Disclaimer: Still not mine...but if they were mine..I'd be making some money on reruns! What the hey?
Previously...
"I need you to help me find my wife..."
"What's her name sir?" Haleh asked
"Her name? Sam, Samantha Sobriki."
Chapter 8
Broken
The elevator closed as Carol, Peter and Mark stared down at their unconscious patient. The only sounds they could hear was the whoosh every three seconds of the breather bag and the clanking of the elevator as they stared at the extremely pale, pasty version of John Carter that lay before them. Each of them glanced up at each other, their eyes holding the absolute fear of losing him.
2:15 a.m.
The clicking of heels on old linoleum could barely be heard above the roar of the conversation behind the emergency room information desk. A woman wearing a conservative blue dress and black heels strode into the busy doors of County ER, clutching a black leather handbag tightly. It was unusual for her to be awake at this hour, but she walked with smooth movements despite her age, and gently pulled an offending lock of grey hair behind her ear as she approached the information desk. An elderly woman stood in front of the desk as Jerry, Malik and two other nurses stood talking about a patient.
"Excuse me." she announced, but was ignored.
"They say he was hit head on."
"...trapped under the car for hours...buried under his own car..."
"Poor guy, I heard they may have to cut his leg off."
"Where did you hear that?"
"Man, I would hate to have Benton working on me to save my live after he's rode my ass all day. What if he decided to leave an instrument or something in there just to piss you off ?" Malik said.
"Guys, it's not funny...this is serious Carter could die, just think positive thoughts.
" They used six bags of blood...I never seen anybody survive using that much when he was still losing it."
Kerry Weaver rounded the corner and caught the tail end of their conversation. As she looked at the counter her face lost all color as she looked into the eyes of Millicent Carter, and the anguish that was now etched on her face. Kerry smacked Malik and Jerry in the back of the legs with her cane.
"Mrs. Carter," she said loudly. "Hi...I'm Dr. Kerry Weaver, I'm one of Carter's... supervisors."
Mrs. Carter looked at her strangely.
"His name is John. Where is my grandson Dr. Weaver?" she demanded as Kerry turned her away from desk and started towards the elevator.
"He was just taken upstairs a short time ago. He needs emergency surgery, we could not wait for next of kin consent. As an employee, Car...John is under agreement to be treated here if something happened to him. He wasn't conscious when he was brought in"
Mrs. Carter put a trembling hand to her forehead as Kerry pressed the up button on the elevator. The doors opened and they stepped into the empty cage.
"What happened to John? He called hours ago to say he was on his way ...was there an accident?"
"Yes ma'am, I am not certain of the details, but there was a vehicle collision and unfortunately he was very seriously injured. One of our surgeons, Dr. Benton was actually at the scene and is operating on him now."
"How serious? Will he be alright?"
"From what I was told he was hit in a head on collision, and the vehicle flipped and ejected John. He was trapped under the vehicle for a few hours before he was found and he therefore has some significant internal injuries and some broken limbs." Kerry spoke with a level of clinical detachment she was amazed that she was capable of.
Mrs. Carter paled as Kerry reached to steady her, but urged her to continue.
"It was fortuitous that Dr. Benton was in the area near the accident, he was able to stabilize John long enough to get him to the hospital."
"Oh my heavens, he was coming to see me...I demanded he come out to the house..."
"Mrs. Carter...as far as we know it was a freak accident, the other driver was brought in as well. We hope to get a statement from her to find out exactly what happened."
"I don't care about how it happened, I just want my grand son to be alright. I couldn't forgive myself if he didn't make it through this. "
"We will do everything in our power to make sure he is okay, but I would notify his parents, they should be here." they stepped out of the elevators as she led Mrs. Carter into the surgery waiting area.
"I'll talk to my son Jack, but they are out town. You just let me know if there is anything that John needs, a specialist or any equipment, you do whatever it takes to save my grandson." She said firmly.
As Peter Benton held the insanely sharp scapel in his hands he stared one last time at the young innocent face of his student that lay before him. He listened to the air being forced into his lungs to keep him alive, and the sounds of a heart beating still to fast. "Too young" he thought to himself, he couldn't let anything happen to Carter, not on his watch.
He stared at the swollen flesh of his patient's abdomen, yellowed by betadine and made a lateral incision. He immediately requested suction as the area started to bleed profusely. It was expected as he knew at the very least two organs were damaged or completely ruptured. As a nurse suctioned he continued to cut through skin, then fat and muscle as he entered the cavity to discover the bruised and battered inner organs of his patient. "Humpty dumpty" he thought to himself as he began his work. So diligent in his concentration he barely heard the words of the other surgeon.
"Dr. Benton, I'll need you assistance removing the remaining shrapnel from his leg
"Dr. Morgenstern, I'm into the abdominal wall..."
"Peter...look at his leg...he's going to lose the damn thing if we don't get this out of here, I'm certain it's lodged in an artery. "
So intent on the exceptional amount of internal bleeding bottoming out Carter's blood pressure, Peter considered the sharpnel a secondary task. After all, they had not been able to get an x-ray and had only been able to get a cursory exam in the ER. He placed a sterile plastic gauze over the freshly opened wound and turned to the leg wound as a nurse continued to irrigate the wound with a plasma substitute.
Dr. Morgenstrn took another look at the shrapnel, and cut around its frayed jagged edges into the middle of his naked pale deep blue thigh, and bit at his own lip as he hit pay dirt.
As he instructed Peter and one other nurse to pull, they lifted out the jagged metal, and Carter's leg immediately began to lose its dark blue color, but with each pulse of his heart a film of deep red arterial blood oozed from the wound in his leg.
"Pressure is 80/60 and dropping...pulse increasing...130. "
"Damn it ...it did knick the artery. The two doctors frantically went into the task of cleansing and then trying to locate the free bleeding damaged artery before their patient died of unrecoverable blood loss. His blood pressure was already so dangerously low he was nearly comatose.
They changed Carter into the head down position and elevated his legs to keep his remaining blood volume in his heart and brain as they tried desperately to replace the volume. Every available nurse was squeezing in liters of fluid with their bare hands trying to increase fluid volume to the patient as the nightmarish procedure continued.
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Mark Green and Doug Ross found themselves in the surgery waiting area. Their shift had been over for more than four hours, but they could not bring themselves to leave. Ever since Benton had come barreling in the door with one of their own laid out in the most vulnerable way possible, they had been able to think about nothing else. Like zombies awaiting damnation they counted as the second hour of Carter's surgery ticked off. Sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chairs they had so often forced their own patients to "wait patiently" in they sipped from the black tar the cafeteria affectionately called coffee.
As they exchanged banter about the time when Mark and Susan put a cast on Carter's leg and laughed heartedly, about Carter's reaction to its chainsaw removal, they were sickened by an interruption in their thought as an echo came over the over head announcement.
"Code blue OR 6, Code blue OR 6." The voice said.
Doug visibly paled as the coffee in his hand was dropped to the floor - quickly forgotten - as he looked at his comrade's equally shocked face.
Each of them leapt to their feet as they headed to the surgery desk to verify the obvious. This time of morning there was only one patient being operated on...only one patient at death's door...at 4:23 a.m. It was John Truman Carter.
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Two more chapters to wrap this up...unless you want more...Will Carter die? Want faster updates? Please read and review! : ) I work for feedback! ; )
