“Emergency” is a short story about the misadventures of a hospital clerk, known as “Fuckhead”, and an orderly named Georgie. In this story, Georgie steals medications from the hospital supply closet. Georgie seems to be spaced out throughout the entire story. Fuckhead has a tendency to wander around when he feels there is nothing to do. Tonight while working the overnight shift in the emergency room, a man comes in with a knife in his eye. Put there by his wife after he gets caught watching his neighbor sunbathe. The on duty doctor is adamant about having the surgeon and anesthesiologist on duty for the surgery because it is over his head. While supposedly prepping the man for surgery, Georgie returns to the front desk with the knife that was once embedded in the man’s eye in his hand.
For most of this story, I felt as though I was on one of Georgie’s supply closet drug trips. There was a certain disjuncture that somewhat confused me. In some instances, I failed to see what one story had to do with the other. The part that brought it together for me was when Georgie made sure Hardee made it to Canada. That was the connecting factor to me, but to a certain extent I wondered why the other section was important. I understood where Georgie trying to save the bunnies supports that he “saves lives” but, it seems like Johnson took the long way around making his point.
For the most part, I liked the characters. Johnson provides us with necessary characters (Terrence Weber, Nurse, the doctor) but does not waste time trying to make them all major characters. He just gives everyone distinguishing personalities and let the dialogue support the characters. I also like that he doesn’t spend a lot of time describing the setting since pretty much all people are familiar with the way a hospital looks. He instead describes the aspects that aren’t in every hospital (i.e: the scripture quoting intercom).
