Chapter 6
Monday morning arrived far too quickly as Edward and Ajna prepared to go to work. Edward would be attending a high-level management meeting to discuss the banks’ quarterly financial statement. He hated going to these meetings as he often had to deal with corporate executives from Beijing and is mandarin was still quite rusty. Edward knew that if he wanted to move up within the company, he would have to speak Mandarin well enough to impress the people of Beijing. But the one thing that was holding him back was time. There just didn’t seem to be enough time for him to learn the language and Ajna didn’t seem interested in learning it. So, even though there were others at the bank who spoke it fluently Edward was largely on his own.
As Edward was nearing the bank, Ajna was arriving at the clinic. Night shift had been busy with three gunshot wounds – all gang-related – and numerous elderly presenting symptoms of various illnesses. The most serious cases were transported to Maine Medical Centers critical care unit while others were treated and released. The worst injuries always seemed to come from the same place – the Portland war zone. The people there lived impoverished lives and violence seemed to be the only thing that gave them a sense of control in a world that had lost its sanity. The war zone was, in fact, such a violent place that some ambulance services refused to go there. Those who did allow their paramedics to carry non-lethal vectored energy weapons. They fired a low amperage charge using a six milliwatt laser as a carrier. It fired in a straight line and many who used it compared it to shooting someone with a bolt of lightning. It created a small red burn, but most people survived the blast.
As Ajna signed into her shift, she was briefed on a trauma patient that was still awaiting transportation. The patient was seventeen and had been shot when gunfire erupted in the war zone the night before. His injury was not life-threatening so he had been placed last for transport during the triage process. But, there was a potentially serious problem. During the gun battle, the young man had shot and killed a rival gang member and retaliation was common among gangs in the war zone. Security had been notified and the police were on their way, but the atmosphere in the clinic remained very tense and everyone expected the worse. It was standard procedure to lock down the building only after the police arrived. Once this was done no one got into or out of the building until the patient was either transported, discharged or taken into custody. Everyone knew the drill and the doctors and nurses had been trained in how to negotiate with those who presented themselves as agitated or potentially violent. In other words, stall them until the police showed up and the only other people in the clinic allowed to carry weapons were the security staff. They were able to carry vectored energy weapons – not lethal, of course, but they got the job done.
Today, the police would arrive a bit too late, as armed gang members walked in through the ambulance entrance. They were looking for the young man who killed one of their own during the gun battle last night and they seemed determined to even the score. The secretary at the front desk rose to her feet.
“Can I help you?” she said.
She’d seen this happen before and tried desperately to suppress the feeling of terror that had suddenly overtaken her. The young man who was apparently their leader approached her rather abruptly.
“Yeah!” he said, rather sternly. “I’m lookin’ for the motherfucker who popped one of my boys last night. I know he’s here ‘cause they brought everybody here.”
“Well,” the secretary responded. “If you gentlemen would like to have a seat in the waiting area…”
“Waiting area!” the young man yelled. What the fuck are you talkin’ about, bitch! We ain’t here to visit!”
He then took out a .45 caliber pistol and aimed it at her head. “Now, I’ll ask you once again. Where is the motherfuckin’ pig that dropped my boy last night?”
The secretary unconsciously glanced down the row of bays then looked back and made eye contact with the armed man. She took a nervous swallow and said, “I think he was transferred to Maine Medical’s critical care unit early this morning.”
The young man knew a line of bullshit when he heard it.
“Don’t lie to me bitch!” he screamed. “I’ll fuckin’ blow your goddamn head off.”
By this time, Ajna, having heard the sounds of screaming ran toward the front doors to investigate and possibly intervene.
“What is going on?” she demanded. “We have sick people here!”
Now she directed her words to the young man wielding the gun.
“And you! Put that thing away before someone gets hurt!”
She always knew this could happen but hoped it never would. She turned to the secretary.
“Call security and get the Portland PD down here.” The young man waving the gun quick became angered.
“You pick up that phone, I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains all over the wall!” he screamed.
“Alright,” Ajna said, now trying to be calm and diplomatic.
“Just relax. What is it you want?” she asked.
“You got someone here I’m lookin’ for,” he said. “Little fuck shot one of my boys last night and now it’s time for some payback!”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Ajna responded. “We transferred everyone out to Maine Medical about an hour ago.”
As the armed man ranted, the secretary sat down and placed her foot on a small red button on the floor and gently pressed it. This connected to police dispatch and alerted hospital security.
“You’re a fuckin’ liar!” he screamed.
He was now pointing the gun at her. “Now, where is he!”
“You can’t just come barging in here with a gun!” Ajna yelled at him. She was trying to maintain her composure, but the fear of being shot was beginning to overwhelm her.
