The Healers [antikvár]

1It had been a quiet night in the emergency room except for the battle with the three-hundred-pound man.The ambulance team - Matt Cross, the black driver, and Ed Riley, a young white orderly - had wheeled the sedated giant into the room. The man's left leg was splinted and extended. A city policeman had accompanied them, and had informed the resident and the medical student on duty that the injured citizen was one Johnny Farrell, address unknown.'How'd he break his leg?' asked Dr Abe Gold, chief resident of Mid-Island Hospital.'Beats me, Doc. He was bombed. Stumbled out of a gin mill, fell off the curb. When you're that big and you hit the pavement, you gotta break something.'Dr Gold laughed. Not a bad diagnosis. Abe had finished medical school after the war and pursued his medical career with the single-minded fervor of a poor boy from the Bronx. Farrell's huge gut rose and fell as he breathed.'Fought us like a madman,' Riley said. 'I figured he was dead the way he was laid out in the gutter. Then he gets up like a Frankenstein and starts swinging.'Matt Cross, mahogany brown and dignified, nodded. 'Got me right on the chops before we jabbed his big ass.''Nice work, both of you,' Dr Gold said. 'Nice splint.'Kevin Derry, a third-year medical student, studied the man's leg. It looked like a bandaged telephone pole. 'Darn good job, Riley. You too, Matt.' Young Derry was always polite and cheerful to drivers, orderlies, kitchen help, lab technicians. A very junior member of the hospital, he was well known and well liked.'Okay,' Dr Gold said. 'Suppose we let him into radiology. Kevin, write up the admitting report and do a physical.'11