"Doc."
Surprised, Edwards turned around. David had stopped shivering.
"Doc!"
Edwards hurriedly bent over the frame.
David stared up at him, his eyes strangely clear and deep. "You didn't have to come, not all the time."
"I wanted to," Edwards said.
"They told me about your brother and your taking him home." David was about to go on when, gasping, he suddenly bolted upright and, struggling against the restraints, vomited up a great flood of bright red blood.
Dying in the burn unit is not normally that dramatic. There is usually very little blood; burns die inside out, down at the cellular level, where the billions of struggling cells just simply give up. It is for the most part a kind of gentle going; breathing becomes labored and distant, circulation falls apart, hearts dilate, livers and spleens grow to twice their size, lungs gradually fill with fluid, and there is always a certain period of confusion. But after it, a comfortable time of unconsciousness, where nothing is done and everything-even the last breath-is rather a leisurely giving up.
Suddenly, with the blood still welling out of his lipless mouth, David went rigid and, arching backwards, collapsed against the frame. Edwards grabbed the suction off the wall and, pulling open David's jaw, began sucking out his mouth, trying to clear the blood and vomit out of his airway. The gasping stopped and there was the more comfortable sound of air moving in and out.
"Get the blood," Edwards ordered, reaching for the oxygen mask. He was turning up the oxygen flow, just as Cramer came running back with the blood.
"Call Johnson. Set up a cut-down tray, and get a tracheotomy set."
The ward master unhooked the IV from its bottles. "The blood is still ice cold," he said.
"Just hang it," Edwards ordered, holding open Davids jaw, trying to get out more of the blood. "Just goddam hang it. And call the general surgeon . . . David! David!" He pressed the oxygen mask over the boy's mouth and he could fell the skin slipping away under the pressure of the mask's rubber edges. "David! David! Can you hear me? OK, listen, you have an ulcer. We might have to operate to night. You have a lot of blood and stuff in your lungs. I'm going to have to put you on a respirator. It will help you breathe, so I'll have to make a little hole in your windpipe. It won't hurt." He looked up, checking the blood running down into the IV tubing. "It's just to help you breathe. Honest Just to breathe."
The corpsman had set up the tracheotomy, and Edwards held the oxygen mask in place while the ward master quickly cleaned David's neck as best he could. The noise coming from inside the lungs was getting louder again. Even with the oxygen David was having to fight to breathe.
"I'm going to make the hole now," Edwards said, removing the mask. Little bits of skin came away with it.
"Doc," David gasped. "Take me home, too. . . Please, Doc, I don't want to go alone. . ."