakfast, luckily, the hotel offered a free continental -- by resting and preparing for the long long day. They even offered coffee, which I happily accepted; one of my college professors had once asked me why I hadn't just had a coffee cup grafted on to one hand, since he never saw me without a cup... and sometimes two cups, one in each hand. This time, we're going to be working afternoon and graveyard shift at the hospital with all new principals and all new cases. Laura is happy; she's finished with town detail and will be checking back on the cases we covered yesterday, covering the bases. Because that's a lot of cases, Chandra will probably be spending at least part of her time helping her. Since I'll be on my feet, more or less, until morning comes around again, I indulge in what I like to think of as archeological and anthropological research. It's relaxing. It's educational.

"It's a video game."

Someday, I'm going to strangle Rick Vasquez and dance merrily around his corpse. He's just happily blown great screaming holes in my fantasy by pointing out the obvious. "It's Age of Empires, and excuse me while I convert these Persian war elephants." Maneuvering my little priest and keying in for him to convert, I found that one was convertible, but the other didn't have enough faith either way. Some flaming balls flew across the screen. "Shit!" I'd forgotten to call off my military, particularly my Assyrian catapults... which had just massacred my own priest and three of my cavalry units. "Shit!"

I hurriedly keyed in the commands for the stable to give me another cavalry unit and for the temple to train me another priest. At least the priest had converted one of the war elephants before he croaked. Between my new war elephant, the catapults, and two chariot archers, I was able to destroy the attacking Persian enemy forces. Hell. At least the new priest can heal the damage they suffered, and some villagers can repair the catapults. I frowned.

"I'm glad you're not president and commander-in-chief."

"Shut the hell up." I started making another cavalryperson, and traded one of my dead cavalry for a chariot archer instead. "Can't you see I'm building a civilization here?" Besides, Stargate SG-1 is airing on TV, and that counts as educational. Damn game is addictive, real good for blowing two or three hours at a stretch. With the staggering amount of coffee we've been inhaling, Juan Valdez is probably moaning with lower back pain. You have to keep it in context; we probably won't get any while we're working.

Looking out the window on our way to work fills me with dread. It's snowing. Joy.

Not.

I'd done some checking on the sly last night and demanded a quick trip to Central Precinct, Major Crime, to pay another visit to Ellison and Sandburg. After all, we had them on film, so we had to get releases. The papers were in one hand, and the bug was hanging off the bottom of my class ring; I had to assume that they'd found or lost the one from last night. Hopefully, they'd understand what was going on. Besides, I needed to plant another bug and I'd enjoy it this time just as much as before. The sacrifices I make for my art, alas.

The stairs up to Major Crime didn't take too long, but I had to forcibly restrain myself from sticking my hand in my pocket. My quarry would be expecting that, assuming he was here. I had no idea if he was here or not, but my reasons for needing to find them both were on the up-and- up.

Luck! Both of them were seated at what I had to assume were their desks, arguing with each other about some crucial factor of the case at hand. I walked in and no one batted an eye, probably because I'd left the camera in the car with the guys. If I'd brought it inside with me, I'd not have gotten as far as the main desk in the lobby. "Detectives?"

That got their attention, and Detective Blair Sandburg -- I hadn't heard his first name yesterday, but that was what his desk said -- gave me such a look. He hadn't forgotten yesterday, not by a long shot. Neither had I.

Ellison apparently wasn't going to let him off the hook, though, because he stood up immediately. "Come on, Sandburg, don't you know that men are supposed to stand up when a lady enters the room?"

"Ha-ha." Suspicious as he was, Detective Gorgeous stood up graciously and extended his hand. "Nice to see you again, Miss Sedgewick."

"The pleasure's mine." I shook both their hands. "Actually, I'm here this morning because we did get you both on tape yesterday, and I was voted to get the releases signed." A sigh hid the fact that I hadn't really minded that much at all.

"Voted, huh?"

"Afraid so."

"How did you get the job?"

"I was in the bathroom."

Ellison and Sandburg laughed at that and the annoyed expression on my face. "Sounds familiar." That didn't surprise me; the rule of 'he who is not present to defend himself gets the job' goes back a long way. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the first Roman emperor got the job because he happened to have been out trying to find appropriate leaves to hang next to the latrine.

