"Oh. Jack." She closed her eyes and groaned. "My head hurts."

He gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "We'll take good care of you, sweetheart. Don't worry about a thing." They wheeled her through the ER doors, toward the trauma room.

"You know her?" Anna asked him.

"Her husband's Bill Haning. The astronaut."

"You mean one of the guys up on the space station?" Anna laughed. "Now, there's a long distance phone call."

"It's no problem reaching him, if we have to. JSC can put a call right through."

"You want me to take this patient?" It was a reasonable question to ask.

Doctors usually avoided treating friends and family, you cannot remain objective when the patient in cardiac arrest on the table is someone you know and like. Although he and Debbie had once attended the same social functions, Jack considered her merely an acquaintance, not a friend, and he felt comfortable acting as her physician.

"I'll take her," he said, and followed the gurney into the trauma room.

His mind was already leaping ahead to what needed to be done. Her only visible injury was the scalp laceration, but since she had clearly suffered trauma to her head, he had to rule out fractures of the skull and cervical spine.

As the nurses drew blood for labs and gently pulled off the rest of Debbie's clothing, the ambulance attendant gave Jack a quick history.

"She was about the fifth car in the pileup. Far as we could tell, she got rear-ended, her car spun sideways, and then she got hit again, on the driver's side. Door was caved in."

"Was she awake when you got to her?"

"She was unconscious for a few minutes. Woke up while we were putting in the IV. We got her spine immobilized right away. BP and heart rhythm have been stable. She's one of the lucky ones."

The attendant shook his head. "You should've seen the guy behind her." Jack moved to the gurney to examine the patient. Both of Debbie's pupils reacted to light, and her extraocular movements were normal. She knew her own name and where she was, but could not recall the date. Oriented only times two, he thought. It was enough to admit her, if only for overnight observation.