Return to Me by Emilia Hattington

Author:Emilia Hattington [Hattington, Emilia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

8

Rough Night

Olivia

I hurried into the hospital that afternoon, heading straight for the locker room to change into my scrubs. I paused only long enough to fire off a quick text message to Marco, cancelling our dinner plans. I had been called into work because they were having a particularly rough night at the hospital and there was a terrible accident at the state fair when the main stage collapsed, severely injuring several concert goers.

I left my phone in the locker and went straight to the trauma center. The ambulances had already arrived and gurneys were being wheeled down the corridor, branching off for examination rooms or going straight to surgery. I headed straight to Dr. Fenton, who was near the central hub barking out orders.

“Jacobs, bout time,” he grumbled. “Take the patient in O.R. three.”

It was chaos around me, but there was no time to catch my breath. The patients outnumbered us and there were several in a critical condition all around, so I snatched the patient file from his hand and took off down the hall. When I walked into the room, the man on the bed was freaking out, trying to pull out the one -inch metal pole that was sticking out of his shoulder. I suspected his collar bone was broken as well, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I got in there. He couldn’t pull it out before we were ready, or he could bleed out. The nurse had already drawn up a sedative, and at my nod, she injected it into the IV line.

The patient started to act lethargic within seconds until his head dropped and I helped lower him backwards onto the hospital bed. “Okay,” I said to the room as the anesthesiologist entered. “Let’s get started.”

The surgery took two hours, and the damage was extensive. I’d been right about his collarbone being broken, which was extra work for me and my team of nurses, but the patient would recover just fine.

But there was no time to celebrate a successful procedure. Another patient was waiting. This was another man whose leg had been crushed. In the end, I had to amputate. Taking a limb was always a tough decision and it left me wondering just what kind of quality of life my patient would have. But at least he would live.

It was my third surgery of the night that wrecked me. It was a little girl. As hard as I tried to stay objective, a kid on my table always had an effect on me. This girl was stuck under the debris of the stage and it had done extensive damage to her small body. I did everything I could to save her, focusing on a collapsed lung and head injury that was causing brain swelling, but she had internal bleeding and I lost her.

“Time of death, eleven twenty-three p.m.” My voice cracked as I said the words. I told myself not to let it be personal, but I had to go out into the waiting room to tell a woman that her daughter was dead.

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