Hospital bed crawl[+]

It was early in the morning, but the hospital was already
buzzing with activity and life. And that was the problem. Due to
worries about the building's reliability, patients were currently only
being kept in the first two floors. And had they only have fifty beds to
go around.
As she walked down the hall, the pen in Dr. Ohakim's hand went
'click', 'click' in tandem to her steps on the charts she was
currently reviewing. She stopped in memorium of her latest issue: a young
boy, possibly in her mid-teens, with his arm in a sling. Two hours ago,
he and a girl -possibly the same age- had arrived. He had a fractured radius;
she had a metal rebar through her lower ribs.
The boy was fine after they'd pumped him full of morphine. The girl
had died right before they'd put her on the table. And Ashira was pissed
about it.
The boy had fidgeted under her gaze. Chemical toxins and mutated platelets
had been a dead giveaway to his mutation, no matter how hard he tried
to hide it. Though she was required to register and hold every mutant who
passed through their doors, Ashira had let him off with a bottle of aspirin.
The poor kid had just lost his companion. He didn't need more problems.
[+]
Of course, back to the first problem at hand. The beds. She bumped into a young
mother and her child, but didn't break her stride. Maybe she could try to
persuade one of the mutant gangs to help, but dismissed the idea. Self-
righteous gits wouldn't spare her a tear if she came coddling a bloody
baby.
If she was handed one more annoying patient in the next five minutes, she'd
scream and would, possibly, kill everyone.

A nurse in pale pink scrubs handed another chart to Ashira, taking the
other one. "The Persian's back," the nurse whispered, and titled her head
in the new arrival's direction.
Ashira let out a heavy sigh, took the chart in one hand, and stomped towards her
patient. She threw the door open.
"The only way you could be shot more," she said, loudly from behind him,
"Is if you painted a target onto your chest. Where'd they shoot you this time?"
Of course, the question wasn't rhetorical since the entry wound was prominent and
bloody. Shoulder wound. Too easy. "Allow me to let you in on a little secret,
Mr. Falco. I am the head of an ailing hospital that sees a hundred patients a day. This
hospital has fifty beds, I'll give you time to do the math. Now," and here she paused
to take a pair of surgical gloves out of her pocket. "Let us take a break from my angry
rant to pull that bullet out of you. And this'll hurt." Ashira took a pair of tweezers
out of her other pocket.

Ashira frowned and jabbed the tweezers in the patient's entry wound.
There she went again, simply referring to her victims as 'patients'. She needed
to work on those inter-personal skills. Finishing her thoughts, and the procedure,
she removed the bullet. It was a pretty big bullet.
"Ouch. This could bring down an elephant," she mumbled, and placed the
bullet on a dish; the dish being one of the many sitting on a table nearby.
"We're low on morphine, so we're going to send you off with a bottle of aspirin.
Let me get a suturing kit." She patted Shahbaz roughly on the shoulder (the
uninjured one, mind you) and swished out the door is a whirl of white polyester.
[+]
Suture kit. Suture kit. She grabbed one of the top-shelf of the supply closet. And
then glanced dismally at their short supply of... everything. This was ridiculous.
She headed back for the room.

As she walked back, she considered Shahbaz's offer. She bit her lip and weighed
the options. Getting him to check the levels out would provide Ashira with cheap
labor, and if the levels were sturdy they'd have five more floors to keep patients. Of
course, if the levels collapsed, she'd be getting nowhere and she'd have her
cheap labor in for seven broken ribs and various head wounds.

Exasperated, Ashira pinched the bridge of her nose with
her thumb and forefinger, something she had started to develop
as a habit. She could feel a migraine coming on.
"Fine, whatever. But if anything gives way, I will not be the
one who patches you up. You can give yourself a cast if you break
something." She replaced her rubber gloves and opened the
suture kit.
"Move over into the light. And if you fidget and I make a mistake,
I'll suture your thumbs together."
The sutures in the kit were bio-degradable. In three weeks, give or
take a day or two, they would melt away, leaving nothing but a small
scar. She jabbed the first near the wound, and continued from there.
When she was done, she discarded her gloves and picked up the chart,
filling in the steps she had taken in the procedure.
"You look fine enough, so I'm guessing you don't have an infection.
Good. I want you back here in three weeks, when your sutures dissolve.
That way we can check to see if you've contracted an infection."
She put the chart down, whistled, and motioned towards the door.
"Let's go." Time for cheap labor to get cracking.

