Dr. Knox Read Online Free Page B

tell me where you were hit.”
    Teddy hesitated, and looked at Astrid. Then he put his arm out. “I was in the Valley, out by—”
    “Where on your body.”
    Teddy swallowed hard. “My…my ass,” he said. “My ass and my thigh.”
    I crouched by the sectional, and slid the blood pressure cuff over Teddy’s arm. I put the stethoscope on and inflated the cuff.
    “BP’s low, but that’s not surprising. You have any health problems? Diabetes? HIV? Asthma? Anything?”
    “No…I…my doctor said I could lose a few pounds.”
    “You’ve made a good start. On any meds—prescription, recreational, anything?”
    “No…nothing. Weed sometimes.”
    “Allergies?”
    “Uh…I get hay fever. And cats—I’m allergic to cats.”
    “You weigh what…one ninety, one ninety-five?”
    “One ninety-one.”
    I slipped the cuff off. “Left arm now.”
    Teddy shifted, and held out his other arm. I wrapped a tourniquet above his left elbow, and tapped for a vein. Then I swabbed the arm and tore open the IV kit. I glanced at Astrid, who had stepped back and was watching openmouthed, with wide eyes.
    “You mind her being here?” I asked Teddy.
    “Astrid? No, no…it’s fine if she stays.”
    “And you?” I asked Astrid as I took out the catheter. “You’re not going to faint on me?”
    Her eyes narrowed. “I’m fine,” she said.
    “Great. Get me garbage bags.”
    “Like…plastic ones?”
    “The bigger the better.”
    Astrid looked at Teddy. “In the kitchen,” he said, “under the sink.” She trotted from the room.
    “You’re shocky, so I’m giving you fluids. Then I’m going to stop your bleeding, patch what I can, and give you antibiotics and some pain meds. Sound good?”
    “Can I have the pain meds first?”
    “We’ll get there,” I said. “Now, this’ll sting.” I popped the cover off the catheter, pressed it against Teddy’s inner arm below the elbow, pulled the skin, and slid the needle into the vein.
    “Fuck!” he yelled. “That fucking
hurt.
”
    “I bet,” I said, and taped the tubing to Teddy’s arm. Astrid returned with a fistful of white garbage bags. “Give me the bags,” I said. I pointed at a brass floor lamp. “And bring that closer.”
    Astrid wrestled it to the sectional, and I hung the Ringer’s lactate bag from it. Then I checked Teddy’s pulse at his neck, his wrists, and his ankles.
    “You’re running fast.”
    “Is that bad?” Teddy asked.
    I shrugged. “It’s about par, all things considered. But your pulse is strong at your extremities, and that’s good.”
    “My ass hurts something fierce,” Teddy whined.
    I held up a syringe. “Got your ride waiting,” I said, and I injected morphine sulfate into the IV port.
    “How am I really?” Teddy said, a trace of sleepiness already in his voice. “Am I okay?”
    “If your wallet was back there, it’s KIA,” I said. “Otherwise, you’re not too bad.” I looked at Astrid. “How about some music.”
    She looked confused. “What?”
    “Music,” I said, and pointed at a bookshelf, and an iPod mounted on little speakers there. “Something with a beat.”
    Astrid hesitated for a moment, and went to the shelf. In another moment Raphael Saadiq came on. “Heart Attack.” I smiled. “Turn it up.”
    Line cooks must know the feeling—slicing, stirring, firing—assembling dish after dish from menus as familiar as nursery rhymes. Magicians must know it too, working one feint, one precise trick, after another—show after show, anticipating the gasps from the audience, and every round of applause. Certainly I’d known something like it back in college, when my soccer coaches had run us through endless three-man passing drills—against two, three, four, five defenders—moving in shifting triangles up and down the field. It was as much about muscle memory as about conscious thought—maybe more so. And that’s how it was as I worked on Teddy.
    So on went the surgical mask, out came the bandage shears,