“Darn it, McCallum, either hold the retractors out of the way or give them to someone else.”
“Sorry, Dr. Baker.” The medical student straightened sharply, focusing on her task of holding tissue out of the way so Meagan could complete the bowel resection currently underway. They’d been at it for five hours, but she had no sympathy for the third-year medical student whose job was simply to hold the retractors.
“And watch that left arm. You break the sterile field at this point, I’ll break your fingers.”
The student laughed nervously when the others gathered around the draped patient chuckled in response to Meagan’s only half teasing threat. They’d all heard it before. Every medical student had accidentally contaminated the sterile field—known as “the blue field” in the O.R.—at some point, but doing so always resulted in a stern censure from the surgeon, scrub tech or resident. Sometimes from all of them at once.
Once the surgical team was scrubbed in, their arms could never drop below waist level, nor could they touch anything outside the sterile field without having to scrub out and then scrub back in. Most infractions were minor, but occasionally an entire tray of sterilized surgical tools had to be replaced, or even worse, a patient recovered in sterile blue drapes. Either of those could result in a tantrum from the surgeon or the scrub tech, most of whom were fiercely protective of their fields.
“Light,” Meagan said, and her first assistant, an upper-level resident, hurriedly repositioned the sterile-draped articulated light pointed at the area where Meagan was working.
Meagan figured in about another half hour she could step aside and let the eager resident close. She heard her cell phone beep to indicate she’d received a text message. Well out of the sterile area, the phone rested on a counter at the far side of the operating room. Looking over the mask that covered the lower half of her face, she glanced around at one of the “floater” nurses who stood outside the sterile periphery. “Mind reading that message for me?”
It wasn’t an unusual request. Considering her grandmother’s precarious health, Meagan didn’t like to ignore messages unless she had to. The nurse, one Meagan had worked with numerous times in the past couple of years, punched a couple of buttons on the phone. A moment later, she said, “Someone named Seth said he’s sorry, but he’ll be about an hour late for dinner. He said send him a text back if you need to reply.”
Not an emergency, then. Meagan relaxed and turned her attention back to her patient. “Thanks, Kathy.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. Baker.”
“Steady,” Meagan warned the med student, whose concentration appeared to be wandering again. The young woman snapped back into position.
This one wouldn’t make a surgeon even had she wanted to become one, Meagan thought with a slight shake of her head. She had the attention span of a gnat.
“So, Seth, huh?” Gale, the scrub tech and one of Meagan’s favorite coworkers, eyed her with a teasing smile crinkling the part of her brown face exposed by her surgical mask. “That’s not a name I’ve heard from you before. Someone you met while you were on vacation?”
“It was hardly a vacation,” Meagan replied without glancing up from her suturing. “I was recuperating from surgery, remember?”
“Someone you met while recuperating from surgery?” Gale asked, refusing to be sidetracked.
“A neighbor.”
“Single neighbor?”
“I wouldn’t be having dinner with a married neighbor. Well, not just with him—oh, you know what I mean.”
The medical student looked with rounded eyes from Gale to Meagan and back again, but no one else paid much attention to the joking. A couple of other discussions were taking place around them, underscored by the soft rock music Meagan preferred listening to while she worked.
“I’m going to want details, you know, especially if you’re getting serious with some dude.”
Meagan glanced up from the bowel long enough to wink at the scrub tech. “You know I’m not one to kiss and tell, Gale.”
Gale laughed. “So, there is something to tell?”
Shaking her head with exaggerated regret, Meagan heaved a sigh. “No. He’s a cutie, but a single dad. You know how that goes.”
“Uh-huh. Dr. Baker’s famous rules of engagement.” Having tried once unsuccessfully to arrange a blind date between Meagan and a divorced friend with a couple of kids, Gale knew exactly how Meagan had always felt about getting involved with single dads.
“Hey, they’ve worked for me so far.” Meagan nodded toward the resident to adjust the light another fraction and bent over her work again.
Gale started to continue the teasing, but then whirled toward the beleaguered medical student.
“Watch that arm!” she snapped, protecting her imperiled blue field like a guard dog on patrol. “Didn’t Dr. Baker just tell you to keep that left arm up?”
“Sorry,” the young woman muttered, shifting her weight uncomfortably in the awkward position she had maintained for most of the past five hours.
Stripping off her mask and gloves, her phone stowed now in the pocket of her scrubs, Meagan left the O.R. twenty minutes later. The very capable resident was closing, which
made the med student first assistant for the next few minutes. Heaven help them all.