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Post by tully on Oct 24, 2012 23:16:44 GMT -8
[style=text-align:center; font-family:courier; font-size:10px;]ext. hope hospital - late afternoon, april four[/style] [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,bTable][atrb=style, width:420px;][style=text-align:justify; font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px;]A wan California sun lit up Hope's ambulance bay, casting slanted afternoon shadows beside the two parked vehicles. Leaning against the one furthest from the building and the security cameras, Tully palmed a crumpled B&H pack out of his back pocket and tapped out a busted cigarette. It was a slow day: mid-week, the usual emergency ward stocking-fillers of drunks and stupid kids was at a low ebb. The paramedics had brought in a motorcyclist who'd lost a fight with the freeway earlier in the morning, but they were stabilized for now, and the kids in the car that had almost taken them out had been treated for shock and released.
He lit his cigarette with a shitty plastic bic after only six attempts to get the disposable to ignite, and he tossed the empty lighter into the trees across from him. It rustled on the way into the foliage and he took a long drag from his cigarette, breathing out slow blue smoke. He could faintly hear sirens in the distance, coming his way rapidly. He'd done his share of ambulance work in London – and here in his big black Buick, although those were two iterations of the same thing that almost had nothing to do with each other. He leaned his head back against the ambulance and breathed out slow as the sirens got closer. He could smoke fast enough, but even he couldn't get through one in the time it took for a wailing ambulance to come from hearing range to unloading range.
Tully flicked his cigarette to the concrete just as the ambulance came into view and checked his watch. He ground the smoke out under his heel, raising a hand to shield his eyes and watch the vehicle approach. He hadn't been paged to come prep for surgery, so they hadn't radioed in that they would need him. He moved aside as the ambulance backed up into place. The emergency entrance doors swung open to admit a rush of activity. Tully watched the gurney pop out the back of the ambulance, paramedics rushing the patient into the hospital. The heavy doors swung shut behind them.
Tully checked his watch again. Less than a minute of frenzied activity and then the excitement was over. He crossed to the front of the ambulance and rested a hand on the door to speak to the driver. Heart attack, older male. Collapsed in a nearby mall. The Irishman nodded, going for a new cigarette. He offered one to the driver, who shook his head and declined. Tully patted the side of the ambulance as it pulled out to make room, and then he remembered that he had no lighter. He tucked the smoke behind his ear and started walking to the front of the hospital to buy or bum a new one. The sun hit the white and blue of Hope Hospital hard, gleaming on the windows of the emergency ward and intensive care. There would be smokers outside the hospital doors. There always were; how far away just depended on how clear the no smoking signs were. Hospitals weren't good places to be without something to steady your nerves – or your hands. [/style] | [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,bTable][atrb=style, width:50px; background-image:url(http://i.imgur.com/BbZ6i.png);][atrb=vAlign,top] |
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Post by candice on Oct 25, 2012 0:41:39 GMT -8
| [atrb=vAlign,top][atrb=border,0,true] [/style][style=font-family: calibri; font-size: 10px; text-align: justify; width: 85px;]Time Stamp
07/04/2012
Word Count
0453
Tags
#docoChoco #upyr
Comments
First Candice post for the win! Sorry if my lack of sleep has made any lax in my writing.
| [atrb=vAlign,top] Candice watched the ambulance as it made a rapid stop at the emergency doors. Doors flung open, men rushed around, and the entire ordeal passed by in a blur. Candice was both scared and fascinated by the brief ordeal. Anything that happened in quick pass was difficult for her still developing brain to keep up with, but she was also concerned for whoever was in the ambulance and what might have happened to them. Beneath her concern though was a curiosity as to what had happened to the man and what would become of him. Was he attacked? Was he ill? Would he get better? Or would he die?
Candice adjusted the volume on her hearing assisters. Similar to hearing aids, the device amplified the sounds Candice could hear; she owned a hand held amplifier which would work better but she didn’t wave that around in public. With the assisters she could make out some of the conversation about the man. She was able to pick up that he had, had a heart attack and was an older gentleman. After that she turned the devices down as the other noises around had also been made extremely loud and it hurt Candice’s ears.
Candice had learned about heart attacks and knew they had to do with poor health and were common occurrences with the overweight and the elderly. She hoped the man would be okay and starred on at the ambulance.
Candice was at the hospital with her family. Her aunt had just had a baby and Candice’s family was stopping by to see him. Candice was able to slip away by saying she was going to play with toys in the maternity ward waiting room. Candice was timing her excursion, knowing she only had 15ish minutes before someone would be likely to check on her. If she didn’t make it back exactly in time she could always say she ran to the restroom. She might get scolded slightly but nothing severe for needing to pee.
Candice checked her watch again. It had taken less than two minutes to reach the emergency room and she’d been standing outside for another three minutes; so she still had eight minutes to linger before heading back.
Candice watched on as she saw the ambulance leave and the doctor, who had been smoking before, began to smoke again. Candice was confused as to why a doctor would smoke, when he must know that smoking was bad for you. In truth the doctor must have definitively known the many side effects of smoking, but Candice knew little about what they actually did. She knew they were bad for your lungs and made people sick but not much beyond that.
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Post by tully on Oct 25, 2012 17:00:24 GMT -8
[style=text-align:center; font-family:courier; font-size:10px;]ext. hope hospital - late afternoon, april four*[/style] [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,bTable][atrb=style, width:420px;][style=text-align:justify; font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px;]Tully shoved his hands in his pockets, white coat rucking up behind his wrists and started towards the front doors. If he went in through the emergency doors he'd get his light but like as not get dragged back to work with ten minutes of his break still remaining. He wasn't but three steps down the path when he caught bright pink in his peripheral vision. He shaded his glasses against the sun.
Oh, what?
This was no place for a little tyke to be, not with 120km/h+ ambulances roaring past. “Hey, kid,” he crossed over to her, keeping an eye out for vehicles. “You get lost?” His Irish accent had had ten years to Americanize and even the most hard of hearing could understand him just fine. He glanced around the bay and could make out no other adults. Had she wandered away from her parents? Couldn't've been much older than nine or ten, not really any kind of age to be wandering around on her own.
“Going walkabouts?” He asked. Had she wandered over from the hospital or in from the wider city – and shouldn't she have been in school? From his recollection of being about ten, although that was hazy, nothing was a more annoying question from an adult than shouldn't you be in school, so he didn't ask. He paused – were those the tell-tail nodules of hearing aids under her pigtails? His sign language was pretty rudimentary, but he could make himself understood. Haltingly and probably error-fraught, he signed out something close enough for government work to would you like me to use ASL?
Well, as far as he was concerned she could come with him 'round to the front of the building and he could hand her off to hospital security to be united with her parents while he tracked down a light. Authority Figure #3: Doctor, identifiable by white coat and haggard expression – his parents certainly would have earlier had him approach a doctor than a police officer if he got waylaid or lost.
That drove the hypocrisy of assuming she was too young to be out on her own home – he and John had been out by their twosie, good as being out on their own, not any older, scrabbling over neighborhood roofs and racing bikes down by the river. If that wasn't a sign he was getting well and truly Old, he didn't know what was. Still, her parents were probably looking for her, and the nurses on his floor would have his bollocks if they found out he'd let a kid just wander by unattended.
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[style=text-align:center; font-family:courier; font-size:10px;]*changed to four, didn't figure for the 7th being a saturday rather than middle-of-the-week[/style] |
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