A walkie-talkie squawked, cell phones rang, men talked, engines clanged, soot-grimed faces carried a charred body. I shut my eyes and let the current pull me away.

I came to briefly when the ambulance arrived. I stumbled to the rear doors on my own, but the EMT crew had to lift me into the back. When they had me strapped in, awkwardly, on my side, the jolting of the ambulance drew me down to a tiny point of pain. If I shut my eyes I felt sick to my stomach, but the light stabbed through me when I opened them.

As we swooped in through the ambulance entrance, I vaguely noticed the hospital’s name, but it was all I could do to mutter answers to the questions the triage nurse was asking. I somehow got my insurance card out of my wallet, signed forms, put down Lotty Herschel as my doctor, told them to notify Mr. Contreras if anything happened to me. I tried to call Morrell, but they wouldn’t let me use my cell phone, and, anyway, they had me on a gurney. Someone stuck a needle into the back of my hand, other someones stood over me saying they’d have to cut away my clothes.

I tried to protest: I was wearing a good suit under my navy peacoat, but by then the drug was taking hold and my words came out in a senseless gabble. I was never completely anesthetized, but they must have given me an amnesia drug: I couldn’t remember them cutting off my clothes or taking out the piece of window frame from my back.

I was conscious by the time I was wheeled to a bed. The drugs and a throb in my shoulder both kept jerking me awake whenever I dozed off. When the resident came in at six, I was awake in that dull, grinding way that comes from a sleepless night and puts a layer of gauze between you and the world.

She’d been up all night herself, handling surgical emergencies like mine; even though her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, she was young enough to perch on the chair by my bed and talk in a bright, almost perky voice.