AN: This is a response to a Pulse Challenge: We know what Logan and Max were doing during the Pulse. What about the other DA characters?
I always had a soft spot for this guy. He just seemed like a really nice guy. So, of course, I had to create a little past for him. Please review, good or bad!!!
University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle
June 1, 2009
"I can stand here without moving a muscle for hours, if need be," he told himself. "I can stand here - alert, yet quiet - speaking only when spoken to." The dull ache between his shoulder blades grew steadily, but he ignored it.
A slight tremble threatened his grip on the smooth metal handle of the retractor, but he stilled it. He tried to ignore the clock, which glared at him from its place on the tiled wall.
"What kind of exposure is that? If you can't hold the Deaver steady, maybe you should go home for a nap," Morgan's icy voice brought him back to the present.
"Sorry, Dr. Morgan." Of course, the offer was really a taunt. He was only about hallway through his 36 hour shift, so there was no way he was going home. He pulled the retractor back slightly, shifted his grip and braced it against his other gloved hand resting on the blue surgical drape.
"George, I need that retractor in your right hand," barked Morgan.
Of course, his name wasn't George. It was Sam. Dr. Morgan called all the men George, when he couldn't remember their names. All the women went by Lily. At least, Morgan didn't discriminate.
The nurse handed Sam the instrument and he took up the new position as instructed.
At last, the delicate sutures were all in place and the area dry and clean.
"Okay," Morgan backed away from the table and pulled off his mask and cap, "close her up." Morgan folded his gown, cap and mask neatly into a ball, swished them gently into the trash bag in the corner and, without another word, left the room.
"You heard the man," the senior plastic surgery resident said quietly, "let's close her up." Sam took the needle holder from the nurse and turned back to the task at hand.
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Two hours later, Sam finished checking on all the post-op patients on his list and dismissed the medical students to go home. He tucked the Diet Coke can into the pocket of his lab coat and made his way down the hallway. The cool fluorescent light, reflected in the polished floors, signaled that it was nighttime, but hospital didn't really look much different than it did during the daytime. The hospital never slept.
"Did you send the 'dents home?" the plastic surgery team's other senior resident, Jamal, came jogging around the corner.
"Yup, ain't nobody here but us chickens."
"Oh, please, do not be giving me that Midwest farm boy bullshit. You know I can't handle that unless I've had at least five hours of sleep."
"I still don't know why the third-years can't pull this shift." Sam stopped at computer terminal in the hallway and scrolled down the list of lab results.
"You know why. This is where all the rich and famous come to have their tummies tucked, their cheeks lifted and noses straightened out. This is where you and I hang with the big boys so we can get a job next year. They're doing us a favor." Jamal looked over Sam's shoulder at the monitor.
"All I know is that I'm getting nowhere with Morgan. That guy can't stand me."
"He can't stand any of us. You just don't yell at the team enough to suit his taste. Besides I heard that he requested you to assist today. The folks in that fellowship progam definitely taking some interest in the young Dr. Carr, our rising star."
Sam doubted this was true. Sam had quietly made his way through the plastic surgery residency. No one could fault his surgical technique, but he was steady and patient, whereas Dr. Morgan was flamboyant and arrogant. Still, it was nice to believe that world-renowned surgeon was taking some interest in the quiet farm boy with the skilled hands.
"You're going to try for that extra fellowhip, right?" Jamal snatched the soda from Sam's pocket, opened it and took a swig, before his partner could protest. "Arent' you going to join your father's practice where you're all grown up anyway?"
"You mean my Dad and mybrother's practice," corrected Sam.
They had reached the end of the hall. Sam paused and pushed open the last door. He flicked on the light and threw his coat over the lone chair. The room was really a utility closet, but some sleep deprived resident had commandeered it long ago to be the "call room." It certainly couldn't be called a sleeping room. No one ever slept there for more than a hour before being called to check on a patient or verify an order. Still, the walls kept the noise out and the quiet was welcome, even if sleep was elusive.
