Page 2 of Resuscitation
Chapter Two
He waited until the alarm went off at six, then slammed the button to kill it. This routine of waking before the alarm happened every evening. A habit born years ago in basic training and, later, Ranger School.
The cabin’s window revealed swirling snowfall as howling wind rattled the ancient glass panes. The temperature inside the rough-hewn log cabin had fallen several degrees since he’d gone to bed seven hours ago, but he wouldn’t be here long enough to worry about it.
Another night, another dollar.
The thought was laced with satisfaction rather than contempt.
Truth was, he loved his job as an EMT. It’d allowed him to finally create a stabilizing rhythm, a foundation, as he slowly rebuilt his life, one day at a time.
Or night. He worked the graveyard shift, eight p.m. to eight a.m., because that’s how he liked it.
He didn’t have to see or speak to anyone when he was at the cabin, but he still got some social interaction with his colleagues at work.
Blake reached over, switched on the bedside lamp, and stood. Then he began to make up the bunk quickly and expertly, as if ready for inspection.
Making your bed as soon as you got up somehow fostered that sense of discipline and set a positive structure for the rest of the day. That’s how Blake saw it anyhow, although no doubt younger souls, Gen Z or whoever, would laugh in his face.
He rolled out his exercise mat in the sparse yet immaculate room, in front of the double doors leading out to a small deck which usually held a commanding view of the lights of Eastfork down in the valley below.
However, tonight the snowstorm obscured it.
Sitting cross-legged on the mat, Blake took a deep breath and felt the cool air fill his lungs.
One, two, three, four.
He held the air in for another four seconds, then exhaled slowly before continuing the cycle. The rhythmic box breathing calmed his racing heart, a technique he had learned in therapy to manage his PTSD.
The whistling wind outside the windows ebbed, flowed, and began to echo the Afghanistan sandstorms that were etched permanently into his mind.
His thoughts inevitably drifted to his comrades, his friends, lost to the IED that had ripped through them in a split second.
Despite his best efforts, the familiar surge of anxiety chipped at his heartbeat, and he tutted, growing frustrated at himself.
You’re losing concentration, Blake.
Their faces. He needed to remember their faces because they got further away from him every day, and there was no way he was ever going to forget his brothers.
Never.
Before he realized it, he was on his feet, rummaging through his army-issue trunk.
He found the photo, the only one he had of his squad.
The image was slightly pixilated, printed from a digital phone many years ago.
He rubbed his thumb along the edge and nodded to himself, feeling his heartbeat calm.
Each of their faces told a story and brought back snippets of memory: a joke he had shared or that time he got his ass kicked at cards.
Private Miller.
Blake often replayed that short conversation with the young soldier, turning it over and over in his head. The kid had been mentally struggling with the whole shit-show. Who wasn’t?
Blake himself had been close to the edge, even before the IED. Miller hadn’t wanted to go out that morning, like he knew something bad was destined to happen. But good-ole Sarge that he was, and Blake had bucked him up, pushed him to join the convoy.
He could’ve given the kid a break, let him ride it out just that one patrol. Then Miller would’ve lived.
Blake exhaled.
They weren’t all angels.
A few of his squad members had been hard work to get along with, but that didn’t mean they had to die that way. None of them did. And for what? To just end up tossing the whole country back to the Taliban? That was one big-ass joke he would never forgive the government for.
Get on with it, soldier. Blake shook his head, pushing back against that first tear which would inevitably lead to uncontrolled sobbing, followed by pure rage, and most likely end with kicking the shit out of anything that would break.
Instead, Blake returned the photo, closed the trunk, and sat down on the exercise mat.
This time, he pumped through a more rigorous workout routine: fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups, followed by a set of squats to really get the blood pumping through his veins. As the endorphins kicked in, Blake began to feel a lot better and more positive while his anger faded.
After showering and dressing for work, he headed to the kitchen.
His motions ingrained with repetition, he started his coffee.
While it brewed, he turned his attention to whisking two eggs into one cast iron pan, then butter-basting a small steak in another.
