“Dr. Lopez, you’re needed in Room Two. Patient has a ten-inch laceration on their lower left leg,” a nurse said, handing a chart to Jordan.
“Are we closing it with staples?” she asked hopefully.
“The patient is an aspiring model with her stage mom in tow. They’re demanding the very best doctor to suture her. Everyone in Plastics is busy, so we’re just going to pretend that you’re the best fit for the job.”
Jordan rolled her eyes at Isabella. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” she said, following the nurse back to the exam room.
“Dr. Carter,” James said as he walked down the hall to the nurse’s station. “Are you busy?”
“I’m finishing up some paperwork,” Isabella said, writing notes on her chart. “What do you need me to do?”
“Come with me,” he said mysteriously.
She gave him a quizzical look and followed him down several corridors. They walked in silence until James gestured to a small room. It looked like a supply closet, but Isabella didn’t remember seeing it before.
“What is this?” she asked hesitantly.
“You’ll see,” he said with a grin.
The room was completely dark except for the blue-white glow of x-rays on the wall. They were in complete silence except for the soft hum of the light.
“Are those …?”
“Yep,” he answered for her. “We’re looking at a patient packed with balloons full of drugs.”
“That’s a pretty serious intestinal obstruction.” She marveled at the x-ray.
“Oh, most definitely. I guess he got greedy with the smuggling jobs and overdid it. Came in when he was unable to pass them.”
“That was smart. Well, as smart as someone can be when they’re filled with drug balloons,” she added.
“Yeah, he’ll be going to jail, but hopefully, we’ll get him there alive. If even one of those balloons bursts before we get them out, he will overdose.”
She stared at the image. Little white orbs dotted the colon like inner tubes on the river.
“Scrub in,” he said abruptly, breaking her from her trance.
“Wait, what?” she stuttered. “You’re letting me assist?”
He laughed. “I’m letting you observe. You might learn something.”
This was so much more exciting than sutures and picking debris from wounds. Even if she was just observing, she was still excited to scrub in on her first surgery as an intern.
James flicked off the lights from the x-ray. Isabella gasped at the sudden darkness. She was alone with her gorgeous mentor in a tiny, pitch-black room.
“Not afraid of the dark, are you?” he teased, turning the door handle. She was disappointed and relieved at the same time to be surrounded by people again.
“No,” she said. “I guess I’m a little on edge these days. Stress and all, you know?”
He smiled, and she followed him to the operating room. There, a nurse helped her into scrubs and she meticulously cleaned her hands. After two pairs of gloves, Isabella was ready to watch.
She watched in awe as James helped another surgeon carefully make incisions in the patient’s abdomen. He worked with perfect precision, like a robot programmed to understand every delicate feature of the human body.
His face was mostly covered by his mask, but his eyes showed great intensity and focus. It was evident that he lived for this—to go inside the human body and solve any problems that he may encounter. To him, surgery was no different than taking apart a computer and putting it back together to make it run more efficiently. The body was a machine that he had the skills to improve.
“There’s balloon number four,” James announced, plopping a rubbery mass in the tray. “One more to go. Dr. Carter, will you come forward, please?”
Isabella looked around like there was another Dr. Carter that he was referring to.
“Dr. Carter?” he asked again.
She stepped forward from where she was observing until she was within arm’s reach of the patient.
He looked her directly in the eyes. Their faces were so close that she could smell his hair product from underneath his scrub cap.
“I need you to reach into the bowel there and carefully grab that last balloon.”
“Really?”
“Would you rather I find another intern to do it?”
“No, no, I’ll do it.”
“Good. Careful, now. You don’t want to break it.”
Isabella inserted her hand into the patient’s open cavity. It was a rush. She had sliced cadavers to no end in med school, but being inside a real, living human was so exciting. She felt around until she found the foreign object and slowly pulled it out.
“Excellent work,” James said gently.
“You can take it from here, Dr. Johnson,” the other masked surgeon said, returning to the scrub room.
There were nurses and anesthetists around, but to Isabella, it felt like she and James were the only two people in the room.
“Now, all we have to do is close him up,” James said.
She watched him with great intensity as he closed the body with graceful precision.
“So, how was your first surgery?” he asked without looking up from his work.
“Amazing,” she gushed. “It was truly incredible.”
“I’m glad you had fun. The best surgeons still have that spark, even during the most routine procedures.”
He handed his instruments over to Isabella. “Want to finish up? I know this is about all you guys are allowed to do, but all the practice really helps.”
She took them in her gloved hands, expertly stitching the tissues back together. She had spent more free time than she would care to admit practicing.
“You’re a pro,” James noted. “Don’t let that go to your head,” he added quickly. “You still have much to learn.”
Isabella hid a shy smile under her mask. When she finished, she handed the instruments back over to James, brushing her hands against his. A jolt of electricity shot through her stomach.
“It’s about time for you interns to leave,” he said, looking up at the clock. “What do you have planned for your weekend?”
“The group is going to a bar tonight, and then I’m just going to study for the rest of the weekend.”
“Try not to have too much fun tonight,” he said.
“I’ll be in bed by midnight,” she said coyly.
On the drive home from this hospital, Isabella felt buzzed. Not only did she get to take part in a surgery, something that no other intern had done yet, but her attending complimented her on her work. Once home, she took a quick shower, applied a light coat of makeup, put on a blouse and skirt she never seemed to have an occasion to wear, and drove to the ba
r to meet her colleagues.
She found the group of them sitting around a table, two dripping pitchers of beer halfway gone.
One of the interns, Justin, slid an empty glass toward the vacant seat. She was oddly touched at the small gesture. She wasn’t very talkative at the hospital, so she was surprised that they were acting friendly toward her.
“I told you she would come,” Jordan boasted to the boys. Isabella poured herself a full glass of tasteless beer as she listened to everyone’s recap of their first week.
“My highlight of the week was getting hit on by a senile old lady,” Craig said.
“Did you take her up on her offer?” Justin teased.
“I sutured forty wounds,” Jordan added. “I think that’s a world record. What about you, Isabella?”
She scrambled to think of something mundane she did over the week, but her mind kept going back to surgery. She couldn’t tell them about that. It would make them all hate her, and things were actually going well.
“I think I made enemies with a nurse. He sent me to get fresh syringes, and I got distracted along the way and forgot.”
They nodded in approval. It was reassuring to hear that other people made mistakes.
“The next round is on me,” Isabella announced, trying to shift the attention away from her experiences that week.
She got up from the table and went to the bar, handing the bartender her credit card. She peeked back at the table—they were all smiling and laughing. It was nice to be part of a group, even if everyone was ready to stab each other in the back to get in on a surgery.
She returned with full pitchers to cheers from her peers. James was right—new doctors lived penniless for so long during school that the second they get anything for free, they lose their minds. The pitchers were drained in minutes.
Isabella was feeling giddy. In her rush to get to the bar, she had forgotten to eat supper. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last meal she’d had. She didn’t care, though. Surprisingly, she was having a great time.
As the interns were digging through their pockets to order more booze, three pitchers were delivered to their table.
“We didn’t order these,” Jordan said to the waitress as the other interns tried to hush her.