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She dove into the fray, dealing with patients as efficiently as she could before moving on to the next. Agnes knew that she was more valuable here in her role as a leader than a surgeon. She delegated and organized, seeing patients herself when no one else was available.
She was just handing over a head trauma to her last free neurosurgeon when shouting caught her attention, even over the general uproar in the ER.
“NO! You’re fucking lying to me—my wife is NOT dead!”
Cora took a careful step back from the irate man. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Jackson. She died in the ER; she never even made it to the operating table. If you would like to see her, one of the nurses can take you to the morgue and—”
“FUCK YOU, SHE IS NOT DEAD!”
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Mr. Jackson grabbed Cora by her scrubs and slammed her against the wall so hard that the crunching sound could be heard from all the way across the room. Cora’s head slammed against the wall and she instantly crumpled.
“NO!”
Agnes felt like she was in one of those dreams where you try to run, but you get nowhere. She couldn’t get to Cora fast enough.
Security piled Jackson, dragging him away as he kicked and screamed, but Agnes didn’t care about him. All she cared about was Cora. Scenes from Jackie’s death played before her eyes. This couldn’t be happening to her. Not again.
She flung herself to her knees next to Cora, resisting the urge to shake her. Agnes had been a doctor too long to give in to such potentially lethal urges.
“Cora? Can you hear me?”
No response. Agnes reached a shaking hand out to feel for a pulse, nearly collapsing in relief when she felt one. Cora’s heartbeat was unsteady, but it was there.
“Stephanie! Get her to CT, now!”
Stephanie already had a gurney waiting. She and Agnes lifted Cora’s limp body onto the gurney. They pushed it through the chaotic ER to the elevator and Agnes slammed her fist into the button for the third floor.
In normal circumstances, she would see other patients while waiting for the CT results, but these weren’t normal circumstances. There was absolutely nothing that would pry her away from Cora’s side at this point.
Maybe Cora had just been knocked out. It could be nothing more than a mild concussion. But Agnes had heard the crunching as Cora’s head had hit the wall.
She paced as they loaded Cora into CT and then watched the screen impatiently for the results.
When the images started showing on screen, Agnes stopped breathing.
There it was, too clear for this to be some kind of nightmarish hallucination. A brain bleed—a big one.
“Get her into surgery!” Agnes shrieked. Stephanie was already moving, getting Cora out of the CT machine. Agnes hurried to help, laying her back on the gurney as gently as possible given the urgency of the situation.
“All of our other neurosurgeons are in urgent surgeries, Agnes. You’ll have to do it.”
Agnes stumbled to a halt, but Stephanie wasn’t waiting for her. She hurried to catch up with the gurney before it turned the corner.
“Stephanie, I can’t.”
“I know it’s not ideal, but we don’t have a lot of options here.”
Agnes knew she was right. She shouldn’t be operating on Cora. It was against hospital policy for surgeons to operate on loved ones, and for good reason. She couldn’t possibly be objective in this situation.
However, Agnes had seen that brain bleed. It would be a tricky repair, navigating around all the important areas to ensure that Cora wasn’t permanently crippled by the surgery. As scared as she was of doing this, Agnes was even more afraid to trust it to anyone else.
One thing she knew for sure, if anything happened to Cora because she wasn’t good enough to save her, Agnes would never forgive herself.
She glanced down at her hands, which were thankfully steady.
Agnes had never performed a surgery like this before—one with such high personal stakes. The OR was already filling with people—surgical nurses and interns, all waiting for Agnes to step in and start directing them.
Agnes scrubbed, using those few minutes to calm herself. She did her best to distance herself from the situation. This was just another brain bleed that she needed to repair. She couldn’t allow herself to think about anything more than that.
