10 minutes earlier, the ambulance bay doors had burst open. Four men in camouflage carried their leader inside while the dog ran beside them. The clerk at the front desk said the man walked in on his own first.
He swayed. He asked her one quiet question, then he dropped like a felled tree. The cler still shook in the corner.”He was asking for someone,” she told the charge nurse.”I only caught one word.
He said,”Doc.” The word landed in Iris’s chest like a dropped instrument tray. Monica Tvaris, the charge nurse, saw her face change.”Iris, you okay?”
Iris said nothing. She was looking at the dog. The heart monitor ticked.
A resident whispered,”Is he going to bite?” Another one backed into a pole and caught it before it fell. Nobody dared to breathe loudly.
She knew that stance. She knew the notch in his left ear. She knew how his weight shifted when something was wrong with the person he guarded.
