Different Circles

A moment later, he left the room. A few minutes after that, a male nurse named Robert came in, introduced himself, told Jake that he was a fan, and then started an IV in Jake’s left forearm. After taping it down, he offered Jake some Demerol for pain, telling him that Dr. Wei had put in an order for it if Jake wanted some. Jake turned him down and then Robert personally wheeled Jake on his gurney over to the diagnostic imaging department, waited around until the imaging was done, and then wheeled him back to his room.

It took almost an hour before the imaging was read. It turned out that Jake had two cracked ribs but no signs of internal injury or lung involvement. He had no broken bones in his face and no signs of bleeding in his brain. It was now time for the procedural sedation.

Dr. Wei and another ER doctor came into the room, followed by Robert the nurse, a respiratory therapist, and an ER technician with an armful of splinting supplies. Jake eyed the group nervously.

“Is all this really necessary?” he asked.

“It is the standard of care when doing a procedural sedation,” Dr. Wei told him. “Dr. Jones will administer and monitor the sedation while I perform the actual reduction. The respiratory therapist will keep an eye on your breathing and oxygen levels and respond as necessary. Robert will document everything and keep overwatch on your general condition. And Kelly here will put the splint on once the reduction is done.”

“I see,” Jake said, feeling his nervousness ramp up a little bit. “And I won’t remember any of this?”

“Not a thing,” Dr. Wei assured him.

And she was right. Jake remembered them escorting Laura out of the room and telling her she could come back once he started to come out of the sedation. He remembered Dr. Jones drawing up a milky white substance into a big syringe and injecting it into his IV line. After that, he remembered nothing else until he woke up with Laura back by his side and his right hand encased and immobilized in a fiberglass splint wrapped in an ace wrap. The hand was throbbing steadily and insistently, much worse than it had been before.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you into that Demerol?” Robert asked him.

“I’m sure,” Jake said through gritted teeth.

Shortly after a portable x-ray was done to evaluate how well Dr. Wei had put him back together, Officer Levitt came back into the room.

Jake was still groggy from the propofol, but he was lucid. “Well,” he asked, “am I under arrest?”

“You are not,” Levitt informed him. “We talked to our sergeant, and he talked to the lieutenant, who actually called the on-call deputy DA at home, and it has been decided that none of this rises to the level of a felony assault. Not your assault on the security guard, not his assault on Nerdly Archer, not even Nerdly Archer’s assault on the sound engineer. And, since none of you want to press charges on each other for misdemeanor assault, the entire matter will be dropped.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said, relieved. Although he had no doubt he never would have actually been convicted of any crime, it was nice to know he did not have to deal with the matter any further.

They kept an eye on Jake for another hour just to make sure he was having no delayed effect from the sedation and then he was put up for discharge. Dr. Wei told Jake he was going to be uncomfortable for the next few days and tried to push a prescription for Vicodin on him.

“No way, doc,” he said. “I don’t need any of that stuff.”

She tried to get him to at least take the prescription with him in case he changed his mind, but he assured her that he would not. He thanked her for her care and did the same for Robert after he pulled the IV out of his arm and read off his discharge directions for him.

They then made their way out front, to where the limousine that had brought them here was still patiently waiting.

“Back to the hotel, Jake?” the driver asked.

“Please,” Jake said gratefully.

They arrived back at Caesars Palace fifteen minutes later. It was now nearly three o’clock in the morning. They went directly to their room where they found the message light blinking on the phone. Laura listened to the message and told Jake it was from Pauline, who wanted an update from them as soon as they arrived, no matter what time it was.

“Can you handle that?” Jake asked his wife.

“Sure,” she said. “What are you going to do? Go to bed?”

“Soon,” he said, “but first I need a little painkiller.”

“But you didn’t take that prescription,” she said.

“Not that kind of painkiller,” he said, walking over to the bar.

“Ohhh, I see,” she said.

And so, while Laura called Pauline and let her know what was going on, Jake poured himself a quadruple Macmillan single malt over ice and went to work killing the pain. It worked pretty well.