“I have somewhere to be, Nurse Kang,” he said quietly.
“Can’t it wait?” she cried.
“It cannot,” Caleb replied. “Dr. Reed and Garner are on call. They will handle whatever comes in my absence.”
“We need you,” the nurse pleaded as he continued on his way.
“I have you,” he said, without looking back. However, just before he shut the double doors to the hospital behind him, he shot her a glance. “Manage it all until I return. I will be back in two hours.”
The relief in her tone was instant. “Thank you, Dr. Pace,” she said and returned to the ER.
Caleb gave a deep sigh as he got into his car and drove away into the dark night. In a little under an hour, he arrived at the cemetery with a bouquet of peonies in one hand and a candle. He found her grave almost without thought, and sat down upon the grass in front of it, lighting his candle and placing the peonies by the side of her tombstone.
“I’m back,” he said, as he read the name engraved upon the marble marker. Aisha Graves. He retrieved the scotch whiskey flask from his coat and took a deep long drink. “If I had known I would come visit so often, perhaps I would have had them bury you at the Lakehouse. At least it’d give me a reason to come home at night.”
He took another slug of liquor, corked the flask and placed it aside. “I cannot stay long today,” he said. “It’s a Friday night.” He smiled at the memory that slid through his mind. “You used to dread Friday nights. Its relation to how much more people got into accidents plagued you to no end.” Caleb chuckled in recollection. “You were a great surgeon, a bit scatterbrained but, still great. It would have been nice if you were here to give me a hand.”
“I’m thinking of quitting,” he said. “When I work, day in and night out, it all seems bearable, but in the quiet moments, such as now, I ask myself what I’m doing.”
He let out a heavy sigh and took yet another drink from the flask as he stared into the dark gloomy night. There were tombstones all around him, but he paid it no mind. The quieter it was, the better. “It’s been four years now, and I still have not healed. I do not want to, but at the same time it worries me that I’ll become so damaged that even the escape that surgeries have become to me will no longer suffice.”
“It’s all your fault,” he said, with a sadistic smile. “You should have stayed… been a bit more patient. Now I’m forced to talk more to you than I ever did when you were still here.” He muttered to himself. “You never goddamn respond.”
Tears suddenly rushed to his eyes, so he looked away, and despite his better judgment, picked up the flask and took one last drink of hard liquor before returning it to his pocket.
His phone began to ring then and at first, he ignored it, but it didn’t stop, and he knew that it would not. So he picked it up and listened calmly to the frantic voice of the head nurse. This was a new record. He had barely been gone for an hour and there was already chaos. How he hated Friday nights.
“An accident has just been reported on Highway 55. Five vehicles and a truck are involved.”
“How many patients?”
“We’re not certain yet. The ambulance has just been called to the scene.”
“They’re not there yet? Then how did you…”
“Dr. Kate Hades informed me- the Doldam Director’s daughter. They were heading here from the city and met the collision. She was accompanied by two doctors excluding her father, so they are performing emergency first aid, and rounding up the patients.”
“Alright, I’ll be there when my second hour is up.”
“We need you this instant!” she roared. “They will be here any minute now.”
“Get the two doctors on call.”
“Dr. Garner has just bailed. He complained of food poisoning and went home.”
Bastard, Caleb swore under his breath and blew out his candle. “I’m on my way.”
It took him thirty-five minutes to arrive at the ER, and the moment he did, he was bombarded with reports.
“Where is the Lidocaine and suture set I asked for?” someone barked from the opposite end of the ER, just as three nurses hurried towards Caleb. The first one to reach him jammed a chest X-ray into his hands. “Dr. Pace, he has a low BP and oxygen. He has already been given treatment for his shock.”
Multiple rib fractures on the right, bilateral pleural effusions, Caleb thought to himself as he studied the film. “Give him high flow oxygen and send him away to OR three to await me. He needs surgery right away.”
“Yes doctor!” she hurried off and another took her place.
“Dr. Reed sent me. He has a patient with a flail chest and cardiac tamponade and another with an incised wound in the leg. He needs surgery to repair the artery.”
“Contact the Director to immediately take this up otherwise the blood loss will increase the area of necrosis and he will lose that leg. Call Dr. Cart at Mayo Clinic and immediately arrange to send the cardiac tamponade patient to him.”
“Got it!” The male nurse responded and went on his way.
“Shard of glass embedded in the abdomen,” said the last nurse, and that brought his gaze from the chaos ahead of him in scurrying nurses, bloodied patients and cries of agony. “How big?”
“About four centimeters,” was the response.
“I’ll take a look,” he said and began to shrug off his coat. The nurse took it from him and handed him a pair of gloves.
