~~
Jack sat in his over-comfy chair at the large, round dining table with its pristine white tablecloth, unable to resist keeping the look of pure boredom from spreading over his face any longer. His elbow was perched on the table, and this was the only thing that was keeping his head upright. His eyelids were fighting a losing battle to keep from closing. The man standing upon the vast stage at the front of the hall was making his speech, the third doctor to do so that evening. He had a voice that droned on and on, and to Jack the words and sentences merged together and formed one long tedious mumble.
"Why did I agree to this?"
The dark-haired doctor passed the time by trying to remember exactly how Mark had got him to go to the dinner, so that he could remember to say the next time such an event came up. Still, the prospect of the next two days off was looking good at that moment.
Jack's head almost slipped off his hand as he was startled by the audience suddenly launching applause for the droning speaker. Jack joined in, having no idea why he was clapping, hoping that those seated at his table (particularly the cute redhead) had not noticed that he'd almost nodded off to sleep.
Another man walked onto the stage, and Jack decided that he could spend five minutes being attentive before he next drifted back to his daydreaming. Besides, this guy HAD to be better than Doctor Drone who had been talking before.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce myself as Doctor Anthony Holmes, Head of the Paediatrics Department at Oakes Valley Hospital, in San Francisco. I'd like to begin by saying to all your Californian doctors that the work we do in the Children's Centre at Oakes Valley could never be done to the high standard we are currently achieving without the help of..."
Jack looked up to the ceiling and began to count the light fixtures.
~~
Another rippling applause signalled that the speeches were finally over, and Jack clapped loudly in celebration of this. He looked at his watch and grinned. He knew exactly what the next part of the evening was.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet cart is now open for business. Now, if you please, we'll let one table at a time go up. We'll start with Table A."
Wonderful, we're Table G, Jack thought to himself. People began to get up and mill around, mingling with each other, but Jack remained seated. He was inspecting the bunch of flowers that had been placed in the centre of the table when out of the corner of his eye he saw someone sit next to him. He looked over and saw the redhead.
"Good evening," he said, flashing a winning grin and extending his hand to her, but she neither smiled nor shook it.
"Oh, now you remember your manners," the woman began, her anger as red as her hair. "You spent the last hour and a half looking like you were watching paint dry. Couldn't you have looked the least bit alert and attentive?"
Jack had gone right off the redhead. "Hey, what's your problem?"
"Those people who went up there and made their speeches spent a lot of time and work preparing them, and you have the nerve to sit there and snore right through them all."
I must have fallen asleep, Jack thought to himself. "If those guys had have made their speeches more interesting, actually worth listening to, then I wouldn't have been so bored!"
"One of those speakers is my husband," the woman growled through her teeth, and Jack found himself thinking how cute she looked when she got angry. "The third one, Doctor Burton."
Jack thought for a moment before saying, "Oh, yeah, the Dro... the doctor of neurosurgery."
"So you paid attention for that much," the woman said, looking ever so slightly surprised. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find my husband, a kind, considerate man." With that, she flounced off, leaving Jack with what he thought would be the highlight of his evening.
"Table B to the buffet cart, please" the man with the PA called out, and both Jack and his stomach groaned simultaneously. At least, he thought, it gave him a long time to try and locate the Men's Room, a place he'd been dying to find since the speeches had started.
He walked out into the cool, airy corridor that had colourful carpet so thick laid in it that Jack felt like he was walking on a trampoline. He looked for the sign to the bathroom, and started his journey deep into the rabbit warren of a hotel.
After a while of following the golden signs with the elaborate font reading "Restrooms" written on them, Jack knew he was decidedly lost. He turned another corner in the seemingly never-ending maze when he swore he heard a gunshot. He stopped sharp, and another bang told him he'd not imagined it. Running to what he thought to be the source of the noise, he found two red doors marked "Stage Doors: Function Room A." He momentarily cursed at the fact he'd been wandering around in circles for the past ten minutes before pushing on the metal bars to let himself in.