Ashira listened calmly as Shahbaz related everything to her. Then
she examined the bottle of morphine wrapped in the hospital gown.
"This one, to put it simply, has expired. So we can't use it without doing
people any harm. These two should be fine though." She gestured at them.
She tapped her chin, "We'll work up. This level, the first, was originally the
ICU of the hospital, so I think we'll return it to that function. The second floor
was... seniors, I think. We'll just use it as an extension of the ICU."
Unfortunately for Shahbaz, Ashira had spiraled into another of her 'hopeful
future' speeches.
"We can convert the third floor to pediatrics. That's medical care that
focuses on children. If we have those three floors, we should be good for a
month of two until we clean up the fourth and fifth floors. We can use those
to house our long-term patients. I think I'll have to keep the sixth and seventh
floors unoccupied for a while, though, just in case there's any more inter-
gang battles any time soon, damn feuds. But if we work hard, maybe we can--"

Suddenly, a skittish intern in dark blue scrubs walked up to Ashira, interrupting
her speech. The intern looked like he has going to have a seizure out of fear, but
he managed to speak. "U-uhm, Dr. O-Ohakim. I f-f-forgot where I put the
f-foley catheter on Mr. Dayes. W-what do I d-do?"
Ashira gritted her teeth and grabbed the intern by his shoulders. Then, in a
patronizing voice she usually reserved for dogs and small children, she spoke.
"Well, here's a hint random annoying intern. You stick it in the organ he uses
to whizz. Another hint, it's starts with a 'p'. Get out of here!" The intern took
off in a frightened blur.

Ashira felt a vein in her brain explode. But instead of
exploding and knocking Shahbaz through the ceiling, she
handled it calmly. Oh please, don't tell me he was actually
trying to go there again.
"Oh. You're so sexy, I'm going to go sit down now."
And she turned the other way and walked to the reception
center. Seems those self-help yoga videos she'd unearthed
were working,

Once at the reception area, she plopped onto a swivel chair
(it'd lost it's swivel long ago) and opened up a copy of Gray's
Anatomy, looking up appendicitis. Not that she really needed
to, but the one thing the video had stressed was 'using a
different activity to take your mind off of what was making you
angry'.

A few nurses hovered fearfully around her, as if picking up on
the mood.

After a while, Ashira said goodbye to restraint and
let herself go. In a flash, she launched herself out of the chair
and threw herself as Shahbaz; her fist meeting the wall inches
from where he stood. The brick fractured at the impact, sending
small stone splinters flying everywhere. Her hand hurt like hell.

"Mister Shahbaz," she snapped, feeling irritated.
"If you are determined to stay put in my hospital, despite that
I have deemed you well enough to leave, then I will put you to
work." Ashira smirked. "Cindy? Chart."

An intern with mousy-brown hair handed her a chart as she
walked by. Ashira shook it. "This man's leg is slowly being
eaten away by a friendly little fellow we like to call clostridial
myonecrosis, but you will probably know it as 'gas gangrene'.
So we're going to chop off the icky parts so the stuff doesn't
kill him. Unfortunately, all we have for anesthetic is a large
bottle of vodka since morphine could cause him to go into shock."

A nearby intern made soundless gagging noises. Ashira waved
him off. "So today you're going to be the muscleman. While I
carefully saw this guy's leg off, and another doctor will be standing
by to stop the bleeding, you will be the one holding him down
so he doesn't try to kill me. Easy enough?"

Ashira grabbed a mask and a fresh pair of gloves
before she entered the room. They had the patient in
quarantine, to prevent the spread of any viruses.

A disgusting mess lay in front of her as Ashira neared
the bed. The gangrene victim was moaning something
that she didn't care about, as her eyes were drawn to his
leg. Or what was left of it. The gas gangrene had eaten
a huge hole through the his foot and most of his lower calf
muscle. All that was left was a blistering, revolting patch
of purply flesh, pus, and blood.

Of course, this wasn't the first patient to come in with
some form of gangrene. The cases were rampant, due
to fights and muggings between gangs. She snapped her
gloves on and adjusted her mask.

"Mister Shabaz," she said, her voice slightly muffled
by fabric. "Make sure you put some gloves on. I'll need you to
step onto that side." She went procured a sharp and nasty-
looking hacksaw. "I spent half the day sharpening it as
much as possible, so this should go quickly. It'll be bloody
though."

A lot.