After reading the documents -- they're pretty simple, they have to be since mostly distressed people usually don't do well with legalese -- both men signed them and escorted me to the door out of the department. I think they wanted to make sure that I left. "You know," I commented to Sandburg at the threshold, "Doctor Cunningham asked me if I'd stopped to get your phone number." Just thinking about it made me blush, and I could see a faint redness spreading over his cheeks. With that, I made my strike, same back pocket, same firm muscle.

On my way down the stairs, I eavesdropped to the sound of hilarity.

"Dammit, I knew she was going to do that!" Thankfully, he sounded more embarrassed than angry. I could make out Ellison's laughter in the background. "And, you, you were no help at all. Standing when a lady was in the room? You might as well have just gift- wrapped my butt--"

"Ahem! The show is over, ladies and gentlemen." That was Captain Banks' distinctive deep voice; I recognized it from the press conference he'd given yesterday. "Ellison! Sandburg! My office!" Footsteps hurried in all directions but I could hear three sets going in one direction and then a door closing. "So, are we any closer to a suspect? I don't need to tell you that the chief wants this closed."

"What does the chief have to do with this?"

"The administrator called the mayor, the mayor called the chief, and the chief called me. I, in my turn, have called you."

"This is what we know so far. The records signed out from Pharmacy don't match up with the patient records during the same period." A pause. "It could just be sloppy housekeeping, but I don't think the records could be that far wrong."

"Someone's selling the drugs?"

"Maybe. Maybe for personal use. Maybe both."

"What do you mean,' maybe'?"

"The problem, Simon, is that the missing drugs aren't anything that has street value." Sandburg's voice. "Antidepressants, minor painkillers, and potassium supplements. Maybe if those could be used in the creation of something more potent, but by themselves..."

"That doesn't make any sense, Sandburg."

"It does if we're still missing something."

Walking into the Emergency Room was like smacking into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour. There's nothing better than starting the day... well, early afternoon, since it's nearly one o'clock... with a new roll of fresh tape, a cup of hot coffee, and even hotter gossip. The remains of the Chinese food had been demolished, so we were heading to work with full bellies, something that's not always a smart idea in this business. Of course, you get used to the gore after awhile, so I wasn't too concerned about tossing my cookies so long as we didn't get anything really disgusting.

Word has it that someone's out to get the hospital for something or another, but no one really knows what's going on. The nurses know more than the doctors do on things happening that may or may not directly impact the hospital, which isn't real surprising. Anyone who works in this business can tell you that nurses and orderlies -- though I think they call themselves transport attendants now -- are the lifeblood of any hospital gossip system. I think that's because people tend not to notice nurses and orderlies unless they're actively sticking a needle somewhere it wasn't designed to go or they're moving you very personally from one place to another. Because of that, they hear things.

Jeanne Rose, R.N., grabbed my arm and pulled me to one side for a few brief moments. Her dark eyes sparkled with an emotion I could only describe as glee. "You won't believe what's happened."

"What?"

We'd worked together briefly on the MVA yesterday, crossing paths in the dark night of the Emergency Room, but even in that short time I'd learned that she was the crux of the hospital grapevine. Then she looked at me, like she's never seen me or my camera before. "Are we off the record?"

"I don't have any control over the editing, but if you say it's off the record, I imagine whoever's doing the editing will go along with that. You have to remember, though, that once I send out my film, it's out of my hands." That was true. While I doubted it was really likely that the editors would use anything declared private, I had to admit that the whole point of this show was to capture the real deal, warts and all.

She thought on that for a moment, and must have decided it was worth the risk. Who can tell why people seek out cameras when there's fresh hot news to serve up to the hungry public? "There's been a few other incidents during the night and early morning, nothing too major, just annoying stuff."

"Like what?"

"Mostly things being moved around in rooms no one's been in, windows being found opened and closed without rhyme or reason, things like that." I was immediately reminded of the inexplicable shadowy image on Geoff's film from the previous night, but I just as quickly brushed it aside. "When he was on his way home, one of the doctors found his car windows smashed out last night."

"Yeah?"

