Chapter Twenty one
John came from the darkness into a faint light that seemed to be getting brighter. Not like a man coming into a lighted room, but rather like a diver returning from a great depth to the burgeoning light above. He had a slight sensation of movement and as the light brightened, he heard a far off screaming. The pain hit him all at once and seemed almost unbearable. He wondered if the screaming was coming from him and then the darkness returned.
The heart monitor went flat and the emergency medical technician that was by his side yelled, “Were losing him and commenced cardio pulmonary resuscitation. After two minutes, he ripped John’s shirt open and yelled charge. He pressed the paddles to John’s chest, said clear and pushed the button. John’s back arched and the EMT was rewarded with a weak but steady beep from the heart monitor.
The EMT’s had John on two different drips plus oxygen and had given him three units of blood in the short time he had been in their charge. They also had him covered in heat blankets for shock and were streaming his vital statistics to a doctor at the U of M emergency room whom they were in voice contact with. They were two minutes out from the U of M hospital and the EMT by his side knew it was going to be close. He didn’t think this boy was going to survive, but was determined to deliver him alive to the hospital. He had been the EMT in charge for three years, and had never had a patient die en route yet. He had responded to some that were dead on arrival, but had never lost one that was alive when he picked him up and he didn’t want this one to be the first.
The medical team that took over for the EMT’s consisted of three nurses, one RN and two LPN’s, a surgeon, an anesthesiologist and two interns. Twenty-two people ranging from surgeons to medical students watched the operation from the gallery. The large turnout was due in part because U of M was a teaching hospital but more because of the reputation of the operating surgeon. Dr. Frank Blanchard had volunteered for duty in Afghanistan as soon as he finished his internship. After two years in Afghanistan, he practiced at Mercy Hospital in Chicago where gunshot wounds were as common as the “common cold”. When the University of Michigan offered him the Head of Trauma Surgery, he moved to Ann Arbor. Dr. Blanchard had the reputation of being, if not the best, certainly within the top ten trauma surgeons in the country. It was very lucky for John that Dr. Blanchard was on call when he was shot, for it is nearly certain that he would not have survived otherwise. Dr. Blanchard’s team worked on John for six hours before he left the OR leaving the closing to one of the other doctors. He didn’t however, leave the hospital. It was Dr. Blanchard’s habit to never leave the hospital until the patient was out of recovery and safely in post-op.
The following morning, the EMT that had brought John in the night before came into the ER and walked up to the nurse’s station.
“Hi Bob.”
“Hi Sally. I heard my fare made it. Does he have a name?”
“John Doe. I didn’t know he was one of yours?”
“Yep. I was afraid he was going to spoil my record.”
“Word is if he hadn’t had Blanchard, he would have.”
“Lucky for me. I think I’ll just peek in on him and be on my way. Which room?”
He stood in the doorway watching John and his monitors for five minutes. Satisfied that he would live he turned and walked away.
Before John was out of the OR a uniformed police officer had came by and picked up his belongings which were now at the Ann Arbor Police Department’s Crime Lab. The clothing had been cut off John and now consisted of little more than rags, which didn’t matter to the technicians since they were only interested in trace evidence. There wasn’t much evidence other than blood, of which there was plenty. It was all irrelevant though since everything they found was connected to the victim including the blood. They did have three items relevant to the investigation, a library card, a cell phone and a slug from a nine-millimeter. The slug was of special interest since it was later matched to the one from the university’s security guard.
The two detectives assigned to the case stopped by the crime lab and talked to CSI in charge. The one who did most of the talking was Lt. Mark Williams. Detective Williams was the older of the two and had joined the force after college. He had taken his first criminology course as a whim, but it had sparked a real interest. He had never seen a dead person prior to joining the force. Even now nearing the end of his career, he had never been involved in any life threatening violence or fired his gun in the line of duty.
His partner Sgt. Otis Brown, on the other hand had known violence his entire life. Detective Brown grew up in Detroit in an area where the sounds of gunfire and sirens were as normal as the sounds of insects and birds in the suburbs. He had known violence almost from birth, had joined the force immediately after high school and worked his way up through the ranks. He had spent the first ten years as a policeman on the mean streets of Detroit while attending night school. Ironically, Brown was the more gentle and sympathetic of the two.
They spent an hour with the CSI Chief talking about the evidence. When they left, they had a copy of the library card and a list of the names and numbers form the cell phone.
Sarah answered the phone with “Yes?”
“I’m homicide Detective Williams, Ann Arbor Police Department. We have reason to believe your son’s been shot.”