"Not much out there," she said.

"You know it?" Baker said.

"I grew up around there." She smiled slightly. "Chinle."

They wheeled the old man, still shouting, through a swinging door. Dr. Tsosie said, "If you'll wait here, I'll get back to you as soon as I know something. It'll probably be a while. You might want to go get lunch."

Beverly Tsosie had a staff position at University Hospital in Albuquerque, but lately she'd been coming to Gallup two days a week to be with her elderly grandmother, and on those days she worked a shift in the McKinley Trauma Unit to make extra money. She liked McKinley, with its modern exterior painted in bold red and cream stripes. The hospital was really dedicated to the community. And she liked Gallup, a smaller town than Albuquerque, and a place where she felt more comfortable with a tribal background.

Most days, the Trauma Unit was pretty quiet. So the arrival of this old man, agitated and shouting, was causing a lot of commotion. She pushed through the curtains into the cubicle, where the orderlies had already stripped off the brown felt robes and removed his Nikes. But the old man was still struggling, fighting them, so they had to leave him strapped down. They were cutting his jeans and the plaid shirt away.

Nancy Hood, the senior unit nurse, said it didn't matter because his shirt had a big defect anyway; across the pocket there ran a jagged line where the pattern didn't match. "He already tore it and sewed it back together. You ask me, pretty lousy job, too."

"No," said one of the orderlies, holding up the shirt. "It's never been sewn together, it's all one piece of cloth. Weird, the pattern doesn't line up because one side is bigger than the other…"

"Whatever, he won't miss it," Nancy Hood said, and tossed it on the floor. She turned to Tsosie. "You want to try and examine him?"

The man was far too wild. "Not yet. Let's get an IV in each arm. And go through his pockets. See if he's got any identification at all. If he doesn't, take his fingerprints and fax them to D.C.; maybe he'll show up on a database there."



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