"And one of the orderlies, Marc, you haven't met him, he works east wing," she waved one arm toward the hallway, to the left, "was attacked last night. Probably a mugging, but with all the other stuff going on, who knows?" She was concerned and I couldn't blame her. There definitely seemed to be something going on here, but I was damned if I knew what it was. To be perfectly honest, I was torn to whether or not I even wanted to know. On the one hand, my journalistic instincts told me that there was something going on, that I needed to find out what it was, and that I needed to get it on tape. On the other hand, however, my stomach told me in no uncertain terms that I didn't want to get involved in whatever was happening. "The medical students are pretty sure all of this is leading up to something."

I had to agree with her. The trail was leading somewhere, but I wasn't sure I wanted to stay on it. Of course, I was pretty sure I'd already hit the slippery slope to the bottom. Shaking away thoughts I couldn't afford to be having at this point in the game, I headed off to find my new assignment. We don't stay with the same doctor the whole time at the hospital, mostly for editing purposes. The recorder stays running nearly all the time; the more tape we have, the happier the editors are. You wouldn't believe how much raw tape you need for a mere three minutes of edited footage.

Doctor Joseph Stuart was waiting for me at the main desk, talking with one of the receptionists while looking at a patient's chart. He looked like a rugged sort of guy, tall with dark brown hair. He looked up and smiled as I approached. "So, the prodigal Annie returns."

"I see my reputation precedes me."

And I wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.

Yet.

Before I could say another word, he spoke up. "I'd like to do some rounds, so we can talk as we go, okay?"

I was cool with that, and we headed on up. "Cool beans."

That made him smile, and I had the odd feeling he'd heard the expression before. "A very appropriate saying for the Washington State coast, so close to Seattle-coffee-country."

"No," I answered, "that would be 'hot beans'."

This time he laughed. By now, we were on the elevator, heading for the third floor, east wing. I decided it was time to jump in with both feet, and get some information before we actively began seeing new patients. "Tell me a little about yourself."

"I'm Doctor Joe Stuart, and I'm a third-year resident at Cascade General in Cascade, Washington. Currently, I'm in the Emergency Department, and I hope to also do a residency in surgery." He smiled charmingly at the camera. "I'd like to stay here in Cascade as long as I can. This is a big city on the ocean with that small-town charm. Unfortunately, it also has many of those big-city problems."

It's not surprising that everyone wants to get into surgery, it's a hard rotation, very demanding, but I imagine it's also one of the most rewarding. You get to treat a patient who really desperately needs your help, who indeed might even die without your help, and you get to see immediate results most of the time. There are exceptions, of course, because sometimes a patient dies and there's nothing you can do. The only thing that might be more rewarding is Ob-Gyn, but the hours are terrible. "What made you decide on Emergency Medicine?"

"I decided I didn't want to go to law school." He paused for a moment to think about his words. "That's more or less the truth, I'm sad to say. I knew that I wanted a career that would allow me to keep learning my whole life as well as allowing me to travel while I worked. Medicine gives me so many opportunities that I couldn't find in any other profession. No matter how high- tech the tools get, people will always need doctors to interpret the findings."

By now, we had made it almost to the nurse's station for the wing. I was just getting ready to ask for some background on the patient we were going to check when Doctor Stuart's pager began trilling insistently. "Cripes!"

"What is it?"

"There's a trauma code coming in!"

It's back into the joy of trauma for us, and we ran hell-bent for leather back down three flights of stairs and too many hallways to count to the trauma bay, waiting for the ambulance to bring in our next patient. Hopefully, we'd get back to that patient later on tonight.

"What do we have," Stuart shouted as he began gowning up and donning a clear faceplate over his surgery cap. The visor protects his face from blood spatter in the case of a particularly bloody injury.

"Not sure," answered another doctor whom I hadn't met. "Medic three reported it initially as a jumper, but reports now that the cops are involved so...." He shrugged eloquently. "They should be here in three."

Very shortly after that, a paramedic brought in a wet young man in his mid-twenties strapped to a backboard with head restraints in place, accompanied by two police officers. Restraints secured both his wrists, and one leg was completely encased in a white splint. His other leg grabbed my attention until the paramedic began giving us a history. "Adult male, approximately twenty-five years old, closed bi-lateral tib-fib fractures, plus fractures of both ankles. Right ankle is also an open fracture, and bleeding heavily. We put on dressings to stop the bleeding, and secured it for transport but did not splint." Not only had he been intubated -- using an artificial airway -- but this unlucky patient had a large-bore IV in each arm, pouring fluids into him. Monitors were attached to him everywhere.

