The Love We Choose

Chapter 16

Crossing the tiles of the emergency room floor, Huan found Evelyn, the middle-aged, cocoa-complexioned, Unit Secretary working at the desk. "Good evening, Evelyn. I was paged. Where's the patient?"

A look of confusion was plastered on Evelyn's face. Checking her notes, she didn't see where anyone had requested her to page Dr. Zhang. No high level traumas had come in that would make it necessary to contact the surgeon on call. "I'm sorry, Dr. Zhang. You must be mistaken. I didn't call you overhead or page you."

Picking up his pager, he looked down at the numbers that came across again. "According to this," he held up the small plastic block, "someone paged me to the ER."

"Let me ask, Mike. Maybe he did when I stepped away from the desk."

A squat, middle-aged, myopic doctor with salt and peppered short-cropped hair came up to the desk with a huff before she could move to find Mike. "Evenlyn, has the interpreter shown up yet?"

"No, Dr. Krantz. No one has come down from social services."

"Just great. I can't get anything out of this guy. He keeps grunting like I'm supposed to be able to understand him. I don't have time for this. He could be seriously injured and I don't know what to treat him for."

Huan took the time to speak up. "I think I'm the interpreter you requested." He told them.

Looking over at Huan the older doctor sized him up and dismissed him almost immediately. "I doubt it. We don't need a Korean interpreter, we need someone who signs," he emphasized the end of his sentence by waving his hands in the air.

Letting that micro-aggression roll off of his back, Huan kept a cordial appearance. "I can assure you that I wouldn't be able to help you out if you needed a Korean interpreter being that I am Chinese and don't speak Korean. Ah-ah-choo!"

"Bless you." Evelyn told him, handing him a tissue off her desk.

"Thank you. Like I was saying, I am the American Sign Language interpreter on call today. Where's the patient?" He asked, before blowing his nose into the tissue.

Flustered at being called out, Dr. Krantz extended his arm and pointed in the direction of Curtain 3, "he's over here. They picked him up on the side of the road. He was disoriented, running a high fever, and shaking. They thought he was a drunk, but his Tox Screen came back negative. That's when the nurse noticed him moving his hands." The doctor told Huan as he followed him.

Walking behind the curtain, Huan saw a man, not much older than himself lying on the bed. His tan skin was frightfully pale and he was shivering despite being underneath a blanket. An emesis basin was next to him on the bed and had been used recently. Ignoring the stench, Huan placed a kind smile on his face before waving a hand in the man's direction to gain his attention. 'Hi, my name is H-U-A-N. I'm a doctor here. Can you tell me where your pain is greatest?'

The man on the bed perked up a little and signed back, 'my name is J-O-R-D-A-N. My stomach is killing me. My head hurts. I am nauseous. I felt bad for days.'

'Ok. We're going to run some tests and get to the root of this problem.' Huan's calm demeanor put Jordan at ease as he continued to interpret the battery of tests and their results.

Later on, after Huan was done with helping Dr. Krantz's with his patient, who turned out to have a perforated colon, one of the newer nurses came up to him while he was typing his notes up at the desk. Her name was Marisol. She was a buxom tanned woman with straight, shoulder-length chestnut brown hair streaked with blonde highlights. "That was amazing Dr. Zhang. I've never actually seen someone sign before. Your hand movements were so elegant, you must be fluent. Where did you learn? Do you have a family member who is Deaf?" She asked him eagerly.