Chapter Two
"Carol!" Mark shouted into the phone. "CAROL!" It was useless. He was not going to get another word out of the nurse. He placed the phone down and just started running to County. He had to get there as quickly as he possibly could. His heart was pounding, but he ignored it. He would not stop running until he was back at work.
He had to stop. He was out of breath. There was no way he could make it all the way back there without passing out. He needed a taxi or something. He scanned the streets, but he could not find any. He started walking. It would not be as fast as running, but it would hopefully get him there eventually.
"Hey," came a female's voice from a car. Mark turned his head slightly and noticed that the car was pulling over towards the road. "Do you need a ride?" the mystery woman asked.
Mark stood there half in shock as he wondered if he could trust this woman. He had never met her before, but that really did not matter to him. All that mattered was that he get across town to County. "Yes, County General Hospital, please," he said as he crawled into the backseat.
"Not a problem," the woman stated as she floored the accelerator and started speeding down the road.
Mark watched as the familiar sights passed by him. He had never noticed them carefully before, and he did not notice them now. All he cared about was Susan. It had to be her train, he figured. Otherwise Carol would not have been so secretive about the information. On the other hand, he had no way to be certain of that. Unless…
"Would you mind if I turned on the news?" Mark asked the driver.
She shook her head. "Not at all," she responded as she made a quick left. She turned to face Mark briefly. "Is this about the train crash?" she asked.
"Hopefully not," Mark responded as he turned her car radio on and dialed it to the news station.
"The train left Union Station at four…"
"Damn it!" Mark yelled as he turned the radio off. "Pardon my language, but damn it!" he said again. Tears of sadness and anger filled in his eyes. Whatever was going on at County was not good, and he had a feeling that he did not want to be there at all.
"Why?" he wondered aloud. "Why that train? Why Susan's train? I loved her, and I wanted her to stay in Chicago, but not in the sense that she would be a corpse," he muttered angrily. "It's not fair."
He had to force himself not to cry. He could not know what exactly was going on at County until he arrived there. Carol could just have been saying those things to get him there because they were swamped. If that was the case, he would hurt her later, but he did not know.
"Here you are," the woman said as she pulled into the ambulance bay. "And good luck with your girlfriend," she added.
Mark did not even bother to tell her Susan was not his girlfriend. What did it matter to that woman anyway? Mark was never going to see her in his life anyway. Instead he rushed into the hospital. "What's going on? Where's Carol? Where's Kerry? Where's Doug?" he demanded.
"Trauma One," Jerry answered. "Trauma One, and Trauma Two," he added. "You're needed in One if you can handle it."
"Handle it?" Mark asked. "What do you mean handle it? What's there to handle?"
Lydia walked past him tragically as she motioned for him to follow her back to the trauma room. "Mark, it's Dr. Lewis," she said softly.