"I want X-ray here, now," shouted Stuart. He hurried over and began examining the patient, muttering to himself. "Probable compression fractures, possible fractures in both femurs, possible internal injuries...." Blood had soaked through onto the gurney padding in places.

The patient's lower legs were making my stomach roll uncomfortably. Bumps protruded from the soles of both feet, but his right ankle had been completely turned around, a spiral fracture of some sort, with his toes now pointing the wrong way. My bones ached in sympathy. I heard the man muttering something or maybe he was crying, but in any case, I don't think he's coherent. Someone was hanging more bags of something and adjusting the drips, but I wasn't altogether sure whether it was blood plasma or a medicine of some kind. My guess is probably the former. Maybe one of each.

"Police report that he jumped off a bridge overpass, landing feet-first on asphalt, while attempting to elude custody. His behavior before indicates possible narcotic use," the paramedic continued. Around us, everyone has leaped into action while listening to the history. People checking the intubation, checking for more broken bones, drawing blood for lab tests, and getting a new set of vitals. It's a complicated dance of organized chaos in the service of Asclepius. "Pulse of 140, resps 28 and shallow, BP 138/94, all as of two minutes ago. Some rigidity in the belly noted on the way in."

Hearing that, Doctor Stuart probed the patient's belly gently, checking to see whether he was bleeding into the abdomen. "Kelly, call the lab, tell them I want the labs back yesterday. Someone else, call surgery and orthopedics. Amy, come here." He rattled off dosages of multi-syllabic medications to the nurse that he wanted administered via the patient's IV line before glancing at the lower legs with a grimace. The only one I recognized was Narcan, which works to stop the effects of a narcotic on the body.

He picked up a plastic tube and, after making a small incision near the belly button, inserted it into the abdominal cavity. Some saline solution was then infused through the tube. I saw him grimace again, and he said, "Frank blood and bile came out." As soon as he moved away, a horde of X-ray people descended upon the patient, getting pictures of his legs, ankles, feet, and pelvis.

"What does that mean?" We began moving him down the hall, presumably either toward the O-R or toward the CT scanning machine. I supposed they could also be taking him to Angiography to determine whether or not the badly damaged right lower leg had enough blood flow to be saved.

"It means that something is bleeding massively from somewhere, and the bile tells me that something else has ruptured -- liver or the gallbladder, for example -- in there. The liver bleeds a lot, so that's our prime suspect at the moment. He's going to surgery. Right now." I got a little closer as we were moving and got a look at the bright red fluid streaked with yellow before refocusing my attention on my doctor. A police officer was pacing us, determined to keep an eye on his charge. I imagine she plans to wait outside the surgical unit, if they'll let her, which I doubt. He's not really likely to go anywhere. "He's going to get lots of antibiotics over the next several days."

"What's going to happen to his legs?"

"Orthopedics will look at them. We haven't splinted the open fracture, just put dressings on it to stop the bleeding, because splinting it now would make the injury worse. That's definitely going to need to be surgically reduced, so an orthopedic surgeon will handle that after he's finished with the abdominal surgery."

"There were bumps on the soles of his feet... what were those?"

Doctor Stuart glanced at them for a moment before turning back to my camera. "I'd be able to say more when the films come back, or if we do a CT scan before reducing the leg fractures, but I'd say those are his heel bones, possibly the pedal bones."

Eww.

"Based on what we're told happened, when he hit the asphalt standing, the force drove his heel bones down -- with objects in motion, and all that -- and then back up again, causing a chain reaction all the way up to, probably, his pelvis." He shook his head with a sigh. "We'll know more later. The orthopedic surgeon might even begin looking at his legs while we're in fixing his abdomen."

Someone busily slapped a gown around me, and I realized that I was being allowed to film the surgery. This was something I wasn't really sure I wanted to do, but there was no way I was going to turn down the opportunity. After someone plopped a surgery cap on my head and tied a mask over my nose and mouth, we headed inside to finish up. At the door, Stuart was joined by an older woman in scrubs, and introduced her to me as Doctor Elaine Wilkes, one of the trauma surgeons. Her silver curls combined with her dark skin plus sharp see-all eyes, gave me a very strong first impression of her as an elegant, refined, and bold lady.

