Free Jury of Peers by Troy L Brodsky Page A

food for you.”
                  “I’m okay,” he said.
                  “You’re still a patient, I’ll get you some food sent up.”  She opened Emily’s chart. 
                  “How is she?” Seth finally asked.
    “Lots of infection.  Bullet wounds are messy, this one was especially so.  She’s young, and really healthy.  Being in such good shape saved her, but it’s still plenty serious enough to keep her here.  Probably for a long while.”
                  “Will she wake up?”
                  “Probably she’ll be in and out over the next couple of days. We want to keep the pain threshold low so she can concentrate on healing up.  But yeah, she’ll probably come around once in awhile.  That’s why I wanted you here.”
                  “Thanks,” Seth said.  He hadn’t let go of his wife's hand since he had arrived.  “Where’s her ring?”
    “She was pretty swollen up when I first saw her, I’d bet that the EMT's had to cut it off on the way in.  We still have it somewhere for you I’m sure.”
                  “Okay.”
                  “And listen, the news people came early this morning and started asking about you.  They can’t come up, and right now you can't go down to them, but I wanted you to know.”
                  “Thanks.  I’ll stay here,” he said without looking up.
                  “I thought you might.  Let me know if you need anything.”  She turned to leave.
                  “How long can a person live like this?” he said before she could leave.
                  “Sorry, what?”
                  “If they didn’t get to the hospital, with this kind of,” he gestured at her stomach, “this kind of wound.”
                  The doctor rolled her head on her shoulders and then straightened the thin necklace around her neck so that the clasp was in back.  “Days sometimes.  I was in Iraq in 1993.”  She came back into the room, tossed the chart down on the table, and leaned on the edge of a chair across from him.
                  “I worked on a man, about fifty.  An Iraqi.  He’d wandered up to within twenty or thirty meters of some outpost in a sandstorm.  They brought him into me after they realized that he had a big piece of metal sticking out of his stomach.  He’d been out there for three and a half days.  People are like eggs Seth.  Squeeze one way and you can’t break them no matter what you do, squeeze another way and everything breaks down.  It’s just how we are.”
                  She watched him, “Why?”
                  “Did he have food?  Water?”
                  “The Iraqi?”
                  “Yeah."
                  “I don’t know really.  He was dehydrated of course, but all of us were.  I think in a way, the storm might have saved him, strange as that seems.”  She leaned forward unto her elbows and closed her eyes.  “Kept the sun off him, let him wander into some Brits before he could get spooked and run off.”
                  “So a couple of days?  Three or four?”
                  “Maybe,” she said.  “I don’t understand.”
                  “Did he suffer?”
                  She hesitated.   “Yeah.  It had to hurt.  But he made it even without painkillers all of that time.  And your wife.…”  There was no way for her to see the depth of her misunderstanding.
                  “I know.”
                  The doctor leaned there for another couple of minutes until it began to feel like a nice place to nap.  Fatigue was part of the game, but keeping it at bay was the key.  It was obvious that Seth Meek had gone back into whatever awful thoughts were keeping his