Disclaimer - I obviously don't own Code Lyoko.
"Excellent work doctor. That was a smooth procedure." the scrub nurse exclaims as the last stitch is sown through the patient's chest. The double bypass went perfectly; there were no complications and the heart started immediately after the patient was removed from the ventilator. With a sigh, Jeremie drops the bloody tools into a container and steps back. Flipping up his eyewear, the blonde haired man gives a tight smile at another life elongated on the table before him.
"Need any help finishing up Carol?" Jeremie asks. He gives his scrub nurse a questioning look and gets a shake of the head in response.
"Nah, go enjoy your two hour break will ya? You look like you need one." Carol replies with a smirk. "At least until something else goes wrong." Jeremie chuckles at their traditional end-of-surgery joke and nods. He walks to the door with a wince at the usual stiffness after surgery. Pushing the door open with his elbows, Jeremie strips his gloves into the biohazard container and performs the usual cleaning procedures. The doctor glances through the window in front of his face at the patient who had trusted his life to Jeremie. At least it was well-placed in this instance.
A cloud passes across his face. So many people he couldn't save but every doctor knew not to dwell on those. All he could do was his best and hope the majority clung onto life longer. Optimism definitely helped out in this job. Surprised I still have it after all these years. A wry smile passes his face at the thought of the last six years spent performing surgeries day in and day out. He dries his hands and walks out into the bustling hallway of the hospital that had become his home.
Carol finishes cleaning up the OR with a frown on her face. Jeremie seemed to get more and more distant every single day. That man has no friends. As a matter of fact she could pinpoint around the time period where stuff went downhill for him. During their idle chats in the years previous he would sometimes mention his old friends from high school. She gathered that they all were very close back then and still kept in touch. But now she couldn't honestly remember him mentioning any of them at all in the last year.
The frown deepens in worry on her carefree face as the OR gradually returns to its normally spotless self. Jeremie was definitely a different doctor than the usual ones around here; his ego never vied for dominance. She always thought he exercised the best skills of any surgeon here but he would never advance up the ranks. He was too quiet and reserved. Most of the interns called him Dr. Ice Eyes behind his back since Jeremie never said much more than what was required. She knew him better though; behind that steely exterior lived some great pain. Small glimpses of his agony had seeped out every once in a while. Jeremie needs to find someone to love. That'll cure him.
Finally done with the usual post-op cleanup, Carol goes through the same routine that Jeremie did a few minutes earlier. Slightly abashed at her train of thought, she heads out the door and stops by the nurses' station to see what was on her to-do list for now. Ah, post-op rounds with his patients. She briskly grabs her clipboard and sees a commotion arriving from the receiving bay of the emergency room. There's never a shortage of emergencies at a hospital but this time was slightly different. The nurses and interns rushing this patient were all calling for Dr. Belpois.
"What's going on here?" Carol asks as the gurney passes her into the operating room she just cleaned. An intern breaks away from the mass and walks up. "Where's Dr. Belpois? This case is pretty serious." the young medical student asks.
"He just went to grab a coffee. I'll page him. Looks like something went wrong." Carol gives a wry smile at their tradition proving itself right once again. "Now, tell me what the problem is so I can relay the information." The intern looks at the chart and quickly recites the words on it.
"Young female, late 20s. Emergency medical personnel rushed her in here with a gunshot wound to the chest. Bullet is still inside. Blood pressure is very low, her skin is clammy and cool, and her breathing is labored with uneven chest rise. Possible hemothorax; here's the chest X-ray that we did quick." The intern hands over the ghostly white image and Carol holds it up into the light. She blanches at the picture and shakes her head. The bullet seemed to be lodged right by the heart and perilously close to the aorta. Might have ruptured the aorta. This one probably is a lost cause.
"Alright, you go in with the others and get everything set up. The surgeon will be in there shortly." Carol feels the usual resolve fall upon her. She no longer was doing a job; now it was a mission to ensure that someone lived to see another sunrise. Sending a page to her boss, Carol also tells the nurse's station to release a hospital-wide page on the building's intercom system before running right back to the operating room.
Jeremie relaxes just a tad as the coffee floods his mouth. There really was something special about a simple cup of dark coffee after a successful surgery. It always tasted better to him. If the surgery failed well…then the brew reminded him of liquid ash. At least Mr. Dryson would live to enjoy whatever remained of his existence. Except with a marked lack of bacon. That really does suck. Two hours to himself and then a full day off. The blonde haired man thinks of the luxury of being able to read all day with no interruptions.