Wilkes did most of the actual cutting, and Stuart just assisted. Like he said, he hopes to go into surgery, so maybe she's his mentor. Besides the two doctors and myself, also present in the O-R were a surgical resident, two more medical students, the anesthesiologist, and two anesthesiology residents. In addition, three scrub nurses, who hand things to the doctors, and a circulating nurse were also present. The latter person allows the doctors to keep the front desk updated (usually so the patient's family in the waiting room can be updated in turn, as well as the recovery room or ICU) and to retrieve unexpected items from supply.

Nearly a half-hour into the operation, the door opened and a tall man in scrubs carrying a set of films, followed by three younger men in scrubs, entered. I learned he was Doctor Ted Parker, an orthopedics surgeon, and his orthopedics residents. He was here, hopefully, to begin working on the extremity fractures as soon as the abdomen was done, if the patient remained stable. Moving to the light, he put the x-rays up for examination and several of us rushed over to look at them while a nurse began suctioning.

From what I could see and understand -- which wasn't much -- the leg breaks were pretty bad. His pelvis was dislocated rather than fractured. Both tibias and fibias in both legs -- the two bones making up the lower leg below the knee -- were broken, and they were rightly concerned about the possibility of compartment syndrome, where the compressed muscles in the damaged leg swell up, raising the pressure inside the leg. It doesn't sound like much but it can result in an amputation. His left femur -- the thighbone -- was broken, and three compression fractures had been located in the lower back. One ankle wasn't so serious, since it was a relatively simple closed fracture. The protruding foot bones were a problem, though. I didn't even want to think about how they were going to have to fix that or how much high-tech hardware would be needed.

The real problem, as you could probably imagine, was the extremely nasty open fracture of his right ankle. Even looking at the x-ray made me queasy. "See here?" Without touching the film with his gloved hand, Doctor Parker traced the outline of where the bone should be. "You say he landed from a fall on both feet?"

"That's what the police told the paramedics on scene."

"Looks as if when he landed, the force snapped both bones. Then," he continued, tracing the motion with a finger while speaking, "when he fell to the ground, the motion rotated the fracture, scattering bone fragments and tearing the ligaments." He paused a moment, and I could see him taking a closer look at the films. "The nerve might be damaged, as might the artery."

"Agreed." Doctor Wilkes' firm tone had a definite sound of urgency to it. Two more nurses entered the room, probably, to assist Parker. Everyone trooped back over to the patient and continued working, some on the abdomen and some on the leg and ankle fractures. The orthopedics people would be there working long after the rest of us had finished. He would likely be in there for hours yet. They might not do all the breaks today but save some of the more complicated ones until more tests and scans can be done. That depended largely on what Doctor Parker decided.

The severity of the injury sounded to me like, unless this guy was really lucky, he might lose his leg. At the very least, he's not going to be running anywhere for a long while. Besides, the cops will see that the first place he gets to go will be jail. If I was home and in charge, as soon as he was able, I would consider bumping him to Old Saint A's. Who jumps off an overpass to escape the cops? Did he think the asphalt would vanish and be replaced with pillows? For the record, New Saint A's -- Agnes, that is -- is the medical hospital, which used to be at the Old Saint A's until they built the new building. Now Old Saint A's is one of the state mental hospitals.

Yes, yes, I know, there's a state mental hospital in my hometown. Believe me, I've heard all the jokes.

A while later, Wilkes finished up with the abdomen, closed it as well as she was able -- the intestines had swollen up, maybe from all the fluids, pouring out of the belly like an obscene pot of thick spaghetti -- and we left Parker and the others to the myriad leg fractures. They began discussing prognoses, treatments, and medications while I tuned everything out and took the opportunity to insert a new tape in the camcorder. It was nearly done anyway.

When we got back downstairs, the trauma bay was quiet. I took the opportunity to eavesdrop; maybe they'd found out something in the forever that I'd been gone. They could have caught and tried him by now.

" The jumper? Who is he?"

