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The waiting room was wall-to-wall people. Interspersed among the usual crowd of flu sufferers, home accident casualties, and car crash victims were the survivors from the Main Drag shooting in bloodstained formal wear.
People squeezed onto crowded waiting room benches and huddled together on the floor. The more severely injured lay on gurneys stacked two deep against the walls. Medical personnel hurried about, leaving shoe prints on the blood-speckled linoleum.
The sounds of sobbing melded with muffled voices from the televisions mounted on the wall. The tension and trauma was so palpable I could literally taste it—a metallic, bitter flavor that cut through me like a Japanese blade.
Conor stopped abruptly, as if his feet were cemented to the floor. He looked like a man walking to hi
