Young Blood
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the ER universe. The character of Dr. Angie Sullivan is of my own creation, though.
Chapter 1: Welcome to Purgatory
January 21st
Doctor Angie Sullivan snugged her wool hat further down over her ears and braced herself against the biting Chicago winter as she wondered why, exactly, she'd accepted a surgical attending position at Cook County General Hospital. How can people choose to live in such an environment, she wondered as she descended the stairs from the El platform. If I was back in LA I'd be bitching about having to cut my lawn by now. Absorbed in thought, Sullivan didn't notice the last step was covered with ice. As she put her full weight on that foot, it slid out from under her and she fell to the sidewalk with a sickening smack.
"Damn it," she swore, as she tried to lever herself upright off the pavement.
"You OK?" said a voice behind her.
Sullivan turned around to find a short brunette with a friendly smile and an earnest face.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied, as she took quick mental stock of her injuries. She hadn't hit her head, nothing seemed broken. The only thing that was still sore was her bottom. That's going to bruise later. Still, the woman would not be dissuaded.
"Well, I'm a doctor at the hospital across the street. Why don't you come over to the ER and we'll get you checked out, just to make sure?"
By that point, Sullivan was growing exasperated and the pain in her behind, both literal and figurative, was getting worse.
"Really, I'm fine. I have to get to work."
"How can you be so sure? Why don't we just – "
"I'm a doctor, that's how," Sullivan snapped, effectively shutting the woman up. Suddenly, she realized that she was being incredibly rude.
"Sorry. Angie Sullivan, County's newest surgical attending."
She stuck out her hand, which the woman shook firmly.
"Abby Lockhart," she replied, "I'm an intern in the ER."
"If you'll excuse me," Sullivan said, "I have to go now. I have a meeting with the Chief of Surgery at seven AM." So I don't have time to hang around being friendly with interns.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Lockhart persisted.
Oh. Just. Go. Away.
"Yeah. Great. Thanks."
With that, Sullivan took off and made a beeline for the main entrance of the hospital. Mercifully, Lockhart didn't follow, instead heading towards the ER.
Once inside, Sullivan removed her hat and looked around for a floor directory. She was almost entirely unfamiliar with County and had actually been there only once before, when she was interviewed for the position she now held. There were no aids visible and the front desk was curiously unstaffed. Oh great, where do I go now?
In the distance, she heard what sounded like the chiming of an elevator. Figuring it would be faster than waiting for the desk clerk, Sullivan headed off in the direction of the noise. Soon, she discovered that she had absolutely no idea where she was going and, before she knew it, found herself in the middle of County's busy ER.
"Can I help you?" asked a rather large man behind the main desk. He was tall and bearded and reminded Sullivan of a somewhat overstuffed teddy bear.
"Uh, yeah, maybe," she responded, "I'm a bit lost. I think I may have taken a wrong turn."
The man, whose name tag announced him as Jerry, chuckled.
"That's not unusual. This place is about as well laid out as the Microsoft web site. Where are you headed?"
"The surgical floor," Sullivan responded. "I'm supposed to meet a Doctor Dubenko in," she checked her watch, "about twenty minutes."
The expression on the clerk's face changed to one of subtle bemusement, which Sullivan didn't fully understand. Probably just the normal relationship between surgery and the ER. Of course, with the rumors I've heard about this place, it could be almost anything. Didn't someone tell me that they'd heard a surgeon had been crushed by a helicopter in the ambulance bay?
"You're a long way off," Jerry said, "fifth floor."
"Elevators are over there," he added, indicating them as he did so.
"Thanks," said Sullivan as she headed off in their direction.
She was about halfway there when a short, redheaded man collided with her.
"Hey, watch where you're going," he snapped.
Before Sullivan could retort, she realized the man was staring at her and not trying very hard to conceal the overtly smarmy intentions of his gaze. Oh God, he is not checking me out…Oh God, he is. This not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening.
As she turned to get away, the man jumped in front of her.
"I might have been a bit pre-emptive there. Hi, I'm Doctor Morris, Doctor Archie Morris, the Chief Resident."
Morris extended a hand, which Sullivan ignored as she pressed the button to summon the elevator. Moments later, she was shocked to feel his hand on her arm. Oh, this little prick is not touching me.
She shot Morris a glare of death, but he was undeterred.
"So, you want to go out for a drink? Maybe a little something else, see how the evening progresses? Bet you've never dated anyone as important as a Chief Resident before."
Ugh. He's been talking to me for ten seconds and he's managed to say the words "Chief Resident" twice…oy…Sullivan spun around to face Morris in such a way that it knocked his hand from her arm. She grabbed it and pulled it up between his shoulder blades, hard, causing him to yelp in pain. Her voice seethed with venom:
"Look you little weasel, I am Doctor Angeline Sullivan, Senior Surgical Attending and unless you want that arm, and various other anatomical features, amputated in a very creative manner, I suggest you never, repeat never, touch me again."
At that moment, the elevator announced its arrival and Sullivan dropped a stunned and suitably chastened Morris to the floor. A spontaneous round of applause broke out from the rest of the ER as the door slid closed.
She took the elevator to the fifth floor and managed, with only minor difficulty, to find her office. Her name was stenciled on the door in white, and she affectionately ran her fingers over the letters. Despite all the hospitals she had worked at, all the offices she had had, seeing her name like that, in elegant lettering, with the letters "M.D." after it still gave her a thrill. It was as if some small part of Sullivan couldn't quite believe, even after all this time, that she was a doctor, much less a surgeon.