"We don't have an ID yet on him, since he wasn't carrying a wallet or anything like that at all." I didn't recognize the woman by her voice.

"What have you learned?" I suppose Ellison had a right to be a bit piqued.

"Well, the tox screen came back." I knew that lab test would reveal what drugs, if any, were present in the body's system. This person could be one of several people including a doctor, a nurse, or a lab tech. Wasn't important to me, though... this was just like a book on tape. "He had high levels of a drug called Phenacemide in his bloodstream."

"Phenacemide?" Sandburg's voice, rising in pitch as each syllable passed his lips.

"An anti-convulsant banned from the United States since the mid-1970s. It was used in the treatment of severe epilepsy but only as a last resort."

"Why was it banned?"

"That I don't know, Detective."

"Thank you for your time, Doctor." Ellison's voice was immediately followed by footsteps walking away. "An anticonvulsant? That's not your typical junkie's choice of high."

"Some of them can have pretty unpleasant side effects. I can't imagine what kind of effect they would have on someone whose brain chemistry was normal."

"Guess that lets you out, doesn't it, Darwin?" Darwin?

"Real funny. Just for that, you get to buy me lunch, and we're not going to Wonderburger."

"Doesn't bother me. There's a perfectly nice cafeteria right down the hall, and I happen to know that they make an acceptable burger."

"Haven't we had enough of hospital food?" There was a distinct complaint imminent to his voice. I had to admit that I agreed with him; you get tired of eating the limited menu of most hospital cafeterias day in and day out.

"We've got lots of researching to do. Maybe we can correlate your computer results a bit further, and find out if anyone is particularly prominent."

"Annie? You've got a message here." That snapped me back to where I was standing like a fool in the middle of the trauma bay, and I wasted no time in switching off the remote.

Now, that was odd. "Thanks." I took the slip of paper from a receptionist whose first name I couldn't remember. The message was from Nick and Geoff, on paramedic duty, telling me that there've been a few more incidents around the hospital. The cops have been talking to the paramedics about them, but apparently everything seems to revolve around the hospital. At least, that's the only thing that makes sense to my two esteemed colleagues. Who knows what information the cops have? Nick also added that he wants burgers for dinner. They've left messages for the others, too.

This whole mess with the hospital, it's not like we should care anyway, but we're nosy. That's the nature of making a living with a camcorder on your shoulder. You earn your paycheck by sticking your nose and your camera into everyone else's business. Some people don't like that and we've been shouted at by patients and doctors alike at some hospitals, but this is our job. To show people the truth, the part of medicine beyond the dramatized injuries of television, where the hero is shot three times in the shoulder in one scene but shows up perfectly fine after the commercial break. Worse are the atrocious tv-movies that show some heroine dying beautifully of leukemia but, ex-squeaze me, that does not happen in Real Life.

Before I could begin ranting and raving, I figured it might be a good idea to ask my doctor another question or two. A few minutes later, I got his attention and asked, "Are you from this city originally?"

He laughed. "No, I'm originally from Boston, Massachusetts."

"Really?" I couldn't stop myself from commiserating, the words just poured out of my mouth like a reflex. We New Englanders got to stick together, you know. "I'm from Red Falls, New Hampshire."

"Small-town girl."

"Ayehp." And it was true. Red Falls is mostly a bedroom community for the larger cities of western and central Massachusetts and Keene, New Hampshire, carrying a population of just over nine thousand people. The majority of the town's income doesn't come from stores since nearly half of Main Street has boarded up or empty storefronts, but rather from tourists seeking something called 'quaint old-fashioned New England.' What that means, I'm not exactly certain, but our Main Street runs straight through town and has hitching posts stationed between some portions of sidewalks and the street. The town council voted five years ago to pretty up the place by installing brickwork in some crosswalks and along the sidewalk in places like a patio with flower boxes.

Most of the tourists arrive during leafpeeping season when the trees begin exchanging their summer greens for the new season's fashions in red and gold. Personally, I think the colors are pretty, but I'd swear some of those people have never seen trees before. Besides, the leaves of an oak tree will always be the same color; only the intensity of the color changes, depending on the amount of rainfall and some other factors, I think.

