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Daniel scrubbed up, then he entered the cardiac lab. Once there, he slipped on his sterile gloves.
He shivered at the frigid temperature, but from experience he knew the heat from the lights and the knowledge he held someone’s life in his hands would soon have him sweating. Although a fairly simple procedure, he never took life for granted or how quickly the tides could turn when you placed a foreign object into someone’s heart.
Each person he worked on was someone’s husband, wife, sister, brother, mother, father, loved one. If he messed up, more than just the patient paid the consequences. That alone made him take his time, do the best he could each and every time he became directly responsible for someone’s life.
From the corner of his eye he noted the audience at the far side of the operating room. With their light blue scrubs, face masks, hair bonnets, and shoe covers, the group of seven were medical students and the Cardico marketing executive.
He preferred to meet the sales representatives prior to them observing, but this one hadn’t arrived until late last night and he’d missed the scheduled meeting with her that morning. One of his research study patients had been rushed into the emergency room due to fluid overload. He’d stabilized her and the ongoing study was not compromised. Besides, he didn’t feel guilty at standing up Kimberly Brookes as her rescheduling had already held up his schedule two times too many.
Out of courtesy, more than anything, Daniel said a quick hello to the woman having the pacemaker placement. Sedation flowed into her via the IV in her right wrist and although she was awake, she wasn’t lucid. He always made face-to-face contact with his patients prior to a procedure, visually and mentally making sure he had the right person.
Ellen Mills, sixty-seven, obese, and suffering from severe fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness, and bradycardia, a slow heart rate caused by a left bundle branch block.
Daniel glanced at the monitor, mentally reviewed his pre-op notes, then watched the operating room nurse clean the woman’s chest with antiseptic. Next, she placed an adhesive drape around the area where he would make the incision.
With Ellen readied, he picked up a sterile blade and made a two-inch straight cut a couple of inches beneath her left collarbone, slicing through skin and tissue. Using an imaging device called fluoroscopy to guide his movements, he painstakingly inserted the pacemaker leads into a large vein, easing the wire to the heart.
Daniel funneled a lead to the desired area within the right atrium of Ellen’s heart and screwed it into the muscle wall, making sure it was securely anchored. Next, he inserted a lead into the right ventricle and screwed it into the heart wall.
The last lead always proved the most difficult and riskiest of the lead placements. With single-minded focus and steady hands, he threaded the third lead through the coronary sinus and into the left ventricle, checked placement, then screwed the lead into the thickened heart tissue.
The operating room nurse dabbed a hint of moisture from his brow.
Daniel carefully double-checked the wire placements and made sure all three leads remained in the desired spots. He slid the thin square battery-operated generator into the incision and anchored it to where he wanted it to rest for the eight or so years that the unit would reside inside Ellen.
Daniel smiled. It would be eight years before the unit needed to be replaced compared to the former six. Two extra years before a patient had to go through the procedure again, thanks to Cardico’s advanced battery technology.
The computer chip in the generator would sense when Ellen’s heart needed to beat and would pace the rhythm to make the heart eject blood efficiently.
First watching the monitor screen to ensure the pacemaker functioned properly, he stitched up the incision. When he’d tied off the last stitch, he removed his gloves and squeezed Ellen’s hand.
“I’m finished, and everything went perfectly. I’ll be by your hospital room later this afternoon to check on your progress,” he told the woman.
Still a bit dazed, Ellen clasped his hand and nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Travis.”
Daniel nodded, then turned to the students and the Cardico representative. He would give a guest lecture later in the week, but for now the students’ instructor would review the procedure with them. However, Daniel’s job entailed meeting and greeting Kimberly Brookes.
Despite wearing identical surgical garb to the students, he immediately spotted her. As the students removed their face masks, she stood slightly to the left of them. Even through the baggy blue fabric, her femininely curved body caused his gaze to linger in appreciation. Truth be told, his noticing surprised him as months had gone by since the opposite sex had held much interest for him.
Besides Ms. Brookes’s delectable body, he could see her tension. Anxiety radiated from her every pore. Was she weak-stomached and the procedure had got to her? As placing the device involved very little blood, few got squeamish or light-headed. Very few.
Annoyed at what he suspected would cause yet another delay, his gaze lifted to hers.
He knew those eyes.
His body tightened with tension and his own stomach weakened.
What the hell was Kimberly Duff doing in his cardiac lab?
CHAPTER TWO
DANIEL pulled himself together with lightning speed, quickly masking his shock at seeing his one-and-only heartbreak.
His Kimberly had gone to nursing school and worked for a medical equipment comp
any? Last he’d heard she planned to go to California to pursue an acting career after she finished high school. Perhaps Hollywood hadn’t glittered quite as brightly as she’d thought.
A nurse.