It wasn't that the plastic surgery program couldn't afford a real call room. This was the most prestigious hospital in Seattle with the most competitive training program of any in the Northwest. But surgical residency programs prided themselves on pushing their trainees as hard as possible. Any surgical program that allowed its residents to sleep in a proper bed obviously wasn't intense enough to turn out the best surgeons. Hence, the cots in the utility room.
"Can you believe we're almost out of this hell hole, Carr? I'm tired of sleeping in my scrubs and eating peanut butter crackers at two in the morning. I am so ready pull into the office parking lot in my Jag and start making my own schedule." Jamal lay down on the cot. "One more month to go. I'm signing out on July 1st and not looking back. Fellowship has got to be better than this.
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Jamal had turned off the light ten minutes ago, but Sam still sat on the cot looking out the window. The view was the only thing this room had going for it. It was spectacular. The eleventh floor window looked out over the whole north end of Lake Washington. When the Huskies were playing, you could look right down into stadium. Sam loved Seattle. His father and brother had pushed him to leave the city for a slightly more competitive training program, but he had decided to stay. His father and brother had tried to plan every other aspect of his life. At least Sam could have this one wish.
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The incessant buzzing of the beeper broke through Sam's thin veil of sleep. He must have fallen asleep at some point, but now he sat up, rubbing his eyes. Sam groped for the phone, while Jamal roused himself with a grumble.
"Three hours." Jamal grumbled, looking at his watch. "Well, it's better than nothing," he groused as he pulled on his labcoat.
"Sometimes, three hours is worse than nothing," Sam whispered to his partner as he covered the mouthpiece of the phone and nodded at something the nurse was saying.
Sam hung up the phone and looked out the window. It was 7 AM, but the sky looked dark and foreboding.
"I thought it was supposed to be June. It looks like it's going to rain again. I hate this city," Jamal added. "When I'm finished, I'll be back in Chicago in a minute."
"Oh, and the weather so much better there." Sam pushed open the door. "Are you done complaining, or can we go get some breakfast now?"
By eleven o'clock, the rain was coming down in torrents. The members of their team who slept the night in their own beds headed back to the OR, while Jamal and Sam sat down with their notes before going home.
"Are you getting out of here soon?" Jamal got up to leave the resident lounge, "You look like shit."
"Thanks. I can't concentrate here. I'm going to find a quiet corner to finish my reports, then I'm out of here too." Sam picked up his notes and stood up.
"All right. Later." Jamal called back as he went out into the rain.
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Sam hit the button on the wall outside the neurosurgical unit. The door swung open silently. The original founders of the hospital had envisioned it as a scholarly institution. Each unit had its own small library , devoted to that specialty. Over time, the books had been abandoned for the much faster computer, so one by one, the libraries had been converted to hospital rooms. The neurosurgical library was the only one that remained. Sam had discovered it quite by accident when he had needed a quiet place to collect his thoughts after a rough day. Tucked into the corner of the sterile unit, it had one small table and dark bookshelves lining its four walls up to the ceiling. The unit itself had space for 15 beds and usually they were full of patients, some on ventilators, recovering from brain surgery or spine surgery. These patients were a far cry from the patients he usually operated on, the patients who came for a nose job in the morning and sipped cappuccino in the afternoon. Some of them had been in car accidents or other trauma, some were there for their third or fourth surgeries. He stood looking at them for a moment, standing in the doorway of the library.
"Pitiful bunch, aren't they?"
Sam hadn't realized there was someone else in the library.
"Oh, sorry. There isn't usually anyone in here."
A young woman sat at the table with a book open in front of her. "Come on in. Plenty of room."
Sam pulled up a chair and took out his notes. He stole a glance at the book on the table.
"Theory of Electroencephalograpy?" he whistled appreciatively.
"I'm actually reading this," the young woman pulled a copy of the latest Michael Crichton novel out from under the heavy book. "Found it in the lost and found box."