We'd just been standing there waiting when a pair of men walked up to us. Well, the nicely dressed one was walking, but dragging the fashionably dressed one by one arm. Cool Man wasn't happy to be there but even I could see the makeshift bandages on his right hand weren't stopping the bleeding too well. "Excuse me," called out Formal Boy, "could you take a look at my partner's hand please?" Then he turned and shushed his partner, like I've seen noisy children quieted by their mothers. They had to be more detectives.

"Sure thing." Stuart extended an arm towards one of the examination rooms, and someone firmly put a hospital chart in his hand. "Room Three. Oh, and Detective... you'll find an examination gown on the gurney. Put it on." I'd swear as they passed us that the dirtiest looks were exchanged. We gave Cool Man about five minutes to argue about the gown with his partner and another five minutes to actually get changed before we headed there. This was going to be good.

Closing the door, the doctor began undoing the layers of bandages after introductions were exchanged. "So, Detective Brown, what exactly happened here today?" The wrappings revealed a long bloody gash just under the knuckle line, extending most of the way across his hand.

"We caught a suspect but he slammed my hand in a car door during the arrest." Brown sounded less than pleased with being here and couldn't stop from flinching while the doctor checked the extent of the injury. "Doc," he began, "it's really not that bad. Can't you just put a band-aid on it? Why did I have to get into a gown? It's my hand that's bleeding."

"That's procedure, Detective."

His partner jumped into the conversation. "Henri, he can't just put a band-aid on that. It's bleeding and probably needs stitches."

"It does not."

"You don't know that. It'll just hurt for a little bit and then not anymore." His expression got softer, more placating. "You don't want it to get infected, do you?"

"No."

"Then stop complaining and let the doctor look at it."

"It hurts when he looks at it because he doesn't look, he pokes." This last comment was followed by a pout.

"He's checking for nerve damage, you know that." I could almost hear Detective Rafe's exasperated sigh and his rolling eyes. "You know it has to be looked at."

"It hurts."

"Don't worry, the doctor will give you a shot before he puts the stitches in."

Brown froze at those words. "A shot?" He looked like he would be sick. "I don't want a shot."

Another tiny sigh from Rafe. "The shot will make it stop hurting."

"I don't want a shot."

"Brown--"

"No."

Rafe's face hardened slightly into lines, so he must be preparing to bring out the big guns. Maybe he was going to call their captain or lieutenant or whomever and get a direct order. Then again, direct orders never work on small children. "Brown, if the doctor decides to give you a shot and stitches, then that's what you'll get. It's for your own good."

"But I don't need a shot, Doc."

"I disagree. There doesn't appear to be nerve damage and the small bones don't seem to be broken. Can you move your fingers for me?" Both detectives let out small breaths at the required motion but Brown wasn't too happy regardless. Stuart had apparently finished his exam of the long gash just above the knuckles. "I'd say you just need some stitches to close this wound. In order to do that, I have to numb the surrounding area."

There was a snide comment just waiting on the tip of Rafe's tongue, I could see it in his eyes, but he apparently thought better of it for now. "See? It'll just hurt for a tiny bit and then it'll be all over."

Brown was slouched over, sulking, watching his arm, hoping for it to magically heal before the doctor began sticking needles in it. "You're not the one sitting here in this air-conditioned--"

"Henri, if you don't quit whining, I'll tell your wife about the snacking you were doing earlier."

That got his attention. "You wouldn't dare." Brown jumped with a yelp as Stuart injected the painkiller into the gash, taking advantage of his patient's distraction.

"Potato chips, wasn't it?" Rafe sounded incredibly smug. "A whole bag of the sour-cream- and-onion?"

"This is blackmail."

"I've got evidence." He patted his coat pocket securely. Stuart's left eye was all crinkled around the edges as he sewed up the injury, and it looked like he was doing his best not to laugh. God knew I was having a hard time myself.

"I'll arrest you."

"Then I'm entitled to my one phone call, aren't I?"

Brown fell back in defeat with the look of a prisoner waiting for the hangman, silently watching the doctor finish his sewing. Gauze went around the stitches without complaint and there were no further comments when a lecture on the care and feeding of stitches was delivered. Detective Rafe would probably remind him of the rules several times.

Thanking the doctor, Detective Rafe shepherded his partner out the door. I was just glad the whole thing was on tape.

