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“Stewart!”
I turn my attention to Dr. Carter. She raises the rails on bed four, and the nurses move like lightning to get the patient she’s seeing rolling out of the room.
“OR. Scrub in as my assisting. Possible cardiac laceration. We need to get in there.”
A nurse comes up behind me, taking over with Mr. Shaw, and I hurry after Dr. Carter.
* * *
“Blood pressure is dropping. He’s going to code.”
The OR nurse calls out from the monitor, and I hold steady, retracting for Dr. Carter.
“I can’t find the damn leak. I need more suction!”
Another nurse comes in to clear the area of blood. Our patient is losing the stuff way too fast, and we all know that somewhere in the heart, there’s a bleed we can’t see.
Suction comes, giving us a bit more visibility, and Dr. Carter finds the injury at the bottom portion of the organ.
“Got it.” A nurse dabs her forehead as another switches her to the suturing implements. “Come on. Get suction in here.”
We struggle with the laceration for seven more minutes, but the blood loss is critical, and the patient codes on the table. It’s twenty more minutes of fighting tooth and nail for this guy, trying our hardest to keep his heart beating and stabilize him after the severe oxygen depletion thanks to the hemorrhage.
It doesn’t work.
“Time of death 7:17 p.m.”
After that, I don’t hear much of what the nurses say. Exhaustion hits both me and Dr. Carter like a damn freight train.
I can see it in her eyes, just like she can probably see it in mine.
We hate to lose patients. It doesn’t matter who it is, and I can see she’s especially pissed about this one.
Pulling her toward the sink to get cleaned up, I help take off her mask and remove her gloves, tossing them in the surgery bin with mine.
“Hey, you did everything you could. You know that. You always do.”
Dr. Carter nods. “I know. I just…damn. If I’d caught the bleed earlier.”
The sound of the rushing water as we scrub our hands is a gentle whoosh that fills the otherwise silent area.
“You can’t start that.” I meet her eyes hard. “Like you’ve told me—you do the best you can, and you live with it.”
She nods, sighing.
“How about I tell any next of kin?” I offer.
With a tired smile, she puts a hand on my arm. “Thank you, Clara.”
“Any time, Linda.”
I exit the operating room, finding the nurses who’ve been manning the visitors associated with the warehouse incident. It doesn’t take long for them to point me in the direction of what I have to assume is the deceased’s crew.
They are a grim, downright terrifying group, and I thank my lucky stars that I’m in the hospital with security guards just a few feet away.
As I look away from them, I notice Mr. Shaw smile in my direction. Then he spots the group of people I’m about to talk to, his grin quickly fading.
Yeah, this is going to be rough.