“Dr. Pace!” A call came, and he lifted his head to the Head Nurse as she hurried his way, two bags of blood in one hand. “There’s an orthopedic surgery patient with an open fracture on his right leg.”
“What the hell is an orthopedic surgery patient doing here?”
“He’s awaiting transfer to a different hospital. His bleeding was too excessive and the ambulance, ill-equipped to handle it so they brought him here briefly for a blood transfusion.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“His blood pressure spiked and the bleeding has gotten out of hand.”
“Quickly bring him to the Hybrid Room,” he ordered, and an immediate yell was given in response. “Coming through!”
He sighted the requested patient as his bed was rolled by two nurses and immediately stepped aside to allow them to entrance into the Hybrid Room. Before he joined them, however, he asked about their only present Attending Physician. “Dr. Hunt?”
“He is at the other end.” A response came and as if on cue, he heard the older man’s bark from the far end of the Emergency Room, probably directed at one of their two residents. “Do you call yourself a doctor? Get yourself together!”
He lifted the soft plastic flap that led to the Hybrid Room but before he could walk in, his arm was gripped by a wailing woman. “Doctor, please save my daughter,” she cried. “My child is dying! You need to save her this instant.”
One of the nurses hurried over to loosen her hold on his arm but she wouldn't let go. Caleb looked to the male nurse for answers.
“Her daughter was briefly examined by Dr. Hunt. She will need pediatric attention so he told them to await you. He diagnosed her hemoperitoneum, caused by a seat belt injury. ”
His eyes widened at the report. “Hemoperitoneum?” He lowered his gaze to the woman. “Wasn’t she in a car seat?”
The woman shook her head hysterically, tears streaming down her face. “I… she didn't want to so I just strapped her in the back with a seat belt.”
“You put a toddler in a car without a car seat?” One of the nurses behind him shrieked, and Caleb turned around to give her a stern look. She lowered her head in remorse. The male nurse went on with his report. “She is currently unconscious, and her capillary refill time is dropping.”
“Hybrid Room, now!” he ordered. “Get a CT scan and report back to me immediately. She might have internal bleeding within her spleen.” The Head Nurse led the woman away while he hurried to the Hybrid Room to assess the fracture pati
ent.
“Reduce the amount of fluid,” Caleb commanded. “Patrick, bring me a CVC, and a Foley Catheter.”
He stabilized the patient and then immediately headed out. The male nurse hurried up to him with an update. “The child’s CT scan is ready, and you were right. It appears as though her spleen has been damage-“
“Doctor Pace!” One of the nurses ran up to him, stopping his entrance into the adjacent Hybrid Room. “You need to take a look at the patient with the shard of glass embedded in her abdomen, I don’t know how much longer she can remain stable.”
He stopped in his tracks and took a few seconds to consider his options. He made his decision and gave out his orders. “Nurse Kang, keep an eye on the child, I will be back in a moment,” he said and began to walk down the room towards the glass embedded patient. However, before he could arrive at her bedside, a bone chilling scream rang out across the ER. All eyes turned towards the nurse whose tray with equipment had fallen from her hands in shock.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled.
Caleb followed her gaze and what he saw nearly stopped his heart.
The patient with a shard of glass embedded in her abdomen had somehow gotten up from her bed and made her way over to the overweight patient in the station beside her. She had then proceeded to part her jaw with a laryngoscope and threaded an intubation tube down her throat and into her lungs. She now held an ambu bag unto which the tube was attached, and compressed it to supply oxygen to the patient, all the while leaning against the iron headboard in deathly exhaustion.
She raised her head at the nurse’s cry of alarm and the sudden quiet of the ER, and it was then that Caleb saw her face. He felt the life drain out of his body.
“She couldn’t breathe,” she explained in a hoarse, agonized voice. “Aerodermectasia.”
Aisha? His mouth could not even form the name.
She struggled to straighten herself, trying her best to mumble an explanation despite her suffering. Just as she leaned against the wall, however, he watched as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed.
He would never know how fast he moved. No one saw him and he didn’t recall his sprint, but in the next moment he was by her side and lifting her up by her arms. Other nurses ran to lend him a hand, but a bark tore out of him. “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare to touch her.”
Confusion and befuddlement spread across the ER like a disease.
Caleb lifted the exact replica of his dead fiancé into his arms and returned her to her bed.
“Get to work,” he yelled when the ER still remained eerily quiet, and in an instant, the chaos resumed in full force.
“Dr. Caleb, the little girl,” the Head Nurse alerted him, but he did not respond. He took his stethoscope from around his neck and began to listen to the beat of her heart.
“Dr. Caleb, the child’s condition is worsening.”
He looked towards his patient’s monitor. “Blood pressure 110 over 70; GCS- 6,” he muttered to himself.
“CT scan?” he called. “Where the hell is her CT scan?”
