Page 46 of Fighting For You

She looked up at me one more time. Then she stepped back, smoothed her hair, and started walking toward the other end of the bay.

I slid the photograph back into the liner, set the helmet on the shelf, and followed her.

CHAPTER 12

The Ask

NORA

Working in an ER is almost like fighting on a battlefield every day. You're on your feet for twelve hours, alert and ready for whatever comes through those doors. You're keeping injured and ailing people alive while more keep arriving. Stretchers come through the bay, walk-ins fill up triage, ambulances back up in the loop outside. The work doesn't stop because you're tired, and it doesn't slow down because you just finished the last one.

But it's not the work of treating patients that's going to wear you down. It's managing their anxiety.

Every patient in this department is having one of the worst days of their life. They're scared, they're in pain, they don't understand what's happening to them, and they're stuck in a bed waiting for someone to tell them whether they're okay. That fear doesn't sit quietly. It turns into anger, into impatience, into pressing the call button every five minutes, into snapping at the nurse who finally walks in.

Managing the person, not just the medicine, is the invisible part of the job. You check in. You explain what's happening even when there's nothing new to report. You give them a face and a timeline so the fear has somewhere to land besides their own chest.

And when a nurse doesn't do that, the patient sits alone. The gap fills with fear, and by the time the attending rounds on bay twelve, the patient isn't just waiting for results. He's angry. And his anger is justified because the job isn't just "draw the blood and come back when the lab calls." The job is the whole person in the bed.

Midmorning, Harlan stopped outside bay twelve during rounds. I was charting two bays down and heard the conversation through the curtain.

"Doc, I've been here two hours and nobody's checked on me since the blood draw."

Harlan looked at the whiteboard, then at the chart. Bay twelve was Liz's.

He found her at the nurses' station.

"Your patient in twelve says he hasn't been reassessed since his labs were drawn. His troponin's back and I need updated vitals before I can make a disposition. What happened?"

Liz's face went tight. "I've been managing four other bays. Fourteen coded⁠—"

"Fourteen didn't code. Fourteen had a pressure drop and was stabilized thirty minutes ago." His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Bay twelve needs vitals and a reassessment. Now, please."

Liz stood up and walked to bay twelve without a word. Jen, who had been charting beside her, didn't look up from her screen. The silence between them said enough.

Five minutes later, Harlan stopped at my workstation.

"Avery. Seven's labs are back. Walk me through what you're seeing."

I pulled up the results. We went through them together: the white count, the lactate, the trending creatinine. He listened, asked two follow-up questions, and nodded.

"Good. Let's get the repeat in four hours and keep the fluid running. If the lactate doesn't trend down, page me directly."

He moved on.

From the nurses' station, Liz watched him walk away.

Liz and Jen were already in the break room when I walked in for my fifteen.

They were at the table by the window, coffees in front of them, mid-conversation about something that stopped when I came through the door. I sat at the other table, pulled out my sandwich, and unwrapped it.

"Harlan's really nice to you, isn't he?"

Liz said it without turning around. Casual, like she was still talking to Jen and I just happened to be in the room.

"He's like that with everyone."

"Is he?" She stirred her coffee. "Because it seems like he has a lot of time for you specifically. Pulling you onto cases, walking through labs with you at the workstation." She took a sip. "He doesn't do that with all of us."