At that moment, the lights flickered off. It had happened before. Occasionally, the electricity would go out during a heavy storm. Usually the emergency backup kicked in after about 5 seconds. This time, the lights stayed off. Just when, Sam was getting up to check on the unit, the lights flickered back on.
Everything seemed fine. Then, Sam realized something was wrong. It was quiet. Not just quiet. Silent. The whir of the ventilators, the beeping of the IV machines. It had all stopped. The lights were on, but anything with a screen was blank or flashing. The PC units for ordering labs, the monitors which showed the vital signs….everything. Sam stood up from his chair as the nurses began to realize that the ventilators had all stopped. He glanced around the room. He was the only physician.
"All right. Everyone stop whatever else you're doing. Get an ambu bag. Check the O2 and get it flowing with a couple of liters, then disconnect the vent and start bagging. Right now – Everyone!"
The nurses quickly spread around the room, attending to the sickest patients. The ones whose ventilators could be switched to manual control were changed to those setting as quickly as possible. Other nurses began to hand-ventilate a few of the patients whose state-of-the-art automated vents had failed.
"What the hell happened?" Sam yelled as he unplugged the useless ventilator tubing, re-connected the bag-mask and began to squeeze it gently. "Can someone call down to the nursing office and get us some more help?
Over the next few hours, it became clear that the situation was much worse than Sam could have imagined. The whole hospital had been affected. It was possible that the whole city had been affected, but there was no way to know because cell phone service had completed stopped and land lines no longer worked. Every computer had crashed and every system controlled by a computer had frozen. They heard shouts from the street below and saw countless ambulances pulling up to the front of the building. Shots rang out and sirens could be heard all over the city. Sam sent one nurse out to find more information, but she never came back. They needed every set of hands to keep the group of the neurosurgery patients alive, so they just barricaded the door and kept trying to reset the vents by hand.
Finally, a police officer had come to the unit and told them some news. A terrorist attack had somehow caused every electronic system to fail. The entire city of Seattle had been affected and, possibly, the entire Northwest. He had left them an emergency generator and told them that it would probably safest for them to stay in the hospital, but that he wouldn't stop them if they chose to leave.
Leave? How could they leave? There were a dozen patients still there, five of whom were still being hand-ventilated. The staff looked at each other. No one left.
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By 7 P.M., all but two of the ventilators had been hooked up to the generators. By now, Sam had been awake for 35 hours. The nurses had been sent on foraging missions for food or brief rest breaks. The two remaining patients who needed to be ventilated had been placed on the floor and Sam sat leaning on the wall next to one of them, squeezing the bag every six seconds. He glanced over at the nurse next to him, who was attending to the other patient."
"Did you get anything to eat? I was holding out for a Twinkie myself," she said wearily.
Sam realized she was the young woman from the library. "I didn't realize it was you. Sorry. I didn't really get a chance to introduce myself. I'm Sam."
The young woman sat a few feet away, squeezing the bag of the other patient steadily. Her dark blonde hair clung to her forehead, as she tried to brush it out of her face. "I'm Cecilia. It's nice to meet you." She extended her free hand and shook Sam's firmly.
It was another five hours before reinforcements finally arrived. By that time, Cecilia and Sam had exchanged life stories. Perhaps it was only the effect of lack of sleep, but Sam found himself becoming more and more entranced by Cecilia's lilting laugh and her warm smile.
Finally, the nurses returned with some Army medics and two more ventilators. Sam and Cecilia were relieved of their duties. Sam got up wearily from the floor, stretching his sore legs.
"Bye, guess you're going home to get some rest," Cecilia waved a hand.
"Come on, troublemaker, back in the bed you go." The two nurses crossed over to where Cecilia sat and bent to lift her onto one of the beds.
"Hey, scrape your jaw back up off the floor, Sam. I'm stuck here recup'ing from a nerve injection for muscle spasms. You think I'd have stuck it out here with you all this time if I had a choice?" Cecelia said. The nurses handed Cecilia's crutches back to her.
Sam started to protest until he realized that Cecilia was grinning at him, her face lighting up in a smile that made his over-tired insides feel almost awake.