When everything was ready, he plated and ate from a small wooden table at the center of the small kitchen.
There was no TV in the cabin. It had given him migraines, and he’d come to the decision that it was probably the worse invention humanity ever created, with the useless spout of shit it fed into millions of living rooms. Good riddance to it.
When he had finished eating, Blake cleaned all the plates and pans and put them neatly back into place. Then he threw on his jacket, slipped his good luck charm—his grandfather’s old Zippo—into place, grabbed his truck keys, and headed out into the billowing snow.
Windshield wipers at max speed, Blake squinted at the road ahead.
The only other traffic he encountered was a single snowplow before he spotted the familiar darkened four-story building that marked the former Eastfork Medical Center.
He grimaced at the sight. The only lights where the ER used to be now displayed a new sign: MediCorps Minor Care Center.
The old neon emergency sign was as dead as the rest of this godforsaken town.
“Damn bean counters,” Blake muttered.
He pulled his truck into the staff parking lot and hurried inside, through the main doors, glad to be out of the wild elements. Brushing snow from his jacket sleeves, Blake walked past a radiology suite that lay dark and empty.
The Computer Axial Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning machines, once the pride of the hospital, had all long been sold off, leaving only a portable x-ray machine, too old to be worth anything.
Beyond the old radiology department, plastic sheeting covered the corridors leading away from the former ER, now used as the Minor Care Center.
Blake swiped an ID card against a locked door’s keypad and stepped into the patient waiting area, adorned with plastic chairs and corkboards displaying posters such as one with a smiling couple looking down at their sleeping toddler: “Got a cough? Sore throat? Ear ache? We’re here for you!”
Among these hopeful positive messages were ominous warnings: This facility cares for minor ailments only! Anyone experiencing a true emergency will be immediately transferred at your own expense to Potsdam Medical Center.
At the registration desk, an exasperated bearded man with his hand wrapped in a bloody kitchen towel was facing off with Angie, the clerk, who patiently tried to calm him. “I’m sorry, sir. As I said, we can no longer accept your insurance at this center.”
“Why the hell not?” the man replied, struggling to control his anger.
Blake grimaced in sympathy, both for the man, who was just trying to get the healthcare he’d already paid for with his insurance premiums, and Angie, who was forced to relentlessly spiel out the same lines to hopeful patients who simply needed help.
“We are now owned by MediCorps, so you need to talk to your care provider…”
Blake nodded to her as he walked past her desk.
The door to one of the triage rooms was open, and Dr. Sara Porter, her brown shoulder-length hair draped over the shoulders of a white lab coat, was examining a woman’s arm.
Blake couldn’t help his smile—out of Sara’s sight of course.
But this hour, the hour between the start of Blake’s shift and the end of Sara’s when the clinic closed at nine, was the best hour of his day.
A man, who Blake assumed was the woman’s partner, sat alongside, looking stricken. “I told you to wait for me to salt the steps?—”
The woman’s arm was swollen and reddened above the wrist. When Sara gently palpated the area, the woman cried out in pain.
Blake would place money on it being fractured.
From Sara’s frown, she agreed with his drive-by diagnosis.
A few months ago, when this had been a functioning emergency department in a fully staffed medical center, treating a simple broken bone was easy.
For the doctors, the staff, the patients, their families.
Now, thanks to MediCorps, it was like running an obstacle course in a hurricane with live ammo firing at them.
“I’m afraid it does appear to be broken,” Sara told them. “We’ll know for sure after the x-ray, but with the main hospital closed, we have no orthopedic surgeons here anymore. In fact, we have no surgeons at all. We don’t have operating rooms or equipment either.”
“Damnit,” the man muttered. “How’re you gonna fix her, then?”
“Let’s get you some pain medicine and a splint, then we can discuss options once I take a look at the x-ray,” Sara said reassuringly.
“What options? There’s a storm out there, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He gestured toward the entrance doors with their chipper signs.
Blake grabbed an empty wheelchair and brought it into the room, nodding at the couple before giving Sara a pensive smile which she returned.