PROXIMA CENTRAL HOSPITAL
SATURDAY, 1:49 A.M.
Dr. Sarah Lanen had left the Proxima Central Hospital almost two hours ago when the clock marked the official start of Saturday. Having come off her watch, she had made up her mind that she would not set foot in that place again until Monday morning, and yet here she was again, walking up the front steps and past the massive pillars that supported the pediment of the stone façade, ignoring the look of those sculpted heroes of medicine up there who saw her return.
A nurse friend of hers had texted her, and the message had not only put her off sleeping but had prompted her to drive back there in no time, crossing four complete neighborhoods, from her home in the Green Area to the White Area, in the heart of the metropolis, where the hospital was. Fortunately, Sarah was young and could afford to postpone her sleep to keep her eyes wide open and her pulse ready to use a scalpel.
And damn, she had to be ready for anything! The Central Hospital, one of the oldest and most important health centers in Proxima, was a place that never closed its doors, that it didn’t know what it was like to be empty; and although there was never a weekend night that wasn’t busy, with people injured from fighting or drinking and driving—yet another reason for not wanting to come back until Monday—this time, there were more people than usual.
In the entrance hall, some people were talking about a truck trailer and how terrible the explosion had been, while others were mourning the death of someone, and Sarah knew that something serious had happened. Had she expected something like this, she would have turned on the radio in the car to find out about it on the way; although in a hospital, news flew like backstage gossip on a TV network, so it wouldn’t take long for her to know in great detail the reasons behind such a commotion.
Again, someone sobbed the words truck and explosion, and her breathing quickened. She braced herself for an emergency, and at the same time, prayed that the reason that had brought her back wasn’t related to whatever had happened with a truck and its trailer.
Evading patients wandering the halls and personnel coming and going, she entered her office and didn’t even bother to turn on the light; she took the green scrubs—which she had left on the rack hoping not to wear them on Saturday—and put it on top of her blouse. She adjusted her glasses and took off down the aisles, straight to the ER.
In the seven years that she had been there practicing as a doctor, she had become accustomed to seeing terrible things and dealing with horrifying cases; but when the patient was someone known, the situation changed. Her skin, white, almost pink, lit up like a spotlight. She felt a shudder in the pit of her stomach and figured it could be one of three things: hunger, lack of sleep or, more likely, anxiety.
She was tying her reddish hair with a rubber band she had found in her pocket, when another doctor in scrubs, a tall, corpulent woman, walked toward her with such an overwhelming pace that even some nurses quickly stepped aside. She didn’t blame them. Cabrera could intimidate anyone, not only because of the enormity of her physique, but because her temper could shake the very hospital.
Cabrera lowered her mask—her cheeks glowed in the corridor lights—and took off her surgical cap with the same gesture that a disgusted novice nurse would take off bloody gloves. The elastic of her cap caught on the black curlers of hair that popped out of her head.
Sarah smoothed her uniform with a couple of swipes so it wouldn’t show that she had put it on in a hurry, and took a deep breath, trying to hide how upset she was. She knew her presence would not be welcomed by Cabrera, and showing how emotionally invested she was would only get her into trouble.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“What are you doing here, Lanen?” Cabrera said. “It’s the norm of this hospital that the shifts are respected and yours has already finished.”
Sarah knew the hospital’s rules, though she knew that Cabrera’s anger was not coming from the fact that she was disobeying them, but because last week she had treated a patient of Cabrera by mistake. Cabrera had hit the roof and had complained to the board of directors, and from that moment, the tension between them had ceased to be professional to become personal.
“We are well-staffed, Lanen. I don’t wanna have you poking around my patients again.”
“I told you that was a mistake!” Sarah answered, furious, and avoiding looking at Cabrera so that their grievance didn’t get out of hand, she kept walking. She was there for a reason and now it was not convenient for her to fight with anyone, especially with the head of the medical guard on duty.
Cabrera, on the other hand, knowing how stubborn Sarah could be even with that fragile and calm appearance, didn’t bother to stop her, and followed her.
“You want to tell me why you’re here, then?”
“I was told that Adam White has been admitted,” Sarah explained; her voice trembling a little. “He is my friend and I want to see him.”
You are friends with this Adam White guy, right? He just got into the ER.
Sarah had found the message from Lisa, her nurse friend, getting out of the shower. By that time, it had been more than ten minutes since she’d received it, along with a call she hadn’t heard either and, when she tried to contact her friend to ask for more details, no one had answered. Surely Lisa must have been busy with some other patient. Then she had tried her luck calling other colleagues and even the hospital reception staff, but no one had been able to tell her exactly what Adam’s condition was. To top it off, Adam’s own phone was dead.
“If you’ve come for White,” Cabrera said, “you can ask me then because I’m the one who attends to him.”
They both walked through the door that announced Emergencies and into a new aisle full of doctors and nurses.
“Where is he?” Sarah asked. “What happened to him?”
Cabrera didn’t return her gaze and took a second to respond.
“Coma… Your friend is in a coma.”
Sarah went paled and her steps noticeably slowed down. Adam was in a coma.
She remembered the last time she’d seen him, the previous weekend when they had gone together to the Central Hospital benefit party, where her friend had received the treatment of a celebrity because of his job in Homam Enterprises, one of the companies that contributed the most to hospitals in the city, and a sharp pain shot through her chest. Nothing bad should happen to someone as cheerful as Adam. Not to him!
And when she was going to ask for more information, both she and Cabrera had to step aside to make way for two male nurses who were carrying a wounded man on a stretcher. The poor guy looked pretty bad, with wounds that could have been burns; then Cabrera commented, “Multiple-vehicle collision at Eight and Thirteenth Avenues.”
The truck trailer and the explosion! Sarah shuddered as if her stomach had shrunk. If Adam was in an induced coma due to the accident, perhaps he had been fatally injured and…
“Your friend wasn’t in the crash,” Cabrera calmed her down. “The paramedics found him and the other a few feet from there, though, in Liberty Park.”
Sarah’s stomach returned to normal, or almost. A sour sensation rose up her esophagus, and this time she determined the cause of it: anxiety. That Adam hadn’t been involved in the accident meant nothing; it was still too early to relax.
“You were saying they found Adam and someone else?”
Cabrera went to room seven.
“Yeah—him and his twin,” she said.
“Twin?” Sarah stopped just short of passing, and her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose. “Adam doesn’t have a twin!”
With a sullen gesture, as if to say, ‘Don’t waste my time,’ Cabrera pushed open the door and pointed to the patients.
Sarah’s jaw dropped. “Oh, God…”
Upon returning to the Hospital, Sarah had imagined the many scenarios in which she could find her friend, from lying in bed with a tube in his mouth and nose due to poisoning from a spoiled dinner to convalescing and full of fractures due to an accident for having tried to be funny walking in some dangerous place. What was now in front of her didn’t even resemble anything that might have crossed her mind.
There were two beds in the room; in one lay Adam White, covered with a white sheet; and in the other, in the same conditions, there was Adam White again. Two almost identical people; both with an IV bag holder on the side of the bed, a peripheral line placed in their hands, and a monitor checking their vital signs.