Not long after that, we were called in to treat a little girl who was brought in by her mother. She looked about nine or ten, maybe a petite eleven but possibly as young as seven, and was sitting nervously on the examination table when we walked into the trauma room. The way kids are today, you can't tell on sight how old they are. An older woman in her mid-thirties or early forties sat in a nearby chair.

"You're Beth?" The little girl nodded bashfully. He turned to the woman in the chair. "You're Mom?" The woman nodded.

"How old are you, Beth?"

Still bashful, she held up eight fingers.

"So," Stuart said to her, "what happened here?" He was being very open with her, trying to be confident and trustworthy. The last thing we wanted was to make her afraid.

His smile earned him one in return, exposing a missing tooth. "I fell."

"On the way home from school," the mother added, "in our driveway, after the bus dropped her off." She smoothed her child's hair, and it was clear that she was nervous.

"Where does it hurt?"

The child put one hand on her head for a moment, and then quickly pulled it away. "My head." She looked at the palms of her hands. It looked from here like her hands were a bit scraped. "And my hands hurt, too."

"When you fell, did you land on your back or on your tummy?"

"Back." For a moment, I thought Beth was going to cry but she did not. How her hands got scraped up when she landed on her back, I wasn't sure.

"This happened on the way home from school? Around three-thirty this afternoon?" He looked at mom for confirmation.

"Yes," Mom said. "Bethie only told me that she fell down while we were sitting down eating dinner, so I brought her straight over as soon as we were done."

Doctor Stuart gently felt the back of Beth's head, and then took out a penlight. "Beth, sweetie, we're going to do a couple of little tests, okay?"

She nodded, a little afraid.

"First, I'm going to shine a small light in your eyes, and all I want you to do is look straight ahead. Try not to close your eyes, even though you'll want to, I know."

"Won't be for very long?"

"That's right. It won't be for very long." When he shone the light, first one eye and then the other, Stuart waved one hand behind the little girl's head as if the light could shine straight through the bone. That got him a little smile when she noticed. When he made a rabbit hop, Beth broke into giggles. Maybe he should consider pediatrics. Maybe he should have tried this with Detective Brown.

"Okay, next test." She nodded happily, and her mother looked considerably more relieved. If the doctor was relaxed enough to joke with her daughter, she likely was reasoning, then there was probably nothing to worry about. Doctor Stuart held up a finger in front of Beth's face. "See my finger?" She nodded. "I'm going to move it around, and I want you to follow my finger with your eyes without moving your head."

"Okay."

That test didn't take very long either, and apparently he liked the results because he was smiling. Turning to Mom, he had some instructions. "Well, the tests come out pretty well. She's coherent, and that's good. Do you know if she lost consciousness at all?"

"I don't know... she didn't say anything about anything like that."

"I'd like to get some x-rays as a precaution, but based on what I see here, I think Beth is going to be just fine." He had her full attention. "Without looking at the films, it seems like she might have a slight concussion, and I would recommend that you might want her to stay overnight, just in case. If not, then I can give you a set of instructions to follow, to keep an eye on her, waking her every hour, that sort of thing." There wasn't much more he could say. "Ultimately, it's your decision."

"Hey."

We all turned, as one unit, back to where Beth sat on the table.

"No needle?" Her voice wavered, crying a little.

"No, Beth, no needle."

"Good." She smiled at that. I was glad I had the exchange on tape.

As it happened, the mother decided to take her child home and watch her there. I imagine she felt safer being able to care for Beth herself, rather than leaving her child with a group of strangers unless she absolutely had to do so. After the paperwork from that case was cleared up, we headed upstairs to check up on the case we missed out on before.

The young woman appeared to be recovering nicely from a car accident in which she suffered a dislocated hip, a badly broken femur -- the thighbone, that is -- and a nearly dislocated knee. Luckily, they believed that the damage to her knee was minimal but everyone was still keeping a close eye on her because of the probability of injury to the nerves serving the lower leg. We chatted with her for a while, and I asked some questions. After nearly a half-hour, we left to allow her parents to enter and talk in private.

Doctor Stuart and I headed back down to the trauma bay. Everything was still quiet. Hopefully, it wouldn't be for long.