Jack peered into the semi-darkness and saw a silhouette of a man crouching over a body. His instincts as a doctor took over immediately and he moved towards them. "Here, I'm a doctor," he said hurriedly.
He saw the glint of the gun too late. He'd not taken three steps when he felt the bullet rip through his insides. Jack stumbled back and landed with a crash in a corner containing a few piles of stacked chairs, a nauseating crack telling him that his head had made contact with one of them. As the chairs fell around him, he felt numb, and then nothing.
~~
~~
It was one of those quiet evenings in the hospital that Friday. There had been the case of one teenage girl that had come in requiring her stomach being pumped after what her tipsy boyfriend described as a "wicked" party. Apart from that, the evening up to that point had been uneventful. It wasn't going to stay that way.
Mark had returned to his office after pumping the girl's stomach to tidy up before he left for home, and to clear a space to put the new fan in, when one of the nurses poked her head around the door. "Doctor Sloan, you're needed in ER," she said hurriedly, sounding like she'd sprinted up three flights of stairs. "There's been a shooting, apparently at that charity thing. Three ambulances on the way," she finished, making very little sense but giving enough information for Mark to know that it was both serious and urgent.
And then it hit Mark like a punch in the stomach. Jack was at that charity thing, the charity ball. Mark silently prayed that Jack would ride in an ambulance only as a doctor, and as no one or nothing else. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and hurried with the sea of other staff as they flowed towards the ER.
The first of the gurneys was already rolling into the hospital when Mark arrived. A woman had been shot in the lower back, and Mark ordered that she be operated on immediately in order to prevent permanent paralysis. All through the prognosis Mark tried to conjure up images of the scenario in his mind. What was the gunman like? What kind of weapon did he have, and was he carrying any spares? Three ambulances meant at least five casualties, so it was possible that he had reloaded his gun at some point.
Doctor Amanda Bentley, pathologist at Community General, had arrived in the ER, she too having been informed of the emergency, and instructed the stretcher-bearers that the man with the black tag should be sent immediately to her pathology lab. She had no idea what the emergency was, except that it was a shooting of some sort, else she would have shared the same worry as Mark, who when she looked at him seemed to have aged five years since she had last seen him five hours ago.
Amanda turned around and prepared herself to analyse the injuries of the next patient. The gurney rolled in, and she gasped when she saw who was on it. "Jack!"
Mark heard the cry and feared the worst. He finished examining the patient who was grazed by the gun, and gave them a yellow tag before moving swiftly to Jack's gurney.
"Gunshot wound, upper pectoral, no exit wound, heavy bleeding," the young EMT rattled off, holding the drip with one hand as he rolled the gurney with the other. "Also, abrasion and contusion to cranium, probably concussion."
"Red tag, get him to OR stat," Mark said, barking the orders. It wasn't the worst of the cases, but if the bleeding wasn't stopped and the bullet removed, it could be fatal, something that Mark did not even want to think about at that stage.
Mark walked alongside Jack's gurney, the checked squares of the floor rushing by below him. Jack fumbled with his oxygen mask and murmuring in pain said, "A guy... shot... stage..."
"Take it easy, Jack," Mark said, replacing the mask and watching as Jack drifted back into unconsciousness. Mark already had a rough idea of how it was that Jack came to be shot. He imagined that he'd seen someone lying unconscious, bleeding possibly, and Jack went to help the person, not realising that the shooter was still in the vicinity. The young doctor was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Jack should never have been there. It should have been me," Mark murmured so that only he could hear what he had said.
"Doctor Sloan," a nurse said to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Dr Marcus will be performing surgery, will you be assisting him?"
"Yes, I will be assisting," Mark said firmly. This was the best solution - Mark wanted to be in the operating theatre with Jack, but perhaps being in the driving seat in the operation was not the best idea. He followed the nurse and began to scrub up.
