Honolulu Noir (Akashic Noir) by Chris McKinney

Author:Chris McKinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.

MERCY

BY CHRISTY PASSION

Downtown

The medcom sheet isn’t signed, so I can’t figure out who to ask some pertinent questions to, like, Is the guy tubed already? Can he move anything? Should we call neuro?

I can barely make out the scribble in the middle of the sheet:

status post hanging, prisoner, Halawa Correctional Facility, HIV, Hep B+ unknown down time, arrival 5 minutes

It says a lot and nothing at the same time. I pick up the sheet from the nurses’ station and point to the blank signature line, mouthing Who? to Carol the ER secretary. With the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear, she shrugs and points to room two, where the charge nurse, Malisa, is trying to restrain a seizing two-year-old, and Abalos, the ER doc, is calling out for Ativan. I’m not gonna even try. The ER is its usual metallic noisy self. Everyone’s busy; the hallways are packed with patients trying to get anyone’s attention. Mostly unnoticed on the wall near Psych is a large black-and-white photo of Queen Emma, one of the last Hawaiian monarchs and founder of this hospital. Her uncomfortable gaze is the only acknowledgment of Hawaii here. Gilded words flanking the queen, “So long as sickness exists, there will be a duty imposed upon us,” are cracked and peeling away. I turn to trauma bay four to get equipment for the worst-case scenario.

When the sliding glass doors open, and I see the EMTs, their shoulders relaxed, pushing the gurney with little hustle, I realize I wasted my energy pulling out the trach cut down tray. It might be bad, but it isn’t going to be worst.

We wait for the accompanying guard to take off the shackles that are fastened around his ankles so we can transfer him to our gurney. The guards name, J. Narcisco, is embroidered in white thread on the pocket of his navy jumpsuit. He’s the polar opposite of his scrawny charge in bright orange, limp on the metal board. Narcisco’s mostly a shaved head, a frown, and shoulders without a neck. He moves with the speed of a man making overtime, jangling across the room and back. Kristina, the chief resident, adjusts her glasses and smooths back wispy strands of hair as she calls out the move: “One, two, three.”

He’s as light as a cheap umbrella.

Che, the ER tech, cuts off his clothes while I survey his arm for a viable vein. Report is being called out over the noise by a lanky paramedic with black-painted thumbnails.

“Fifty-three-year-old male, Jeremy, found hanging from a sheet tied around the sprinkler system from the ceiling. The guards say he was just seen fifteen minutes earlier.”

I look up from his right arm—there is no good vein for an IV. I glance over to his left for possible real estate when I see Narcisco in the corner scrolling through his Insta account.

Che squeezes between me and the intern to take the temp. “Ninety-five point six.”

We all pause for a fraction of a second. That’s cold, that’s a bad sign.

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