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“Construction site accident. He wasn’t harnessed in, and he fell. His blood alcohol level is more than twice the legal limit, which only complicates this further.”
“Damn,” I mutter.
“Seriously,” Cricket snarks. “What kind of moron is drunk at seven in the morning on a construction site?”
“Someone with a problem from the sound of it,” I retort. “What’s your plan?”
“Dr. Lawson and I are doing the surgery. You’re just here to help like one of the nurses.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline, and I glance over at the nurses in here who are—rightfully so—pissed at the snotty implication that nurses aren’t just as important as doctors, which is absolute bullshit.
Bennett gives Cricket a hard look for that comment too, but then turns back to me. “Dr. Peterson and I are going to go scrub in, but I want you to stay with the patient and keep him as steady as possible.”
Cricket gives me a bright and shiny smug grin, and I so want to tell Cricket to fuck herself with the rusty pole, but I keep my mouth shut and my jaw clenched.
“What a bitch,” I mutter under my breath the moment they’re gone.
“A serious bitch,” Martha, the nurse helping to hold up the patient, says.
The anesthesiologist snickers. “You need to be careful, Katy. She bashes you every chance she gets and is quick to steal surgeries.”
“She’s like an ambulance chaser,” I drawl. “A surgical bottom feeder. But for real, have you ever seen anything like this? What is that tool in his side?”
“On X-ray, it looks like some kind of pliers.”
I wince. “Ouch.”
The OR doors swing open, and Bennett and Cricket return along with some interns and second-and-third-year residents who are eager to watch since cases like this don’t come along every day and will require a lot of moving parts to make it successful.
“Thank you, Dr. Barrows. I can have one of the interns come and spell you.”
Dr. Fields comes in and takes over holding the patient up for me. “Can I scrub in?”
Bennett gives me a long look as if he’s debating that but then nods. “Yeah. Go ahead, but be quick.”
I catch Cricket complaining about that, but she can eat my ass if she thinks I’m not scrubbing in. I set my phone to vibrate and drop it on the table along with the others before I fly out of the OR to scrub in at light speed. In a flash, I’m back in, getting regowned and gloved up, and then coming in and going exactly where Bennett points me to.
“Katy, I want you on the other side there beside Cricket. We’re going to start with the tool first since the pole is tamponading any bleeders in the chest, and it appears that the pliers are pressing right into his liver, which is bleeding profusely. Let’s move fast, pack off, and cauterize what we can so we can move onto the pole and then open him up.”
An incision is made, and then the three of us get to work, packing off the liver that is not in good shape. I’m shaking from the adrenaline, which is a bit odd since I never shake in situations like this, but then again, this isn’t an everyday trauma.
“It’s sclerosed,” Cricket laments. “I don’t see how we’re going to be able to stop the bleeding like this.”
It’s true. The liver has a lot of damage from what appears to be years of alcohol abuse, and unfortunately, sclerosed livers bleed and don’t clot well. It’s an absolute mess. More blood is hung to transfuse and keep the patient’s vitals stable—which they shockingly are—and we do what we can before the team starts in with the saw to cut the pole. We stand back while they do this, oxygen turned off as sparks fly, which is why the anesthesiologist now has to manually bag the patient to keep him breathing.
I’ve never seen anything like this in my four-going-on-five years as a resident. It’s seriously the coolest and craziest thing ever, and I can’t wait to pick Bennett’s brain about it later. He throws me a side-eye, giving me a sly wink, and I feel my face heating, my skin growing clammy, and my heart beating faster.
Once the pole is cut, we jump back in, sliding it out slowly while working from behind to stop any bleeding. I’m sweating, my muscles are aching, my heart is racing a mile a minute, and… my vision sways.
The hell?
I brush that off and keep going, following Bennett’s directive.
“Someone’s phone is vibrating like crazy over here,” the circulating nurse announces just as we finally manage to remove the pole and lay the patient down so we can open him up and fix his liver and other internal injuries.
“Is it a call or a page?”
“Neither,” she says. “It looks like an app notification.”
