Mount Mercy

45

Amy

“GET THE crash cart!” I yelled. I was kneeling astride Krista on a gurney, desperately pumping her chest as Corrigan pushed us full speed down the hallway. I was yelling orders at nurses as we passed them. “All the blood you have! She’s B negative!” I knew her blood group because we’d both donated blood at the same session, the first week I’d arrived in Mount Mercy. And then she’d taken me to Krüger’s and I’d got wasted on two tequila shots because the blood loss made me even more of a lightweight than normal and she’d helped me home and—

Krista!

We crashed through the door into the ER and Corrigan started to slow down but I shook my head. “No, her heart’s damaged! I need her upstairs in the OR, now!”

“We have to get her breathing first—”

I lost it. “Goddamn it, Dominic, don’t argue with me!” Tears were running down my face. “She has one chance and that’s to get her on bypass right now while I fix her heart!”

He looked me in the eye...and nodded. “Okay. You’re the surgeon.” And he pushed us towards the elevator.

“Lina! Adele! I need you too!” I yelled. They ran into the elevator with us, loaded with blood bags and pulling the crash cart.

The elevator doors started to close. I kept the chest compressions going, my hands slick with my best friend’s blood.

The elevator doors stopped, still a foot open. Bartell stood there, his arm blocking the door. “What are you doing?” I screamed, almost hysterical. “We have to get her upstairs!”

“There’s a fire.” He was pale-faced and sweating.

“What?!”

“It started with the generator fuel in the basement: Colt started it to cover his escape. We thought we could put it out with extinguishers but it’s spreading. Firefighters are on their way but we have to evacuate the hospital.”

I shook my head. He opened his mouth to argue. “I don’t operate on her right now, she dies!” I snapped tearfully. “Get everyone else out. We’re going upstairs.” I glanced around at the others but they all nodded: they were with me.

Bartell sighed, nodded and withdrew his arm.

Upstairs, we rushed Krista into the OR and scrambled to get her onto a heart bypass machine and a ventilator. “Gown up,” I told Corrigan. “I need you to assist.”

“I never—” he began.

“I’ll tell you what to do.”

And we went to work. But when I opened her up, I felt sick. She was a mess. The first bullet had clipped her heart, but at least it had passed straight through. The second one had hit a rib, spraying bone fragments into her organs, and then tumbled through her body, tearing into a lung and slicing an artery. I saw injuries every day, but this was brutal. “I don’t know if I can fix this,” I said, my voice going tight and quavery. “There’s too much damage. It’s—” Tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t focus. I could barely think. This was my friend! She should be standing next to me, assisting, not lying on the table all—all—

“Hey,” said Corrigan from behind his surgical mask.

I looked up at him.

You can’t touch, when you’re in surgery. Your gloved hands have to remain sterile. So he couldn’t wrap me up in his arms or put his lips next to my ear. He couldn’t smooth his hand down my back to calm me or put his finger under my chin to keep me looking at him. He could only look me in the eye. But it felt as if he was doing all those things.

“She has you,” he said. “And you’re the best.”

And I believed it because he believed it. I blinked back the tears, swallowed... and focused.

And slowly, agonizingly, the wreckage of Krista’s body began to make sense. I started to see places where, if I was careful and delicate enough, I could maybe begin to piece things back together. I took a deep breath... and began.

Corrigan stood right next to me, holding clamps and suctioning away blood when I asked him to. His hands were huge next to mine. Not clumsy, just big, and with so much strength: he was like a giant trying to pick up a Fabergé egg. And he couldn’t get out of the ER mindset of frantic patch-it-and-pray. That works when you’re trying to open airways and restart hearts, but it’s disastrous when you’re repairing delicate organs. “Slow,” I said gently. “Slow and easy.”

“But—” he nodded at the clock. We could only keep Krista on bypass for so long.

“You have to not let it faze you,” I told him. “Don’t take your time. But take as much time as it needs.”

He nodded and tried. I loved that he tried. I knew how hard it was, to be totally out of your comfort zone.

Twenty minutes in, I thought I smelled something, but pushed the thought away. A few minutes later, I heard Lina sniff. She looked up at me, worried.