Between You and Me

“Get away from me. These are bad people.”

“We want to help you,” Reese said. “Do you understand English?”

“No. No English.”

“Please, may I ask you some questions?”

“My secrets are mine to keep.”

“Sometimes it is best to share a secret. Is this your first baby?”

“Yes.” The woman unfurled a little, dropping her arms from her drawn-up knees.

“What is your name, ma’am?”

“My name is Lena Garza.”

“How old are you, Lena?”

She hesitated. “Nineteen.”

“Ask her what she took,” someone said. “We heard her say she’s intoxicated.”

Reese studied the drawn, olive-toned face. The girl looked older than nineteen, her deep brown eyes haunted and scared.

“You were wandering around in traffic,” Reese said, rapidly translating for one of the EMTs. “Why were you doing that? Did you take something?” She had been taught to practice empathy—direct eye contact, a physical touch—and at first, reaching out to a stranger in this way had felt strange to her. Now that she’d been at it for a while, the gestures felt natural. It was gratifying to see the woman relax slightly, taking a deep breath before she spoke.

Lena Garza twisted the band of silver she wore on her forefinger. “Estoy intoxicada.”

“Ask her what—”

“Wait,” Reese said. “Intoxicada just means that she ingested something. Could be food, a drug, anything that makes a person sick.” She turned to Lena. “Can you tell me what you took?”

“My mother told me I will burn in hell,” she whispered. “I am not married. That is why I took the herbs.”

Reese’s heart skipped a beat. “She took something,” she told Mel in English. “What did you take, Lena?”

The girl reached into the pocket of her faded dress and drew out a crinkly cellophane bag. “She said this would cause my period to start.”

Reese grabbed the bag and showed it to Mel. “Angelica. Said to have abortifacient properties.”

Mel sniffed the yellowish-brown herb. “Also called dong quai. When did she take it? Was it within the last four hours? How much did she take?”

Reese asked the patient.

“I don’t remember. I will burn in hell,” she moaned.

“Only if you die,” Reese said in Spanish. “And we are not going to let that happen, not today.”

Mel said, “We’re going to need a gastric lavage, stat.”

While the techs prepared the lavage tray and measured activated charcoal into a beaker, Reese coaxed a bit more information from the patient—When did she have her last period? Had she seen a doctor? Where did she live?

Reese reported the answers, then convinced the woman to lie back and be connected to monitors. “I’m going to have a listen to your baby, all right?” She gently lifted the dress and slid the gel-slicked Doppler wand over Lena’s flat belly, trying to detect heart sounds.

“Ay!” the patient yelled. “That is cold. You torture me.”

“I’m sorry,” Reese said. “We need you to be still and be quiet. We’re trying to hear your baby’s heart sounds … There it is,” she said as the Doppler emitted a rhythmic wow-wow-wow. “That’s the sound of your baby’s heart.”

Lena went limp on the table and laid her forearm over her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I hear it. I can hear it. My mother says it’s a sin to have a baby before I’m married.”

Reese let the moment stretch out a few seconds longer. Then she said, “Mothers aren’t always right about everything.” She offered a brief conspiratorial smile. “Mine thinks she is, though. Let us take care of you, and when you’re feeling better, someone will talk to you about your options.”

She explained the lavage process and convinced the girl to cooperate by swallowing the gastric tube. The girl gagged and fought, but Reese kept up a soothing patter, the way Juanita used to when Reese was small and scared of the dark.

A short time later, Lena’s eyes were closed, and her hands lay slack on the sheeting. Mel gestured, and Reese followed him out to the corridor. “You did a good job in there,” he said. “She’ll be ready to turf out before you know it.”

Reese thought about the disturbed young woman, her frightened eyes and the strange, deep knowing that lived in her like an old, old soul. “Before you turf her, let’s get someone to talk to her about her choices. I’ll be the interpreter.”

“That’s a great idea,” Mel said. “I’ll call social services and OB/GYN.”

Moments like this gave Reese a feeling of satisfaction. An overachieving fourth-year at the end of a long rat race, she was full of plans, but full of questions, too. Her parents had their own plan for her—acceptance into an elite residency program, a path to join their carefully built practice. But sometimes, the wall of her armor cracked open to reveal a glimpse of something else—another dream, maybe. A different dream, not her parents’ goals.

At the end of the hallway, the double doors burst open and Jack Tillis, the chief of trauma, swept through. His lab coat wafted open like a set of wings. He was surrounded by his team of devoted acolytes—the residents, nurses, support staff, and technicians who made up the trauma team.

“What’ve you got?” Mel asked, perking up.

“Just had a red phone pre-alert. Major trauma, coming in by life flight,” another resident said. “ETA twenty minutes.”

Reese exchanged a glance with Mel. She felt a twist of anticipation in her gut. “Can I help?”

The resident nodded. “You don’t want to miss this one. Some kid had his arm ripped off in a farming accident.”

The helicopter descended from the sky like a huge metallic insect, its giant rotors beating the cornstalks flat against the dusty field. Kneeling on ground soaked by his nephew’s blood, Caleb instinctively leaned forward over the boy’s body, which lay on the rescue workers’ shiny yellow board. The shadows of his neighbors and the rescue workers fell over him, blocking out the morning sun. Above the violent rhythm of the chopper blades, he could hear crackling radios and shouts, but all his attention stayed focused on Jonah.

Only a short time earlier, Jonah had been racing across the field to help fill silo, something he had done dozens of times before. Now he lay broken and bleeding, his left arm and his boyish face slashed by the vicious metal teeth of the shredder. And despite the injuries, Jonah was sweetly, horrifyingly conscious.

White-faced, blue-lipped, his eyes dull with shock as his life drained away, the boy tried to speak through chattering teeth. “Cold,” he kept saying. “I’m ssso … cold.”

“I’m here, little man,” Caleb said, his voice a rasp of panic. “I’ll keep you warm.”

The rescue workers had immobilized the arm with an air bladder and enclosed his neck in a stiff collar. They covered him with every blanket they had, but it wasn’t enough to keep Jonah from shivering like a leaf in the wind. Then they prepared to load the stretcher into the helicopter.

“You cannot take him in that … that thing.” Caleb’s father stepped forward, thumping his hickory cane on the ground. “I won’t allow it.”

From the moment the county rescue crew had declared that Jonah’s only hope of survival was to be airlifted to a trauma center in Philadelphia, there had been a division in the community. Dr. Mose Shrock, who supervised the emergency services of the local hospital, had been contacted by phone. He’d confirmed the rescuers’ plan, and Caleb had approved the transport without hesitation.

Now his face felt carved in stone as he glared at his father. “They’re taking him,” he said simply. “I’ ll allow it.”