Not like he had anything else to do. Jeremie's life for the last ten years morphed from school to work seamlessly. Many times he wondered why he had picked this line of work. How intimately he knew a human heart and often held them in his hand. Too bad you could never understand her heart until it was too late. A med student had little time to socialize and his tenure as a doctor gave him no time at all. He didn't need it though. Don't lie to yourself. You miss them all. His worn face stared at him accusingly from the coffee cup. Running a hand through his hair, Jeremie recalls the faces of his four best friends. He hadn't talked to three of them in a year. Aelita, well…she had moved on with her life. The last communication with her had been their farewell before everyone went their separate ways after high school almost ten years ago. He felt it had been best to use a clean break with her.
Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich had kept him updated of how she was doing. So even though he hadn't talked or seen her in a decade Aelita's face still remained perfectly clear in his mind. Something in his head had performed slight alterations to his mental picture of her over the ensuing years but to him she remained beautiful no matter what. The blazing sensation of the coffee in his throat reminds Jeremie to get out of his morose train of thought. Let the past remain in the past. He had blown his chance; no point worrying about it now.
Too bad his mind refused to listen. Jeremie often spent his breaks from the stench of blood thinking about those four years that remained the happiest of his life. The people he had belonged with and made him feel accepted for the first time. Unfortunately the cruel whims of fate scattered them across the globe. He had received the invitation to the ten year reunion only a couple weeks ago but it remained unopened on his kitchen counter. Jeremie didn't want to rouse the old ghosts any more than he had to.
A buzz by his hip alerts him that he was paged and the dark thoughts flee him. Just as he reaches down to see Carol's name flashing across the screen a voice intones from the ceiling: "Dr. Belpois to OR 2. Dr. Belpois to OR 2." Looks like something went wrong indeed. Hastily draining the coffee, the doctor stands up and walks briskly towards the fate of yet another patient. His long medical jacket billowed behind him in his wake.
Jeremie enters the room and quickly washes his hands while Carol explains the bare facts. "Female, late 20s. Presented with a gunshot wound to the chest and the bullet is still lodged inside close to the heart. Clinical signs show possible hemothorax which the X-ray confirmed. The thing that brings this into your area is the sheer amount of blood in her thoracic cavity and the chance of a torn aorta in addition to the complications from the bullet." Her businesslike tone facilitates Jeremie's usual mood during surgery: steely resolve and calm determination to save a life.
"Any ID?" Jeremie asks casually while slipping on gloves and tying his facemask on. He made it a point to know exactly who he was operating on every time. Carol checks the chart and nods.
"Yeah. Her name is Aelita Schaeffer." Jeremie stops dead in his tracks and slowly turns his head to stare at his scrub nurse. His usual focus had just shattered upon hearing those innocent syllables. No way I heard that right. No way at all. Carol returns Jeremie's frantic gaze with concern. "What? Let's get moving!" she says and motions towards the door.
"Sorry, hand me the chart please." Jeremie commands in a shaky voice. Carol complies without a word and Jeremie's eyes stare in shock at the name printed on the bottom. There it was plain as day yet his mind kept throwing up possible solutions that this woman in mortal danger on a table five feet away was not the one he still loved. Well then. I can't let her die! Once again her life is in my hands. What is she doing here in Boston? Flicking away the errant thoughts buzzing through his head, Jeremie finally moves again and sighs with relief at the receding shock within him.
"Boss, are you alright?" Carol asks with genuine worry. She had never seen his façade crack so badly. That woman on the table clearly held some deep meaning to him. But what? Carol stuffs her curiosity down. There would be time for questions later if this woman lived. If she didn't…well it didn't look like Jeremie would take that very well. "No matter what's going on she still needs your help." Jeremie nods and murmurs something to himself as he walks in.
Carol follows him into the OR with a puzzled expression behind the facemask. She thought she heard him say "She needs my help once more." Her fears subside as Jeremie blocks the emotions roiling within him and focuses solely on the task at hand. Looking at the alarmingly low blood pressure on the monitor, Jeremie motions for the scalpel to be placed in his hands. Relief flares in him for a brief instant as the usual focus falls back on him like a second skin. Jeremie glances at the small hole in her chest oozing blood and feels a surge of rage at whoever did this. He channels that anger into the scalpel as it becomes a part of his hand, his being.
