Miracles in the ER (22 page)

The Frozen Snake

Lori Davidson burst through the triage entrance, her eyes wide and face flushed.

“Dr. Lesslie, you need to come look at this!”

A middle-aged man in a police uniform was holding a wad of bloody gauze to the left side of his neck. He sat slumped in the wheelchair Lori was pushing, and as they went by, Sergeant Mason Tolliver of the city police looked in my direction, caught my eye, and gave me a weak smile.

Lori wheeled him into major trauma and I dropped the chart in my hand to the countertop and darted after her.

We moved him to the stretcher and jacked the head of the bed to a sitting position. Lori whipped out a pair of large scissors from her dress pocket. She deftly separated his dark blue shirt, neatly swerving around his sergeant’s badge. No time for undoing buttons.

“What happened?” I leaned close to the officer, checked the pulse in his left wrist, and carefully began to peel the layers of gauze from his neck.

“Something silly.” He slowly shook his head a few times.

“Is he okay?” Through the doorway dashed a young policeman, Chad Brinkley. He had his partner’s blood smeared on his hands and forearms. “Is he going to be alright?”

Brinkley’s chest was heaving, and his pale face turned first to his partner and then to me.

“I’m going to be fine, Chad.” Mason extended his right hand and the younger officer grabbed it.

“Let’s take a look.” I removed the last piece of gauze and glanced up at the overhead light. Lori stepped beside me, reached up, and adjusted the bright beam, focusing it on the gaping seven-inch wound. It extended from just below Mason’s left ear to his collarbone. Blood was flowing from the edges of torn skin and muscle, but nothing was spurting—not yet.

Brinkley gasped and took a faltering step backward.

I saw movement in the doorway and looked over at Amy Connors. “What do you need, Dr. Lesslie?”

I glanced down at the wounded officer. Lori was starting an IV in his right arm and had several filled tubes of blood lying on the stretcher. “We’ll need another IV,” I said quietly to the nurse. Then to Amy, “We need lab stat, and a portable chest X-ray.”

The secretary turned and I called after her, “And see who’s on call for general surgery.”

“Already done it.” Harriet Gray slipped around the exiting Amy and stepped into the room. “Dr. Ravenel is upstairs making rounds and is headed this way.”

“Thanks, Harriet.” I nodded at her and turned back to Mason Tolliver. “Any other wounds that you know of, Sergeant?” He was now stripped from the waist up and I didn’t see any other obvious injury.

“Nope, I think this is it.” He tucked his chin to the left and smiled. “Probably enough, I suppose.”

I heard shallow panting behind me. Lori quickly looked up and over my shoulder. Before I could turn around, Harriet had grabbed the arm of Officer Brinkley and guided him to a nearby chair.

“Have a seat, son,” she told the pasty-white and sweating private. “Take a few slow, deep breaths. There, that’s it.”

“He’s not used to this,” Mason whispered. “It took him by surprise. Took
me
by surprise too.”

“Who did this?” I leaned him forward a little, checking for any other wounds of his upper back.

He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Freddy Parsons.”

Lori’s head jerked up and her eyes sought mine.

From behind me I heard Harriet’s “hmm-hmm,” and the sixty-year-old nurse stepped over to the stretcher.

She put her hands on the rail and looked down at Mason. “Freddy Parsons.” Her words were slow, deliberate, and they hung heavily in the air above his bed.

Trying to get a good look at Mason’s entire back, I twisted around him and saw the one-inch circular scar—still purplish and angry.

“The same Freddy Parsons who shot you in the back ten years ago?” This time Harriet’s voice was a low rumble. “I thought he was in prison.”

Sergeant Mason Tolliver and his partner, Danny Childs, were responding to an altercation on Dutchman Street. “Gunshots fired,” the dispatcher had warned.

It was midnight, the middle of winter, and the two officers were the first at the scene.

Mason looked at the younger officer and noticed his incessant lip-licking. “First time?”

Danny kept staring at the ramshackle house in front of them and nodded—and licked his lips.

“That’s okay.” Mason reached out and put a firm hand on Childs’s shoulder. “Just let me take the lead on this one.”

They slowly approached the sad clapboard dwelling and were halfway up the cracked cement sidewalk, when the rickety screen door flew open. They froze, pointing their weapons, as two teenage boys bolted out the door, glanced once in their direction, and hightailed it for the nearby woods.

Danny took a step in their direction and Mason grabbed his elbow. “Nope, not them. We’re going inside.”

