The rest of the shift was spent in hard work, eight solid hours with only a few minutes break here and there.

Once he found himself whispering, “Dear Lord, please get me through this.” The prayer surprised him because, right now, he and God weren’t on the best of terms.

Once, as he pushed a gurney toward the elevator, he passed Dr. Ram'irez making notes in a chart at the nurses’ station.

“Look but don’t touch,” Williams warned him. “Yes, she’s pretty but she’s a doctor. She makes sure we all know that. Her body language says, ‘Keep away.’”

Mike didn’t read it that way exactly, but staying away from Dr. Ram'irez was good advice, both personally and professionally.

After the first wave of those who’d been affected by the chemical spill had been taken care of, two ambulances arrived from a gang shooting. The vitals of the first kid to come in had dropped and the EMTs couldn’t get the wounds to stop bleeding.

While everyone hovered around the gangbanger, Dr. Ram'irez looked at a tiny Hispanic woman on another gurney who’d been an unlucky bystander, the EMT had said.

The doctor picked up the paramedic’s notes and read them. Finished, she said, “I want that woman in there.” She pointed at Mike then at Trauma 2.

He nodded, grabbed the gurney and pushed it into the cubicle Dr. Ram'irez had indicated. On the count of three, he and a nurse’s aide named Gracie moved the woman to the trauma bed. Gracie cut and peeled off the woman’s blood-soaked clothing, then put her in a gown. The patient closed her eyes, whimpered a little and bit her lower lip.

“Get a drip started,” Dr. Ram'irez told a nurse. Then, her voice soft and low, she said to the patient, “?Le duele mucho, Se~nora S'anchez?”

Mike remembered enough of his college Spanish to know that she’d asked the elderly woman if she hurt. The patient nodded.

The doctor pulled the blanket and gown down to study the area on the patient’s right shoulder the paramedics had treated. “?Aqu'i?” She gently pressed on the area around the wound which had begun to seep blood.

“Ay, me duele mucho.”

He could tell from her expression that the pressure had hurt the woman, a lot.

“Help me turn her on the left side,” Dr. Ram'irez said to Mike. “Slowly and carefully.” Once Mrs. S'anchez was turned, Dr. Ram'irez ran her hand over the patient’s shoulder and back. “No exit wound,” she said.

“Okay.” Dr. Ram'irez glanced up at Mike. “After the IV is going, take her to the OR. I’ll call the surgeon.”

Before Mike could transfer Mrs. S'anchez to a gurney, the doctor took Mrs. S'anchez’s hand and said, “Se~nora, todo va a estar bien. C'almese. El cirujano es buena gente.”

Something about everything being okay, to calm down because the surgeon was a good guy, Mike translated for himself. The elderly woman took a deep breath and unclenched her fists as Mike rolled the gurney away.

Seemed Dr. Ram'irez was more than a tough professional. She cared for her patients, understood what they needed. That was the kind of doctor he wanted to be, the kind he would be if he could get the money together to go back to med school.

Because he’d been in foster care, the state had paid college and medical school tuition. During four years of college and one of medical school, he’d roomed with four guys in a cheap apartment and worked part-time to make it through. But with the extra money he needed to rent the house, buy food and cover whatever expenses came up until his mother and little brother could get on their feet, he had to work full-time. No way he could go to medical school and support them, which he had to do. After his father had deserted them almost twenty years earlier, Mike was pretty much the head of the family.

He’d considered other options but couldn’t afford the time off and the seven-hundred-dollar fee for paramedic training. With overtime, he’d make more as an orderly than teaching high school, plus he’d be in a hospital. All that made the decision to be an orderly easy.

By seven the next morning, he was so worn-out he moved in a fog. This was hard work, but he loved the feel of the hospital, the certainty that amid the commotion, all the patients would be helped, that he was doing good, meaningful, healing work.

The sight of Dr. Ram'irez added a lot to that positive feeling. After all, he could appreciate the view, if only from a distance. At this moment and maybe for several years, with the mess that was his life, all he could enjoy was the view.

A week after his first day in the E.R., the phone rang in the small house Mike rented. When he answered, his younger brother, Tim, said in a shaky voice, “I had an accident, but it wasn’t my fault.”

Mike held the telephone tightly. “Are you all right?”