“We have children and elderly here…”
“I don’t care ‘bout no fuckin’ kids,” he yelled. “And those old motherfuckers gonna die anyway! Now, where the fuck is he?!”
He quickly turned back toward the door as the sound of sirens pierced the chilly morning air. Just as quickly, he turned back to Ajna still pointing the gun at her.
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you right now, bitch!”
His tone went from being angry to almost desperate and Ajna knew that the most dangerous person was someone who felt they were out of options and he was becoming more agitated as the sirens grew closer. His eyes became wide with panic and the hand that held the gun began shaking. If he were suddenly startled he would shoot her anyway just out of reflex, so Ajna took a deep breath and mustered enough courage to regain her composure.
“Listen,” she said calmly. “If you’re hurt or you’re sick we can help you. That’s what we’re here for. But you cannot walk in here with a gun.”
Now, she was trying to stall for time as the sirens got even louder. They heard the quickening steps of security personnel making their way towards them while the police pulled up in front of the ambulance entrance. Now, the gang was surrounded – with security on one side, an army of police on the other and Ajna in the middle still staring down the barrel of a gun. The secretary had crawled under her desk and the nurses were very quietly trying to move patients to a more secure part of the building – including the young man they were looking for.
“Look,” Ajna said. “If you just give the gun to one of the security guards I’ll go talk to the police – try to get them to give you a break, o.k.?”
The young man and his cohorts looked back at the police who were aiming assault weapons at them, guided by tactical laser sights. Each gang member now had a small red dot drifting around on their chest. This, of course, made the atmosphere far more tense and unbeknownst to Ajna, everyone in the gang was carrying a gun.
No one knows who fired the first shot – the gang, the police – it didn’t seem to matter anyway. The emergency room exploded with the sounds of gunfire and hissing of energy weapons. The gang had turned toward each direction and fired on both police and security personnel. Ajna acted on instinct and tried to shield one of the nurses – a young woman who’d just recently found out she was pregnant. The police were fast and efficient, but as one officer fell after being shot in the leg his weapon fired away to the right striking the desk where the secretary had been hiding. She was found dead, having been shot in the head. The police used high velocity, hollow point rounds with embedded microcharges. She had been hit only once, but the round has caused her head to explode from the inside. The underside of the desk had become coated with blood and brain matter that quickly congealed into a heavy paste, while her skull shattered leaving boney pieces of shrapnel lodged in the desk’s synthetic underside. The nurse survived, but Ajna had taken the hit. They were close friends and Ajna was always asking her when she was going to start a family. Ajna was elated when she told her about her pregnancy.
Now, in a moment plagued with panic, Ajna threw herself in front of the young woman as time itself seemed to freeze in its icy tracks. She saw everything in one eternal moment – the angry look on the gang leader’s face as he squeezed the trigger; a beam of red light that cut through the smoke-filled emergency room after leaving a police officer’s tactical laser. She would later recall that as the forty-five caliber round entered her right chest, she felt it burn its way through her flesh and fragment one of her right ribs. The round tumbled and buried itself deep with her right lung and as nurses and doctors arrived from elsewhere in the building to examine the wounded, the severity of Ajna’s injury would not be fully assessed until she got to critical care.
She lost consciousness as soon as her body struck the cold, tile floor. When her mind began to drift back into awareness she heard the sound of a siren screaming just over her head. She opened her eyes and was immediately blinded by a paramedic’s penlight and when she tried to move discovered that her body had been strapped to a backboard.
“Doctor!” said an unfamiliar voice. “You’ve been shot! Try not to move!”
She was unable to move her head and quickly realized that a cervical collar had been placed around her neck. It seemed as though only moments had passed that Ajna found herself under the bright lights of Maine Medical’s critical care unit. The last time she’d been there was as a resident and she had forgotten how chaotic critical care was. The trauma team went through the normal routine – airway, breathing, circulation. They called for a set of x-rays. There were no films to develop as radiology had technically evolved into holographic imaging using high-speed processors and real-time 3-D viewing platforms. The x-rays appeared on the viewing platform almost instantly and could be rotated on all three axes with the push of a button. Ajna was asked all the usual questions – her name, what had happened, where she was, the date and how she felt on the pain scale. A chest tube was placed in order to drain off blood and allow her lung to reinflate, while care was given to avoid her shattered rib. As a doctor, Ajna had placed chest tubes in more than a few people and knew it was not a pleasant experience. But, she didn’t realize how painful it really was until she found herself on the receiving end of one. A long-acting painkiller was injected into her intravenous line and she was immediately taken to surgery. The good news was that she would survive. The bad news was that her recovery would be long and painful. This would represent a part of her life that would test her strength, courage, and determination. For Ajna, this would be a life-altering event.