~~
Jack sat in his over-comfy chair at the large, round dining table with its pristine white tablecloth, unable to resist keeping the look of pure boredom from spreading over his face any longer. His elbow was perched on the table, and this was the only thing that was keeping his head upright. His eyelids were fighting a losing battle to keep from closing. The man standing upon the vast stage at the front of the hall was making his speech, the third doctor to do so that evening. He had a voice that droned on and on, and to Jack the words and sentences merged together and formed one long tedious mumble.
"Why did I agree to this?"
The dark-haired doctor passed the time by trying to remember exactly how Mark had got him to go to the dinner, so that he could remember to say the next time such an event came up. Still, the prospect of the next two days off was looking good at that moment.
Jack's head almost slipped off his hand as he was startled by the audience suddenly launching applause for the droning speaker. Jack joined in, having no idea why he was clapping, hoping that those seated at his table (particularly the cute redhead) had not noticed that he'd almost nodded off to sleep.
Another man walked onto the stage, and Jack decided that he could spend five minutes being attentive before he next drifted back to his daydreaming. Besides, this guy HAD to be better than Doctor Drone who had been talking before.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce myself as Doctor Anthony Holmes, Head of the Paediatrics Department at Oakes Valley Hospital, in San Francisco. I'd like to begin by saying to all your Californian doctors that the work we do in the Children's Centre at Oakes Valley could never be done to the high standard we are currently achieving without the help of..."
Jack looked up to the ceiling and began to count the light fixtures.
~~
Another rippling applause signalled that the speeches were finally over, and Jack clapped loudly in celebration of this. He looked at his watch and grinned. He knew exactly what the next part of the evening was.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet cart is now open for business. Now, if you please, we'll let one table at a time go up. We'll start with Table A."
Wonderful, we're Table G, Jack thought to himself. People began to get up and mill around, mingling with each other, but Jack remained seated. He was inspecting the bunch of flowers that had been placed in the centre of the table when out of the corner of his eye he saw someone sit next to him. He looked over and saw the redhead.
"Good evening," he said, flashing a winning grin and extending his hand to her, but she neither smiled nor shook it.
"Oh, now you remember your manners," the woman began, her anger as red as her hair. "You spent the last hour and a half looking like you were watching paint dry. Couldn't you have looked the least bit alert and attentive?"
Jack had gone right off the redhead. "Hey, what's your problem?"
"Those people who went up there and made their speeches spent a lot of time and work preparing them, and you have the nerve to sit there and snore right through them all."
I must have fallen asleep, Jack thought to himself. "If those guys had have made their speeches more interesting, actually worth listening to, then I wouldn't have been so bored!"
"One of those speakers is my husband," the woman growled through her teeth, and Jack found himself thinking how cute she looked when she got angry. "The third one, Doctor Burton."
Jack thought for a moment before saying, "Oh, yeah, the Dro... the doctor of neurosurgery."
"So you paid attention for that much," the woman said, looking ever so slightly surprised. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find my husband, a kind, considerate man." With that, she flounced off, leaving Jack with what he thought would be the highlight of his evening.
"Table B to the buffet cart, please" the man with the PA called out, and both Jack and his stomach groaned simultaneously. At least, he thought, it gave him a long time to try and locate the Men's Room, a place he'd been dying to find since the speeches had started.
He walked out into the cool, airy corridor that had colourful carpet so thick laid in it that Jack felt like he was walking on a trampoline. He looked for the sign to the bathroom, and started his journey deep into the rabbit warren of a hotel.
After a while of following the golden signs with the elaborate font reading "Restrooms" written on them, Jack knew he was decidedly lost. He turned another corner in the seemingly never-ending maze when he swore he heard a gunshot. He stopped sharp, and another bang told him he'd not imagined it. Running to what he thought to be the source of the noise, he found two red doors marked "Stage Doors: Function Room A." He momentarily cursed at the fact he'd been wandering around in circles for the past ten minutes before pushing on the metal bars to let himself in.
