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page 1c york county hospital 1 emergency he has red hair and a red face and a red sweatshirt the hair and the face are naturally red but the sweatshirt was yellow up until the moment someone in aurora hit him in the face with a steel chair and smashed his nose and perhaps broke his cheek bone he makes a fair commotion on his arrival outside the double doors to the emergency department of the york county hospital because the ex perience has unaccountably failed to sober him up and as they wheel him along the corridor he is full of unin telligible wisecracks and hearty bravado which mask his humiliation at having lost the fight well well what happened asks a nurse cut your lip he makes a playful grab for her and misses and nearly falls out of the chair then the orderly wheels him on through to the admitting office the nurse rolls her eyes ceilingward and hustles off in the opposite direction to the york county emergency on a friday night they come from all over the unlucky the careless the fearful innocent the impassive aged in cars and trucks and ambulances they arrive at the door from schomberg and sutton and oak ridges from queens ville bradford and holland landing crying fighting for breath or moaning in their private nightmares they finish the trip along the corridor in wheelchairs on stretchers afoot or in the arms of distraught parents try and relax were only trying to help you they come to be made well usually they- are sometimes they die icelin clayton the evening shift supervisor of nurses looks through an examining room door at two men on adjoining beds one man his eyes open and a little wild moves restlessly under the sheet the am bulance attendant beside the bed says try and relax were only trying to help you the man on the other bed does not move his eyes are closed but the sheet across his chest rises and falls whats that all about asks mrs clayton mva over on 48 a nurse says motorcycle hit a bridge dr hugh h paterson is the duty physician and he is not quite midway through a 24hour shift he wears green operating room fatigues stained with perspiration when he is not at york county he does research for a pharmaceutical manufacturer in toronto paterson wraps a huge bandage around the leg of a small boy lying on a bed in the corridor do you play baseball asks paterson the boy shakes his head his mother holds his hand and he looks at her solemnly boy wont you have something to show everybody tomorrow his mother smiles he nods what did he do to the leg a nurse asks on her way past hit it with a board the mother says ninetynine percent have been drinking you know says paterson still wrapping the bandage ninetynine percent of the people who come in here have been drinking not just a little a lot theyve been anaesthetized thirty feet away an ambulance attendant scrubs at his trousers with a damp cloth one of the men in the motorcycle accident threw up when he was being carried to the am bulance never mind says his buddy one time i got a call early in the morning and took off in my good suit trousers good shoes too we found the guys we were after in a car that must have been 200 feet into a plowed field the corridor smells antiseptically clean scrubbed that is the first thing you notice about it the next thing you notice is how quiet it is rubber wheels on the floor tile rubbersoled shoes there are six examination rooms four off one side of the corridor two off the other there is the nursing station and a short hallway leading to xray there are three registered newmarktt ambulance ife nurses and a nursing assistant on duty th with paterson they are seldom still whats that an ambulance to i attendant says into the phone i cant tl hear you wellington street east pi aurora right away he hangs up and runs along the corridor and out qu l the door cc before he reaches his ambulance wa three people run past him into the rail hospital a woman and two men l their faces are pale with fright they rajl are the mother and brothers of one of fro i people rely on ana you m now a book about the hoi from the moment an emergen is called into york county hospital s is speedy efficiency above injure about to bemoved to stretcher righ