The screen door was bravely hanging by one twisted, rusted hinge, and almost fell off when Mason moved it aside. The officers stepped into what could once have been a comfortable living room. Now it was only dank, dark, and depressing. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, splashing shadows on a couple of worn chairs and a tattered, blue sofa. The young man sitting on the sofa looked up as the officers approached, his eyes glazed from some illicit medication, his brain absent.

“Put your hands on your head!” Danny called out. When the man didn’t respond, he repeated his order, louder this time. Still no response.

Danny was moving toward the sofa, when the gunshot exploded in his ears. A burning sensation tore through his left hand and up his arm. He spun to his left, just as Mason fell awkwardly to the floor and a sickening
thump
echoed through the cold, gloomy room.

Freddy Parsons sat in a dilapidated wooden chair, its wobbly legs straining to hold his weight. He was holding a .38 in his hand, pointing it at the fallen police officer.

Later, after the adrenaline cleared his brain and he could think clearly, Danny tried to remember what happened next.

“I don’t know why I didn’t shoot the guy right then and there. I was
squeezing down on the trigger, bracing myself for the shot, and the man looked at me and tossed the gun on the floor. Then he put his hands up in the air and sat there, grinning.”

The slug from Freddy Parsons’ .38 had passed through Danny’s left hand before hitting Mason in his back. The sergeant had surgery that night and recovered without any complications. Danny Childs resigned from the police force and moved from Rock Hill with his wife and two small children. Freddy Parsons went to prison.

While in the “big house” in Columbia, Freddy had been visited by Mason Tolliver. At first Freddy wouldn’t utter a word. Over time the two developed a kind of relationship—not quite a friendship—but they began to talk with each other.

Freddy behaved, studied some automotive repair books, and was going to “make a new start” when he got out of prison. Mason encouraged the younger man and advised him to keep his nose clean. The officer continued his visits every couple of months until Freddy was finally released. “Good behavior,” the report had read. “Good chance of becoming a productive member of society.”

“So it
was
Freddy Parsons who did this to you.” Harriet stepped over to the stretcher and put a hand on Mason’s shoulder. “How did
this
happen?”

The chair behind us grated roughly across the floor and officer Chad Brinkley rose slowly to his feet. “I’ll tell you how it happened, Mrs. Gray. Sarge and I were responding to an altercation and were the first unit to arrive. We walked into this beat-up house on Dutchman and found this guy—Freddy Parsons—sitting on a coffee table. Sarge knew him and they started talking. Seemed like friends and all.”

I glanced down at Mason. His eyes were closed, squeezed shut as if his partner’s words were arrows.

“Everything seemed calm,” Chad continued. “Then all of a sudden these two guys busted out of the back room and headed for the front door. I grabbed my weapon and was about to holler for them to stop, when Freddy jumped up with this huge knife and slashed Sarge’s throat. Blood was flying everywhere—they were all out the door before I could do anything. I ripped off part of my shirt and held it over his neck till the EMS got there.”

“Thanks again, Chad.” Mason’s eyes were open once more, and he was looking at the young policeman.

Harriet squeezed Mason’s shoulder. “A frozen snake.” She looked down at the sergeant and smiled.

With eyebrows raised, he stared up at the nurse and slowly shook his head.

“Let me explain.” Harriet shifted her feet and settled against the stretcher rail. “The story goes like this—there was this man, about your age I think, and he was walking to town one day. There had been a terrible blizzard and snow was everywhere. It was freezing. The man could barely see to take one step in front of the other, but all of a sudden, he saw a snake lying in the middle of the road—frozen solid. He stopped, bent over, and picked up that snake—stiff as a stick. Now you need to understand something about this man—he was kindhearted and didn’t like to see anything or anyone suffer. So he opened up his jacket and tucked that snake up against his neck, trying to warm it up.

“After a couple of miles, he felt the snake begin to move a little, to wriggle around. Then out of nowhere, the snake bit him! Right on the neck! The man reached down, grabbed the snake, and held it in front of him. ‘Why did you bite me?’ he demanded. ‘I rescued you from the frozen road and warmed you—I brought you back to life.’ Well, the snake just looked at the man all beady-eyed and finally said, ‘You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.’ ”

The room was silent. Harriet raised her eyebrows, looked down at Sergeant Tolliver, and slowly nodded. “Mason, you
knew
Freddy Parsons was a snake.”

The police officer didn’t say anything for a moment—he just lay there.

Finally he looked up at the grandmotherly nurse, and a smile slowly spread across his face.

Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

M
ATTHEW
18:21-22

T
HE
Miracle
OF
H
UMILITY

All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

J
ESUS
, in Luke 14:11