Different Circles

“I understand,” she said. “And I hope you understand that we will be required to report this injury to the police and they may wish to speak to you about it, particularly in light of the fact that we have two other crewmembers here from the TSF that have fight injuries as well.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Did those assholes from Pantera’s crew show up here too?”

“I am not authorized to tell you that,” she said. “Now, how about we get some vitals taken and then get you to x-ray?”

“Sounds good,” Jake said. “But if those dudes are here, you should probably keep us away from each other.”

“I will take that under consideration,” she said. She pulled a thermometer out of a holder. “Under your tongue, please?”

She took his vital signs and wrote them down on the triage form. She added in his height and weight—allowing him to self-report the figures instead of actually measuring them—and then went over his medical history (he did not really have one), what prescription medications he was taking (none) and what medications he was allergic to (again, none). She then wrote out a brief summary of what had happened to Jake and where he was injured.

“All right,” she said. “I’m going to order an x-ray of your right hand. Go ahead and pop back out into the waiting room and someone will come get you and take you over to diagnostic imaging. Once the films are read, we’ll get you in a room and go from there.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said.

It took about thirty minutes for Jake to be x-rayed and placed in one of the rooms in the ER. A young male technician housed him and Laura in one of the enclosed rooms near the front of the department. It was one of the big rooms, with a cardiac monitor on the wall and all the bells and whistles as far as equipment went. Jake wondered if there was some reason they had put him in here instead of a smaller room. This looked like the room they dealt with serious shit in—heart attacks and CPRs and things like that. Was it just VIP treatment because he was Jake Kingsley, or was there another explanation?

They sat in the room for almost twenty minutes before the door opened and a tall, trim Asian featured woman of about Jake’s age came in. She wore grey scrubs and had the letters MD after her name on her name badge. She wore an expensive looking stethoscope around her neck. Her face was completely expressionless.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Wei,” she introduced, without a hint of accent. “What is your emergency tonight?”

“I got in a scuffle this morning and punched someone in the face with my right hand,” he said. “I think I broke something.”

“Yes, you did,” the doctor told him. “You have fractures to the third and fourth metacarpal bones of your hand. Those are the bones between your knuckles and your wrist. This is what is commonly known as a boxer’s fracture, although most of the time it is the fourth and fifth metacarpals that are fractured.”

If you already knew why I was here and that my bones were broken, why the hell did you ask? Jake wondered but did not say aloud. “How bad is it?” he did say.

“You did a pretty good job of it,” she said. “Both bones are displaced by more than eighty degrees. We’re going to have to put them back together and you’re going to have to be in a splint for some time. I’m not sure if surgery will be needed—it usually is not with this injury, although you did a better than average job of breaking them—so you’ll need to follow up with an orthopedist.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “What does putting them back together entail?”

“We’ll do what we call a procedural sedation,” she said. “The nurse will start an IV on you and we’ll give you propofol through it so you go to sleep for a bit. I’ll then reduce the fractures the best I can and we’ll put a splint on the hand to keep the bones immobilized.”

“Okay,” Jake said carefully. He had never had surgery or been anesthetized before and the thought of being put to sleep was a bit disconcerting. But he had to trust modern medicine, right? “What about functionality?”

“What about it?” she asked.

“I’m a musician,” he said. “I play guitar for a living. Will I still be able to do that?”

“Not until the injury heals,” she said, “but I do not see any reason why you should not be able to play guitar after that.”

Jake breathed a little sigh of relief. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m also a pilot. Will I be able to fly my plane with this splint on?”

Dr. Wei’s expression changed for the first time. It darkened. “You are a pilot?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “My plane is currently parked at Henderson Airport here in Vegas and I was planning to fly it home to Los Angeles tomorrow. And then I need to fly to Oregon from there a few days later. Will I still be able to do that?”