Sins of the Son

Pho­to by Brett Sayles from Pex­els

Sins of the Son
By Torn Macalester

“Did you hear it?” The patient asked over the cacoph­o­ny of emer­gency equip­ment as the doc­tor worked on him and six oth­er patients that were near­ly as bad.

“Hear what?” The doc­tor asked, plac­ing the gauze pads over the burns. “Make sure we clear his lungs. We need a scope in him as soon as possible.”

“She’s singing to us.”

“What is she singing?” Doc­tor answered, look­ing at his eyes. One seemed burned, but the oth­er remained clear. Triage put him in the urgent cat­e­go­ry, but the bil­lion­aire made every­thing dis­tort­ed. “Damn.”

“She’s going to save us.”

Fig­ures, he thought. All I need is Mor­ris Mason’s son to turn into a lunatic. This is not my day. The doc­tor had been work­ing con­stant­ly since the explo­sion. The explo­sion at Yel­low­stone result­ed in hot rock hurled hun­dreds of miles into Ida­ho. The result­ing fires and sub­se­quent ash­fall from the explo­sion turned Ida­ho City into a dis­as­ter. Hun­dreds of injuries had choked the hos­pi­tal with patients.

About four hours after the explo­sion, a truck drove into the emer­gency lane, bring­ing the patient. He was Mark Mason, the son of the bil­lion­aire own­er of Mason Ener­gy. The doc­tor had been busy, and triage had pushed Mark in the sec­ond cat­e­go­ry. Now, after a threat­en­ing phone call over a sat phone, the doc­tor tried to keep the emer­gent patients alive but also treat Mark’s urgent injuries.

“How is she going to save us?”

“The Earth is dying.” Mark said, incoherently.

“Looks like it.”

“We have to move.”

“Move?” The doc­tor turned to the assis­tant. “I need to increase the oxy­gen. I think he’s hallucinating.”

“No,” said Mark. “She’ll help us. She knows what we need to do.”

An oxy­gen mask muf­fled Mark’s voice. The doc­tor won­dered about the words spo­ken in the delir­i­um. Is there any­thing to do to save us from this doom?  Snap out of it. You need to keep sav­ing lives.

“Doc­tor, can you help over here?” Asked an order­ly from a near­by bed.

The doc­tor left Mark’s side and con­tin­ued the hard work of sav­ing lives.