Jack peered into the semi-darkness and saw a silhouette of a man crouching over a body. His instincts as a doctor took over immediately and he moved towards them. "Here, I'm a doctor," he said hurriedly.
He saw the glint of the gun too late. He'd not taken three steps when he felt the bullet rip through his insides. Jack stumbled back and landed with a crash in a corner containing a few piles of stacked chairs, a nauseating crack telling him that his head had made contact with one of them. As the chairs fell around him, he felt numb, and then nothing.
~~
~~
It was one of those quiet evenings in the hospital that Friday. There had been the case of one teenage girl that had come in requiring her stomach being pumped after what her tipsy boyfriend described as a "wicked" party. Apart from that, the evening up to that point had been uneventful. It wasn't going to stay that way.
Mark had returned to his office after pumping the girl's stomach to tidy up before he left for home, and to clear a space to put the new fan in, when one of the nurses poked her head around the door. "Doctor Sloan, you're needed in ER," she said hurriedly, sounding like she'd sprinted up three flights of stairs. "There's been a shooting, apparently at that charity thing. Three ambulances on the way," she finished, making very little sense but giving enough information for Mark to know that it was both serious and urgent.
And then it hit Mark like a punch in the stomach. Jack was at that charity thing, the charity ball. Mark silently prayed that Jack would ride in an ambulance only as a doctor, and as no one or nothing else. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and hurried with the sea of other staff as they flowed towards the ER.
The first of the gurneys was already rolling into the hospital when Mark arrived. A woman had been shot in the lower back, and Mark ordered that she be operated on immediately in order to prevent permanent paralysis. All through the prognosis Mark tried to conjure up images of the scenario in his mind. What was the gunman like? What kind of weapon did he have, and was he carrying any spares? Three ambulances meant at least five casualties, so it was possible that he had reloaded his gun at some point.
Doctor Amanda Bentley, pathologist at Community General, had arrived in the ER, she too having been informed of the emergency, and instructed the stretcher-bearers that the man with the black tag should be sent immediately to her pathology lab. She had no idea what the emergency was, except that it was a shooting of some sort, else she would have shared the same worry as Mark, who when she looked at him seemed to have aged five years since she had last seen him five hours ago.
Amanda turned around and prepared herself to analyse the injuries of the next patient. The gurney rolled in, and she gasped when she saw who was on it. "Jack!"
Mark heard the cry and feared the worst. He finished examining the patient who was grazed by the gun, and gave them a yellow tag before moving swiftly to Jack's gurney.
"Gunshot wound, upper pectoral, no exit wound, heavy bleeding," the young EMT rattled off, holding the drip with one hand as he rolled the gurney with the other. "Also, abrasion and contusion to cranium, probably concussion."
"Red tag, get him to OR stat," Mark said, barking the orders. It wasn't the worst of the cases, but if the bleeding wasn't stopped and the bullet removed, it could be fatal, something that Mark did not even want to think about at that stage.
Mark walked alongside Jack's gurney, the checked squares of the floor rushing by below him. Jack fumbled with his oxygen mask and murmuring in pain said, "A guy... shot... stage..."
"Take it easy, Jack," Mark said, replacing the mask and watching as Jack drifted back into unconsciousness. Mark already had a rough idea of how it was that Jack came to be shot. He imagined that he'd seen someone lying unconscious, bleeding possibly, and Jack went to help the person, not realising that the shooter was still in the vicinity. The young doctor was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Jack should never have been there. It should have been me," Mark murmured so that only he could hear what he had said.
"Doctor Sloan," a nurse said to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Dr Marcus will be performing surgery, will you be assisting him?"
"Yes, I will be assisting," Mark said firmly. This was the best solution - Mark wanted to be in the operating theatre with Jack, but perhaps being in the driving seat in the operation was not the best idea. He followed the nurse and began to scrub up.
~~