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Twenty minutes later, we were all sterilized and walking in the OR.
"Zach, I need a green light."
"Yeah, get in. I'll lower her pulse with meds."
"Drill, please," I said, and Mary handed me the instrument.
I placed the drill bit on her skull and fired it up, feeling the bone opening up with a clean whole. A few more millimeters and we would see the brain. Those were the moments when I felt most powerful and confident.
If only all my life could be as easy to manage as drilling into someone's brain.
I went in and did the magic for forty-five minutes. I was ready to close up when the monitor lit up and started beeping.
"Zach?" I asked as calmly as possible without looking away from my incision.
"She's in v-fib, no pulse. Fuck."
"Try shooting her up with adrenaline; you can't use paddles when I have two needles in her head.
He barked an order to London who had everything ready, and they waited for the monitors to shut up while I kept focusing on my job. The smallest tremor of my hand could destroy this woman - I couldn’t afford to panic.
Zach's voice caught my attention.
"London, give me a scalpel."
"Ford, what are you doing?" Double operations were too risky to be made in the heat of the moment, no matter how good at our jobs we thought we were.
"Either you stop what you're doing so we can shock her, or I open her chest to give cardiac massage. Call it fast because she's crashing."
Fuck.
"If I stop now her brain will be drowned by blood."
"Scalpel," he repeated, and once again, I disconnected from what was happening in the room. When I finally had the bleed under control, I looked up to see a desperate Zach, with his arms elbow deep in our patient.
"Fuck. Come on, lady, fight!"
At his side, London was shaking her head. With a disheartened look, she showed me the clock. The woman had no pulse for more than twenty minutes. She was gone.
My mouth dried like I had just gulped a spoonful of dust.
"Zach, let it go." But he didn’t stop from his attempt to bring her back. He went on for five more minutes.
I called his name again, but he didn’t flinch. From behind him, London put her shaking hand on his arm and whispered to him.
"Baby, you need to stop."
"Fuck!" he said, frightening everyone in the room and walking away. "Time of death, eight thirty-four."
Yeah, fuck indeed.
Later, after we were all cleaned up and things started to cool down, I found Zach in a hallway, sitting on a hospital bed.
"You, ok man?"
"Yeah, just feel like shit after that emergency."
"Jessica told me the kid is fine; he only has a broken arm, so something went right."
