chapter 2
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
ing charmed. I shook myself a little, and straightened my
back (her posture was perfect).
Her husband made a less distinct impression. The cervical stabilization collar has a dampening effect on most
people, as would the eight milligrams of morphine he’d
absorbed over the past six hours, so it was a bleary and
not very articulate history I got from him. His wife filled
in the relevant bits. No prior MI. Occasional chest pain,
hard to pin down. Otherwise a generally healthy, alert and
active man. On the one really critical point — what had
caused the fall — Mr Mongay insisted on giving account.
He had not fainted. He had not been dizzy or breathless or
experienced palpitations or anything of that sort. He had
tripped. He had caught his toes on the uneven edge left
by the damned contractor who’d resurfaced the driveway
two years previously, and gone down like a stupid ox. As
he said the last he shook his head vehemently within the
confines of his collar, and I caught my breath: you’re not
supposed to do that with a broken neck.
Even so I was partially reassured. The history didn’t
suggest a cardiac cause to his fall, and he denied any
of the other symptoms that go along with impending
doom. The physical exam was similarly reassuring, although hampered by the cervical collar and my dread
of doing anything that might disturb his neck. He was
a tall, bony man, with a nasty-looking cut across the
scalp above his right eye and dried blood crusted in his
bushy eyebrows. The cut had been sutured already, and
the blood made it look much worse than it was. Aside
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