One evening in March, when all the holiday decorations had long been put away, when the snow had lost its novelty, and winter seemed to stretch bleakly into interminability, the Grangers were eating dinner together. They always ate dinner together, sitting around the kitchen table, watching the news. They watched the five o'clock local news while one of the Dr.s Granger cooked and Hermione set the table. They watched the world news at five thirty, sometimes arguing with the anchor between bites of potatoes or passing the pepper, discussing events during commercials. They watched the six o'clock local news while Hermione put the dishes in the dishwasher and the Dr.s Granger relaxed.
Once, Hermione read an article that claimed the demise of the family meal (worse, families that ate meals together but paid attention to the television) was the cause for the decline in morals and family values in the country. She indignantly wondered how she was supposed to watch the news otherwise, since her bedtime was before ten o'clock.
This evening in March, Hermione neatly cut her pork tenderloin while her parents discussed the recent IRA murders and wondered whether it would be worth investing in a computer for their dental practice. When the commercials ended, they turned their attention back to the melodic voice of the anchorman. "Today in sports, a freak accident nearly resulted in tragedy."A brief view of a map of the United States panned into New York before showing a clip of a ice hockey players skating in toward the goal.
"During a scramble in front of the net, Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk caught a skate in the throat..." Players tangled near the net and crashed past the goalie, colliding with the boards.
"...severing his carotid artery."Blood pooled on the ice. On his knees, the goalie threw off his helmet, trying to hold his throat with one hand. A jet of blood was shooting through his fingers onto the ice. The shot, so close before, zoomed out.
"Sabres' trainer, former Army medic and Vietnam veteran Jim Pizzutelli rushed across the ice, and saved Malarchuk's life by physically holding the artery shut."A plain clothesed man slid across the ice, putting his hand inside the goalie's throat. Hermione's ears buzzed. Then together, the men stood and walked off the rink.
"Hours of surgury and more than 300 stitches later, Malarchuk is expected to make a full recovery." The anchorman was replaced with a paramedic, whose broad American accent was nearly unintelligible, saying, "Oh he's incredibly lucky, definitely. But in the ambulance he kept asking if we'd be able to get him back on the ice by the third period." The paramedic laughed and shook his head. The camera then cut back to the anchorman, who blythely launched into the next story.
Hermione's ears were still ringing.
"Mm, remember Johnny Alworth's extraction?" Hermione's mother asked the other Dr. Granger, who grunted, "Had the hardest time of my life stopping that bleeding. Of course I remember."
Hermione asked through cold lips, "So that trainer literally...stuck his hands in that goalie's throat?"
Her mother nodded, forking a bite of green beans into her mouth. "Usually, pressure is enough to stop the bleeding, other times it's appropriate to use a tourniquet. But in this case, you saw how the blood was just spurting out of his hands—he would have bled out first—and there's no where to tourniquet a neck. The femoral artery, down on the inside of the thigh, is another such place. That trainer pinched the artery together. How long would he have had, John...two minutes?"
"I'd say less than a minute."
"Ha-ave you encountered this before, Mum?"
"Nothing of that scale personally, but it's just one more thing they teach you how to handle in med school."
"That Johnny Alworth was bad enough."
Nine year old Hermione Granger shook her light head and wished she'd one day be as calm and collected as her mother. Just then, the memory of goalie's blood spraying onto the ice made her head spin. Hermione put her fork down. Well. One way to face your fears is to confront them. "Mum, do you still have your med school textbooks?"