EXODUS
February 1998
To say he suspects would be a lie.
It's completely ordinary, to be standing here, examining the damage this child has inflicted on his cornea — result of an adventure involving tinker toys and a rigged-up slingshot hurtling at great speed. He's taking part in his last week of an ophthalmology rotation, called to consult in the ER on this groundbreaking case, while Gracie stands close behind him, inspecting his work with an overabundance of interest. She is close behind him, with a mission in mind.
Why he doesn't catch on is beyond her.
"Will there be any permanent damage?" The mother asks, her worried tone more than overcompensating for the child's lack of agitation.
"I see no laceration," Carter says, leaning back on his stool and nearly catching Gracie off guard. She recovers quickly. "Just an abrasion of the cornea. It'll hurt for a while, but should heal just fine."
"But he'll be able to see?"
He gets this expression on his face, this mildly amused, yet gently reassuring expression that has this tendency to drive her insane. He tells the mother, "His vision will be fine." Gracie hops out of Carter's way as he stands up, her task now complete. "I'm going to prescribe some antibiotic eye-drops, and Nurse Abrahams here will need to update his tetanus. But you, Mikey, will be just fine!" He ruffles the little boy's hair, and Gracie dutifully follows Carter out of the exam room. She keeps her distance, waiting for the moment to drop.
At admit, she takes the chart back from Carter after he is done with his notes, and in her head she is whistling innocently. He's in such spirits that it doesn't take long for him to reach his hands down into the pockets of his lab coat.
Carter shouts, horrified, ripping his hands out of his pockets to find them covered in some sort of horrible, clear, mucousy-looking slime. It oozes off his fingers and drips onto his nice leather shoes, and all the nurses at admit are doubled over with hysterical laughter; Gracie included.
"What the hell!"
Then he notices the collection of empty SurgiLube packets Gracie has displayed on the counter. She's getting high fives, and she's giving him a sly smirk, and his eyes narrow, and by God there's nothing more he'd like to do than throttle her. Instead, he points at her menacingly, and stalks away to wash his hands.
But it starts later, with the plant workers.
They come in screaming, soaked in solvent, lugging with them a co-worker in respiratory distress. Gracie and Kerry Weaver are at his side immediately, and Gracie tries to protect the man's airway, while at the same time trying to protect her own from the overpowering smell of solvent. But it all gets too hectic, too fast. Weaver's about to listen to the guy's lungs when she collapses to the floor, unconscious, taken over by the fumes. Gracie is so caught up in the plant worker's sats that she can only watch as Carter, back in the department, stops to help. He's checking the plant worker over as Weaver starts to seize, and a moment later he tears himself away to help support her own airway.
And it all feels so ominous, like she's a spectator of a movie, or at least a really great play. It's difficult to focus on the moment when so much of this feels like it isn't happening. Gracie and Lily try to handle the care of the plant worker as chaos erupts, waiting for a doctor to get back and order his treatment, but everyone gets swept up. Mats are put all over the floor to prevent the tracking of solvent, and a mad scramble is made to move patients away from the fumes, to close to paramedics, to do anything about this situation at all.
"This is getting ridiculous," Gracie mutters to Lily, as she holds an oxygen mask over the plant worker's face and checks his O2 level. He's gasping, his chest shuddering with every breath, and the three of them are relatively ignored as the rest of the ER erupts into chaos.
"Sats are down to eighty-two," Lily replies quietly.
Gracie says nothing for a moment, then says decisively, "I'm going to intubate," moving firmly and confidently as she gathers what is needed.
"Gracie —"
"Lily, fifteen of Etomidate and a hundred of succs, please," is all Lily receives in reply. It's not like Gracie doesn't have the privilege to intubate, she had trained intensively in the area, but it's generally more acceptable to wait for a doctor.
Yet Lily pushes the drugs, and Gracie is opening her laryngoscope, telling the gasping plant worker, "Manny, I know your wife's on the way, but I need to intubate you now. You're gonna feel kind of sleepy in a minute, and when you wake up, there'll be a tube in your mouth to help you breathe."
He's out a minute later, and Gracie has the blade of the laryngoscope pushed past his tongue when Carter comes sweeping by. "What are you doing?"
"I'm intubating this man," Gracie replies matter-of-factly, her tone absent as she spends her time concentrating on properly placing the ET tube.
Carter forgets whatever he was doing and rushes to the bedside, tugging on latex gloves and hovering over Gracie as she, despite his reaction, expertly places the ET tube. "You wait for a physician, Gracie, you know that!"
"I'm sorry, would you rather I let him go into arrest?"
He says nothing, visibly torn between anger and distraction — as if habit tells him that this is what he should be focusing on, but the ongoing situation says otherwise. "Get ready to bag him," Gracie says idly, a second later announcing, "I'm in." She removes the laryngoscope, takes her stethoscope from around her neck, and listens to the man's lungs as Lily begins to bag him.
"Oh, sure, let's all ignore policy —"
She rips the device from her ears. "Lily, keep bagging, I'm going to get a vent, and you —" Gracie points at Carter as she begins to bustle away. "I'm not dealing with you right now."
"I'm not dealing with you, either!" He shouts after her. All he receives is a rather dismissive wave in return before she completely disappears from sight.
It seems like ages later when the paramedics come storming in through the double doors, despite the calls placed to close to trauma. Corday is with them, and with the two extra gurneys and the influx of people clogging the main hallway, it becomes more noisier than ever before. Gracie is stuck behind one of the gurneys when Carter snaps and shoves his way to the front of the arguing crowd.
"Everybody shut up!" Carter yells. "Everybody shut up!"
The silence becomes deafening.
"We are going to evacuate the entire ER," Carter announces authoritatively, despite how out of the blue this decision seems. "Check every room. All contaminated patients and staff go to the ambulance bay right now."
Malik asks how to know if you're contaminated.
"If you've got a spot on your skin, if you've got a spot on your gurney, if you've got a spot on your clothes, go outside right now."
Gracie knows this means she's contaminated. She had treated the plant worker. She's not thrilled to have to go out into the cold, but she obliges. With the arrival of Hazmat comes decontamination, in the form of showering outdoors.
She shudders as she stands under the rushing water, soaked to the bone in her bra and panties, getting scrubbed down as she watches Carter rush around the ambulance bay with a newfound air of authority. Every now and then she sees his eyes dart in her direction, as if he wants to make sure of where she's situated at all times. She wouldn't think more of it if this feeling hadn't already began stirring.
She feels guilty.
For four years she's known Carter; for four years she has watched him go from a bumbling med student, to a surgical intern, straight into emergency medicine. For four years she has worked with him, argued with him, triumphed with him, and loathed him. And now it's as if he's transformed into a doctor. Right in front of her very eyes. It's disconcerting in the wildest way. And the guilt for her prank this afternoon swirls in her gut, in a way she hates intensely. She feels guilty for this afternoon, but even more so for how they have treated each other.
She knows there's a word for this, she just can't put her finger on it.
Gracie changes into a new pair of scrubs and is off at the word go, her wet hair flapping in the wind as she rushes to get up to the cafeteria before anything else could possibly go wrong. She hears briefly about an elevator stuck between floors, but has no time to think about it. Her services are needed upstairs.
But hours later, after cafeteria codes and non-stop moving, after a return of triumph to the ER proper, Gracie finds herself hit with a thud of realization on her way home. It's enough to stop her dead in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk, mostly for the surprise of the feeling.
She respects him.
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