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“But it’s loud,” Leo’s tiny voice murmurs over the phone.
I rub my hand over my eyes. “Why don’t you wake Abuela?”
“She’s sleeping,” he says emphatically. “Snoring. Her snoring scares me.”
“Leo, Mami’s at work, okay? You crawl into bed with Abuela and she’ll protect you from the rain, okay?” Curse these rare desert rains. They scare the crap out of kids and dogs alike. Of course, it had to happen in the middle of my shift too when I only have a couple of minutes. “You’re brave, Leo. You went all the way to the kitchen to get Abuela’s phone, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, fear still in his voice.
I smile, tucking myself further into the alcove to avoid the eyes of a passing nurse who might tattle on me to hospital administration for taking a call during my shift. “Then you can face anything. A storm? That’s nothing.”
There’s a roll of thunder outside, loud enough that I can hear it outside the hospital and through the phone. Leo cries out.
“Hey, listen, baby, it’s okay. You know when you’re upset and you cry and sometimes you get angry and you yell?” I ask.
“Yeah?” he says, his voice gliding up, even higher pitched than usual.
My poor baby. “That’s just what nature has to do sometimes. She can’t be bright and sunny all the time.” Just like Mami, I want to add because lord knows I’m not always at my best, despite my every attempt to be for my little guy.
“Mother Nature gets upset like that?”
“Yes, of course she does. You would too if so many people littered!”
Leo giggles. My chest warms.
“Now, go wake Abuela up and –“
They get one thing right on TV about emergency rooms. The doors always slam open when there’s an emergency. And tonight is no different. The double doors smash into the walls, capturing my attention immediately. The rain-soaked EMTs line the gurney, looking for the eyes of a doctor.
And I’m on call.
“Leo, I gotta go, okay, I love you so much.” I hang up before hearing his reply, trying not to imagine the sad look he’ll give the phone when it’s disconnected.
I run over to the gurney, grabbing gloves as I go. I shove them on as I take in the patient laid out before me. A biker in scraped-up leathers. Motorcycles are coffins on wheels. One of the EMTs has already started chest compressions.
“What have we got?” I ask.
“Accident on the highway,” the other EMT, Collette says through heavy breaths. “He was alert in the ambulance but just went unconscious and –”
I shove my hand against his neck. Weak pulse. Unconscious. Chest barely rising with breath. Gotta get moving. “Defib, stat!” I call out over my shoulder.
We pull the gurney out of the way and a nurse arrives at my side with the defibrillator.
I pull open the patient’s shirt, revealing his tattooed chest. There’s a large purple splotch forming under his skin. “Internal bleeding,” I mutter. “Someone get the intravenous fluids going.”
I hear a resident cry out, “On it!” and I trust that she is truly on it because I’ve got to focus on keeping this man alive first before anything else matters.
The nurse wipes down the man’s chest while engaging the defibrillator, choosing the correct mode and energy level for the patient. It’s a complicated process that has become innate over my years in the ER.
I place the paddles on his chest, engage the paddles with a press of a button, and wait for the orange lights to flash to indicate the paddles are charged. With a momentary glance upward, I lock eyes with my resident, Amina, who’s in the middle of figuring out the fluids. “Clear!”
“Got it,” she says nervously, nearly dropping the bag she was working with.
I press the buttons; the patient’s body lurches upward.
“Shock delivered,” the machine says robotically.
I press my hand up to the man’s neck and feel the thumping in my fingers. I resist a smile of relief. It’s just a normal day in the ER. Nothing novel about saving someone’s life. Still, it gives me a tiny bit of a thrill every time and lets me know all those years of school weren’t a waste. “Okay, let’s deal with the bleeding, get him on an EKG, and –“