Time becomes a series of sequential instants. Jeremie notices nothing except the patient under him. Each second lasts an eternity in his mind; surgeries always slowed time down to almost nothing for him. Other doctors said time sped up but to him the moments with life and death in his hands became bubbles he could examine at his leisure. So when he looked into a sea of blood there was no panic. There was only calm reaction and a search for the source of all that misplaced liquid. His hand moved swift and sure as the nurses and interns performed their various duties. "Suction!" he calls.
He lost track of how many bags of blood were hung on the rack out of the corner of his eye. There could be no doubt or worry right now. Jeremie's brow tightens at a wounded heart pumping blood into the wrong space. The bullet had apparently sliced a tear through the thoracic aorta and Aelita's blood pressure spike at being shot did the rest. The small tear had enlarged into a decent sized hole. Jeremie marvels for a second at how lucky she was; the outer membrane of the vessel remained intact over sixty percent of the rupture. If it had burst all the way she would have been dead before the emergency personnel had even arrived at the scene.
Now a dilemma confronted Jeremie. The aorta needed to be repaired but the bullet also couldn't remain lodged in her. It was so close to the heart and the bleeding artery. If he left the lump of metal in her then it could migrate and cause much more damage. On the other hand, taking it out while being so close to the aorta could finish the job of the bullet. Extreme caution ruled Jeremie now; a mistake either way and Aelita's life ended here on this cold metal table. That situation was mapped and all the consequences of both decisions figured out in about half a second. Without hesitation Jeremie holds his left hand out and says, "Clamp." He had to stop the bleeding for a minute to remove the bullet. Could the aorta stand the increased pressure he was about to put on it?
It's all I can do. Jeremie carefully places the clamp properly around the bleeding artery and slowly maneuvers his other hand to put it in the best place possible for removing the bullet. An insistent beeping sound from his left reminds him of Aelita's dire predicament. She didn't have much time; an hour at most before everything would go downhill. Then again a screw-up here and her life wouldn't go downhill; it would crash straight into the underworld. Suddenly he realized what exactly would happen if he released that clamp right now: Aelita could possibly survive but organ damage was likely. He had to ensure her body got some blood supply while he sutured the aorta. But there's no time!
With ten seconds of quick conversation Jeremie works out a plan with his assistant, Dr. Fairheim. They would perform a fast aortic bypass around the tear. Jeremie could then remove the bullet while Fairheim sutured the aortic wall directly. If all went well Aelita could avoid organ damage due to lack of blood supply. With a speed and efficiency born of years of using their skills, the two shunt some of the blood flow around the rupture. "Blood pressure's getting dangerously high. Her heart can't take this much longer and that rupture might break open any time." a nurse warns.
Sharing a look of sheer desperation, the two men trying to beat back the encroaching tide of death turn to their tasks. Somehow Jeremie removes the bullet without ever disturbing the throbbing vessel and he places the small object which had caused so much distress in the metal bowl offered by Carol. She puts the dish down and is struck by how the rounded metal ball stared at her like a malevolent pupil in a blood-red eye.
Jeremie joins Fairheim in the suturing and finally breathes slightly easier as the bleeding stops. They remove the temporary bypass grafts and close those up as well. By no means was she out of the woods. If it ruptured again then all bets were off. For now Aelita still lived; that's what mattered. The group takes a collective breath of hesitation as they all wait for the aorta to break back open. "Blood pressure is fairly steady and it's dropped a little." a nurse comments. Jeremie inserts a chest tube to drain the rest of the hemothorax and grabs his sutures.
"I'm still a little worried about how high it is. She needs to have it as low as possible while the artery heals itself. Let's give her a little pain medication to drop it." Jeremie says while closing Aelita up. Another bag joins the IV as the liquid trickles into Aelita's arm and through her now closed-system network of vessels. Jeremie stands back as the last stitch closes her chest and smiles brightly. Never has a surgery affected me like this. A feeling of merriment spreads through the team; most patients with such a wound died on the table.
Carol glances at her boss and immediately senses his ever-present depression fading away. Jeremie stared at the pink hair splayed on the table with relief shining in his glacial eyes. She smiles to herself and knows exactly what Ms. Schaeffer meant to him. Death had been thwarted for at least this pristine moment. Carol lightly places an unstained hand on Jeremie's shoulder. "Good work. She's alive. I'll cancel your surgeries for tonight. I know where you will be." Jeremie laughs at how transparent he was and gives her a glance of appreciation. She's alive. Now she just needed to recover speedily.