Paging Doctor Baxter Huntley Part V
My name is Henry James. And I’m Sunny Alexander and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth Magazine.
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Conclusion
After a rocky start we both decided, thanks to a direct order from our Chief Editor Rick McDonnell and a ghost doctor who’d been dead for the better part of twenty five years we had a story on our hands.
Although one of us is still a little grumpy and walking around like a ninety year old.
Which reminds us. We’d like to give a special shout out to Terry, the driver of the eighteen wheeler which smashed into Henry’s car and sent him to County Medical. Without his skillful handling of his eighteen wheeler Henry would have never met Baxter.
Now we’re standing in a decommissioned operating room on the first floor of County Medical watching the ghost of Baxter Huntley gaze around the room.
Neither of us saw anything except scores of empty beds and pieces of furniture, but we knew he was seeing something completely different.
“It was surreal that night,” Baxter said, still concentrating on something we knew only he could see. “We were short staffed. It was just me and Charlie Macy on the surgical team, a handful of ER nurses and the normal care staff. Just a normal, dull, ordinary night.”
“And then?”
“Well Miss Alexander then all hell broke loose. Dispatch notified us they received notification from state troopers about a group of school buses returning from a summer camp at Glen Rose. Seems they got hit by tornadoes just south of Willis. County Medical was the closest hospital.”
“How many?”
“It was hard to say at the time Henry. Somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty. We dispatched our emergency medical teams, and they were running back and forth most of the night. In less than two hours we had the hallways packed with children, most of them in critical condition. We even had them scattered around the operating room where Charlie and I were working.”
The doctor paused. We both knew he was reliving that night. Envisioning the sights, the smells, the cries of panic and the sounds of total chaos. We knew he’d continue when he was ready. After a couple of minutes the ghost of Baxter Huntley looked at both of us.
“Nurses were flying around taking blood samples from all the kids, hand running them to the lab for CBC panels and just when we thought the situation couldn’t get any worse it did. I guess the storms were pretty bad because after the casualties started flowing in we lost power.”
“So you were trying to perform emergency surgery in the dark?”
“No Henry. Thank God the diesel generators were working that night. But they only switched over for mission critical like ICU, ER, one of the labs and the operating rooms. Everything else was pretty much lights out.”
“That night I made a decision. One that I lived to regret. Instead of loading up the more critical and trying to get them to other hospitals I made the call for me and Charlie to keep at it.”
“How many of those kids would have survived the transport?”
“Probably none of them Sunny. These children were severely injured. You have to understand. Both of the school buses were picked up and tossed around like they were made of paper mache. Imagine putting marbles in a can and shaking it. Children were being thrown around inside those buses and every part of those vehicles became a weapon. Seats, windows, window frames, the engines, everything.”
“I’ve a feeling you’re not telling us everything Doc.”
“I’m am my dear. This is what happened.”
“But there’s more isn’t there? Were you married at the time? Have any children?”
The question must have struck a nerve with Baxter that night. He stared at us, his mouth open as if shocked we’d even asked it. Then he dropped his head and concentrated on the floor. His image wavered a bit as if the question had taken something from him.
Both of us realized it wasn’t the question that had taken something from him.
“Yes, I was. Her name was Martha. We had two sons. Twins.”
“Martha and your sons were in those buses that night weren’t they Baxter?”
We watched the elderly man nod, but continue to stare at the floor. While neither of us at this point ever thought it possible, we were witnessing an ethereal spirit begin to weep.
It’s heartbreaking to see a living human suffer pain and anguish and we’re both here to tell you it’s just as bad watching a ghost wracked by the same set of emotions.
This much we have come to understand.
Some pains are eternal.
“She kept telling me to tend to the children, tend to the children and I knew, and I think she did too, she was going to die that night. I held her hand. I tried to comfort her, kissed her…kissed her on the cheek. Told her I loved her. She smiled. Thanked me for being such a wonderful husband and father. Then she reminded me I had work to do and told me to go. So I did. It was the last words we ever had together.”
“What happened to your sons Baxter? Baxter, what happened to your boys?”
Baxter finally lifted his head and gazed at us.
“Sunny, I believe with all my heart Charlie Macy killed both of my sons that night.”
READ ON — PAGING DOCTOR BAXTER HUNTLEY PART VI
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