One of the residents hurried over to him with a laptop in hand. “Here it is,” he said. “There isn’t any serious damage to her arteries but she does have intestinal injuries.”
“You cannot be sure of that,” he retorted, returning his gaze to her face, his hands trembling from the shock. “Her wound is littered with shattered glass. There might be a damaged artery that you cannot see. I’m going into surgery right now.”
He shot to his feet and gave his instructions to the nurse. “Lead her carefully to OR 5. If the shard of glass even moves an inch within her abdomen, I will kill you.”
“Doctor Pace,” the Head Nurse called once again. “This patient might still be able to hold on for a while. However the little girl…”
He did not respond. He turned around and ran to the OR, his hands already unbuttoning his shirt. “Get me a pair of scrubs!” he yelled and a response followed.
“Yes, doctor!”
Caleb was not certain but just as he exited the room, he heard the endless, heartbreaking flatline tone of a monitor.
Someone had just passed away.
He didn’t look back. Instead, he quickened his haste towards the OR. Moments later, he was scrubbing his hands and seeing in his mind’s eyes the face of the woman he’d thought he’d lost forever. He had to save her life no matter the cost, or this time he would indeed lose her forever.
He rinsed his hands and hurried into the operating room.
***
Three surgeries later, and with the sun just about rising, Caleb walked into his office and allowed his legs to crumble beneath him. Dragging himself over to the couch by the corner, he climbed onto it and collapsed on his back.
He thought that he would fall instantly asleep but when minutes later he found himself recalling over and over all that had happened in the last few hours, he sat up and headed over to his cabinet to grab a bottle of sleeping pills. He popped them in his mouth just as the door flew open.
“Caleb, my father wants to see you,” announced a tall blonde. “He expected that you would have been by to check on him by now.”
Caleb raised his gaze to hers. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
For a second she appeared taken aback by his retort, but then quickly regained her composure with a snort. “Caleb…”
“Retrace your steps and knock,” he said. “Then wait for me to invite you in. And it’s Dr. Pace, not Caleb.”
He saw the shock in her eyes, and then the tears but he felt nothing but irritation. He swallowed his pills and took a seat behind his desk to watch her storm out, banging the door shut behind her. He knew that she would not return. A few seconds later, however, the door flew open once more, and when he saw who it was, he leaned into his chair and shut his eyes.
“Who was that?” The male nurse who had just entered watched the tall blonde clonk away in her heels, her bob bouncing around her neck. “She is so gorgeous...”
He turned to Caleb, and then shut the door behind him. “Hey,” he tapped loudly against the desk. “Hey! Why are you still here? Go home!”
When he was still met with silence, he headed over to the blinds and pulled it open, sending a burst of rays into the dim room.
Caleb finally opened his eyes and turned to the nurse in a squint.
“Get some sleep or you will collapse,” the nurse said. “And not in the hospital. Go home and make some use out of that ridiculously expensive lake house that you own.”
“Why are you here?” Caleb asked. “I left you in charge of Aisha.”
The nurse looked confused. “Aisha?”
Caleb corrected himself. “Miss Joan.”
“She is fine,” he said. “Her vitals are stable and in a few hours she should regain consciousness.”
At the report, Caleb shut his eyes once more and leaned in the chair again.
“The hospital is abuzz with your reaction to her in the ER,” the nurse said quietly.
Caleb did not respond so he took another approach. “The little girl died,” he said, “and everyone is calling it an unfair trade. They all say that you should have attended to her first. Her mother is still hysterical and has refused to leave, and I hear that her father will be arriving…”
“Kevin, I need to rest,” Caleb said. When the nurse refused to move, Caleb rose from his seat and left the office. He headed straight to the ICU and walked in to check up on Aisha. He read the monitor by her side, placed his hand on her forehead to feel her temperature, and then drew up a chair to sit by her.
He gazed at her face, now swollen from surgery, and the bandages on her arms. If he had harbored any doubt that she was truly Aisha, it had been dissolved as he had operated on her.
Her surgery had taken almost twice as long as it should have, and it had nothing to do with its complexity. For the first time in a long time, he had felt immense fe
ar and dread as he had worked a knife along a patient’s intestines, second-guessing his every move, and double checking his every act. He’d operated on her as though it were his very own body he had been working on.
He could not wait until she awakened, as there was so much he had to ask.
“Aisha,” he breathed as he held her bandaged hand. Tears filled his eyes while an overwhelming bout of suppressed grief and the sickening feeling that this was all just a dream, rose to his chest. He sobbed like a child, just as he had the day he had received the news that she had passed away. After a long while, his exhaustion in body and mind finally caught up with him. So he laid his head by her side and finally drifted off to a deep and peaceful sleep.
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