In The Air Tonight, Part 7
- - -
The arrival at the hospital was like a blur to Michael Vaughn. As the ambulance screeched to a stop, the doors burst open and a flurry of doctors and nurses swarmed the back, their talking jumbling together in Michael's ears until all of it was incomprehensible. All he knew was that they were whisking Sydney inside in one hell of a hurry…and not him.
Raising a bandaged hand at the retreating entourage as if that would stop them, he cried, out, "No, wait!" He started to get up off the gurney with the intent of chasing after them, but he was pushed back down to the mattress by the medics that were working on him.
"No, Michael," said the one who had spoken to him earlier. "You need to stay here; we're still applying bandages and pulling out glass slivers from your legs." The other medic added, "Yeah, geez…It looks like you went swimming in glass, here. What the heck did you do, anyway?" he asked as he picked out another sliver with a pair of tweezers.
Vaughn ignored him, instead keeping his attention on the first medic. "But… Sydney --"
"-- is being rushed into surgery, so you couldn't be with her anyway," the man finished. "But, I promise you that as soon as we've got you cleaned up and set up inside, I'll go find out her status, okay?"
After a long moment, Vaughn nodded once, and lay uneasily back onto the gurney.
- - -
Fifteen minutes passed before the EMTs believed they had removed all of the slivers of glass from Michael Vaughn's hands, knees, and legs. They strapped him onto the gurney and lowered it out of the ambulance and wheeled it into the emergency room of the hospital.
Immediately a physician approached them. "Is this the third one?" the doctor asked.
"Yes," replied the medic that had promised to check on Sydney's condition for him. "Other than a 2 inch gash in his right thigh, and a slash across his left palm, his wounds are mostly superficial."
The physician nodded. Briskly he motioned toward the left. "Bring him into Room 3… I'll have the nurse come in and get his insurance info, and then we can get down to business." They wheeled him into the examination room and carefully hoisted Vaughn from the gurney to the exam table, setting him down gently, with the ease of having done this task thousands of times before.
"The nurse will be in in a moment. I'll try to find out what is going on with your friends… but it might take a while," said the medic who'd promised to help Vaughn.
"Thank you, Mr.…" Vaughn squinted to read the man's name badge and nearly choked. "Rambaldi!?" Vaughn shivered involuntarily, breaking out into a cold sweat.
The man instantly broke into a toothy grin. "Yeah, that's right; Rambaldi… Jake Rambaldi." He laughed at what he thought was a comical expression on Vaughn's face. "Why? Do you know someone else with that name?"
Vaughn swallowed the lump in his throat and, trying to force himself to breathe, rasped, "Yeah."
Jake strolled back toward the bed and leaned on the counter facing across from Vaughn. "Huh. Really? I've never met any other ones…I mean, besides my family. Despite it being Italian, I've discovered it's not a very common name. What's the name of the guy you know?"
"Milo," Vaughn answered, still shaken. "Milo Rambaldi. But I don't know him; he lived 500 years ago. I…uh, I've been studying his work. For a graduate dissertation I'm writing. In philosophy."
Jake looked up and repeated, "Milo…." as if trying to place the name. After a moment he replied, "Oh, wait… Is he that crazy guy that worked for the pope?"
Vaughn nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
"Yeah….I think…Yeah, my great grandma used to tell us stories about him when we were kids… She was really old…" Jake laughed, not noticing Vaughn turn slightly pale. "Or maybe she wasn't that old. But at least she seemed that way to an 8 year old, you know? My sisters and I, we'd go visit her sometimes and she'd always tell us about him. We ate it up. It was like listening to ghost stories around the fire at camp, but better because it was about someone you're related to…"
Vaughn's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. "You…you're related to Milo Rambaldi!?"
Jake shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly. "Yeah, I guess so. He's like a great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather or something like that….maybe there's more 'greats' in there…How many would you need for 500 years?" Jake shrugged it off as if the answer really didn't matter to him. "Anyway, at least according to my great grandma, he was. Don't normally go around bragging about it though, seeing that most people have no clue who he is, and the ones that do think he was a complete nutcase."
Vaughn's heart pounded in his ears. Something felt truly…spooky…about this coincidence. "Uh, Jake…do you…? Would you mind if I called you sometime? I mean, I'd like to hear some of these stories your great grandmother told you…It would be fascinating to write about Rambaldi from the, um, family's point of view."
"Sure," Jake agreed easily, pushing away from the counter he'd been leaning on and reaching into his back pocket. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card. Turning it over, he wrote a number on the back before extending it to Vaughn. As Vaughn started to reach out for it, Jake pulled it back. "Oh, hey, let me put it in your jacket pocket…" he pointed toward Vaughn's hands. "You might bleed on it." He pulled out the lapel of Vaughn's jacket and placed it inside the interior pocket. "There. Hey, let me go check on your friends… I'll get back to you as soon as I can, all right?"
Vaughn nodded, and then watched as Jake crossed the room, pulled open the door and exited. As soon as the door had thumped shut, Vaughn reached into his coat pocket and retrieved the card. Under the logo for Simmons Ambulance Service it read: Jacob Rambaldi, Emergency Medical Technician. Turning the card over, Jake had indeed written a telephone number on it…one that sent another shiver of foreboding up Michael Vaughn's spine. The bold handwriting read: Jake ~ 632-4747.