As she entered the office, she found that it was incredibly small compared to what she had had at her previous hospital, and looked even smaller because of the mountain of boxes, containing her personal belongings, which needed to be unpacked. There was a single window on the wall opposite the door, with a bookshelf to the right of it, taking up a good portion of the wall. A desk, filing cabinet and small work area completed the meager furniture in the space. Sullivan noticed that there was a small sofa along the dividing wall between the office and the hallway, no doubt a relic of some previous occupant.
Removing her coat and tossing it down on sofa, she checked her watch. Six forty-five – she had fifteen minutes to get ready. On the way down the hall to her office, she had passed the surgeon's locker room and managed to find a pair of clean, County-issue blue scrubs. Closing the mini-blinds on the window to the hallway, she changed out of her street clothes and into the scrub suit. Her lab coat and a sturdy pair of running shoes completed the basic ensemble. Clipping her identification badge to her lapel and swinging her stethoscope around her neck, she felt like a doctor again for the first time since leaving UCLA the week before.
"Time to go find the boss man," she muttered to herself as she walked out the door. She was halfway down the corridor before she realized that she had forgotten her pager in the pocket of her overcoat and ran back to fetch it. Moments after she retrieved it, it began to beep. Sullivan looked at the tiny screen – 911 – the universal ER trauma page, the same at every hospital she had ever worked at. Why are they paging me? How do they know I'm even here?
Doctor Dubenko would have to wait – a trauma was a trauma and years of training instinctively sent Sullivan dashing towards the bank of elevators.
Several minutes later, Sullivan pushed through the doors of Trauma one.
"What do we have?" she asked.
"Who are you?" asked a tall, dark-haired doctor with a thick accent that Sullivan couldn't immediately place.
"Dr. Sullivan, trauma surgeon."
The dark-haired doctor turned to Lockhart, whose presence Sullivan had just noticed.
"I thought you paged Dubenko," he said.
"Yeah, well, I thought the new girl could use some fun," Lockhart replied sarcastically.
"Hey be nice to her," said another young doctor with a shaggy goatee, "anyone who clocks Morris is alright in my books."
"I didn't 'clock' him." replied Sullivan testily, "And do you think we could get back to the patient?"
"I'm Doctor Kovac, this is Doctor Pratt," the dark-haired doctor said, indicating first himself, then the black physician across the gurney, "Sam the nurse, Doctor Barnett and – "
"Doctor Lockhart and I have met," Sullivan replied.
There was a momentary pause, before Kovac said:
"Ray, fill her in."
Barnett proceeded with a run-down of the case.
"Meet Alberto Rodriguez. Guy's a line cook at some all-night diner. His boss apparently found out that the two of them were screwing the same waitress and decided to get up close and personal with a ten inch chef's knife. Multiple stab wounds to the chest, arms and torso. Came in about five minutes ago with no pulse, got him back after multiple shocks and five rounds of epi. Pressure's barely ninety over sixty, with two liters of saline. Heart rate one hundred and twenty. Intubated when sats abruptly dropped to eighty-five. He's at ninety-four now."
Sullivan bent over the gurney to conduct her initial assessment.
The corpulent cook had ten stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, plus a few more lacerations on his forearms where he had clearly tried to defend himself against his aggressor. All of the thoracic wounds were penetrating injuries and it was clear that the man was going to need immediate surgery if he were to survive.
"Now this is why you shouldn't piss off a chef," Sullivan said, with a hint of excitement creeping into her voice. "He's obviously going to need the OR. My first ex-lap at County – and I thought my first day was going to be dull."
She shot a maniacal grin at Kovac, who regarded the surgeon as if she had just spontaneously grown six additional heads. Pulling out her stethoscope, she listened to the man's chest and abdomen.
"Decreased breath sounds on the right. This guy needs a chest tube."
"Going in now," replied Pratt, who was swabbing the man's chest with Betadine. As Pratt grabbed a scalpel, Sullivan said:
"Do you mind if I do it?"
Pratt exchanged a quizzical look with Kovac, who nodded his approval.
"Be my guest," Pratt replied.
Sullivan took the scalpel and made the first incision. The man was so severely overweight that it took more cutting than usual to get through the pleural cavity. As she reached a finger inside the pleural space to make way for the tube, a massive geyser of blood rushed out and soaked Sullivan's lab coat and scrub top.
"Damn it," she swore.
"Pratt, take over," Kovac said.
"I got it," Sullivan replied as she inserted the tube and deftly stitched into place. When she finally stood back from the gurney, covered in blood, Pratt turned to her and said:
"There should be some clean scrubs on the shelf in the hall."
"Thanks," replied Sullivan and dashed out to get a clean top. She returned less than thirty seconds later, pulling the ER green scrub top over her head as she pushed through the door.
Suddenly, the screeching of monitors filled the room.
"He's in v-fib," shouted Kovac, "starting compressions!"
"Charging to three-hundred." added Lockhart, "Clear!"
Everyone took an involuntary step backwards as she shocked the patient. The monitors continued to screech as Kovac called for another round of epi and the patient was shocked twice more. Finally, the room was mercifully silent.
"Normal sinus," Lockhart announced.
"It's not going to stay that way for long," Sullivan said, "he needs the OR. Can I get a hand taking him upstairs?"
"Ray, go with her," replied Kovac.
Barnett and Sullivan each grabbed one side of the gurney and wheeled it out the door. On the way to the elevator, Sullivan noticed Morris sitting in a chair at the nurses' station, an enormous bag of ice on his shoulder. As soon as he saw her go past, he leapt up and fled down the hall, towards the trauma bays.
"Whatever he did to you," Barnett said with a wry smile, as they rolled the gurney into the waiting elevator "he sure won't do it again." You got that right. Next time I'll actually hurt him.
"Thanks Doctor – Barnett – is it? I can take it from here."
As the door to the elevator closed, Sullivan thought to herself:
Welcome to purgatory, you lucky bastard.