Author's Note: Hello again everyone! Let me just note quickly that this chapter, as well as its second part is based on/was inspired by the ER episode "Day One." Also, the title comes from lyrics to the Jimmy Eat World song of the same name. Thank you all for reading! Please let me know what you think, and enjoy!
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Chapter 34 - Hear You Me, Part 1
Erik
When it happened, I was just about to reach the end of the last afternoon of my three-day shift rotation in surgery. For the most part, everything about that October day itself had been considerably normal until then - nearly to the point of devolving into all-out monotony, although none of us ever actually complained about the lack of the personal or professional chaos that was usually found in the department. Rather, it was something to be taken in stride and counted as good fortune, because the decidedly rare lull in patient-intake and the similar absence of emergent cases had given most of us the chance to stay off of our usual sense of high-alert for a while - a welcomed relief in its own right - and had allowed several of the residents to grant some much-needed time toward checking in with their students.
Distantly noting all of that from the corner desk where I had holed myself up in order to finish the charting I'd been avoiding and the other necessary busy-work that had accompanied it, and given the overall muted air of the environment, I hadn't expected much more to come of that day, beyond what little was already written up on the admit- and scheduling-board. I wasn't on-call downstairs, nor was I needed in any other part of the hospital, and thus assumed that I would be staying put, either until it was time for me to leave and meet Christine and Josie for dinner downtown - able to do so as they were already in the city, away from Schaumburg for a day-trip with Jo's school - or if a surgical trauma case was thrown in my direction. Up to then though, in my department, we'd pretty much decided that seeing anyone that wasn't scheduled for general surgery wasn't very likely, and that it was fairly safe for us to just settle in and wait out the clock.
So, I was genuinely surprised when I received the 911 page from the ER - more so when several other pagers went off around me, a clear sign of a mass-casualty alert.
On the way out of the surgical service, my colleagues and I were informed that we were heading down to assist the ER teams in handling urgent diagnoses and subsequent treatments for a multi-vehicle accident that had just occurred close to the hospital. Apparently - or at least as far as the nurse imparting these details as she swiftly followed us down the stairwell knew - a driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, and then unknowingly veered into oncoming traffic, his mistake in turn causing a lengthy chain-reaction in the opposite lane wherein several of the other cars were badly affected, leaving many of those drivers and their passengers having to be brought into the emergency room in critical condition. Beyond that, though, we knew next to nothing about these people - only the circumstances that brought them to begin with, maybe anything relevant that the EMTs needed to say afterward. But as was the standard, that brief glimpse of these incoming patients would be about as much information as we'd receive about them, about what we were walking into, where now only the practice of medicine could be our main focus, anything else instantly becoming matters for the patients and their families to face later. It was that same strange kind of detachment that had always been a significant aspect of my career, even after so much time spent as a surgeon, and one that I'd continued to regard warily; I would always walk that narrow line between professionalism and burn-out.
Even so, I was ready to get to work immediately, ready to evaluate patients and to take any traumas that were handed over to me by the time I and a few of the other physicians from my department had made it downstairs. From there, we parted ways, customarily expecting not to see each other again until the final wave of accident victims had been dealt with. The ER was understandably crowded by then, the confining space uncomfortably loud and overwhelmed by too many voices lost in varying states of fear and pain and confusion; I wanted to get started in managing some of the disorder that I was seeing around me quickly, because this situation as a whole would certainly get much worse long before it could have a chance to get better, and more doctors on the floor meant mitigating at least a portion of that damage - but, to my irritation, I was pulled aside as soon as I took my first steps into the emergency room, rather than being allowed to move ahead freely as I usually did.
Quickly recognizing the charge nurse when I'd turned to the source of the interruption, I let go of my irritation in the next instant, and then began to ask in response to the urgency I saw in her eyes, "Do you need me to - "
But she halted my question, " - We didn't page you down here to work, Dr. Riley. Your wife and daughter were in the accident."
Your wife and daughter were...
Oh my God...
I balked at the news. This distressing turn of events was so utterly unexpected that I was having trouble believing that they were part of reality at all - and even as I fought to process each new detail, everything in me had wanted to protest those words first and foremost, had wanted to deny the meaning behind them altogether. Because this wasn't right; in spite of what I'd just heard form the woman standing in front of me, it could not be possible that Christine and Josie had been hurt in any way. It simply couldn't be possible that they were in the accident in the first place, one that I'd been informed only moments before now was exceedingly harmful to those involved. By my present understanding - and only once I bit back my shock and more or less conceded to the fact that any of this was happening - I knew the EMTs that were bringing the incoming patients from the scene had called in noticeably more major injuries than minors over their radio line, and on that basis alone, I didn't feel very confident in the odds that were alluded to by that determination. Ideally, I'd wanted to be optimistic for my wife and our daughter, to avoid jumping to any of the worst-case scenario conclusions that had flashed in my thoughts, but I still needed to conscientiously force myself not to overreact then and there.
Feigning steadiness into my voice, and barely succeeding, I asked, "Where are they?"
"Your daughter's still en-route, and Dr. Durant's in trauma-one."
"She's in a trauma room? It's that bad?" I demanded sharply, forfeiting the last of the notion that had somehow remained in my mind about staying calm in the wake of her words.
But although I'd been the one that posed the question, I never gave her the chance to respond - I didn't need to hear her saying what I already knew, or to hear further evidence of everything I was afraid of happening. If Christine hadn't been injured too severely in the wreck, then she would've simply been assigned to stay for basic treatment at one of the curtained-off gurneys that were part of the main floor, away from the more serious patients, but still kept under close observation. The fact that she had gone straight to a trauma room upon her arrival very nearly sent me into a blind panic; I couldn't ignore the dread that I felt at the implications of each of these pieces of the overall story.
That dread only worsened when I neared the trauma room itself, when I caught that first view of Christine being transferred from the ambulance gurney to the one belonging to the room. From where I stood, I could tell she was badly injured, although to exactly what extent, I couldn't say with any measure of certainty then - I was only sure that she was bleeding from a laceration high on her forehead, from several others scattered across her body, and that each breath she'd taken was clearly painful for her. But even though she was in pain, even though she'd looked so incredibly terrified lying there, I could see how stubbornly she fought it all; I saw it in her eyes, in the way she clenched her fists at her sides. I knew she'd do whatever she could to settle down again, and to convince herself that everything was going to work out. I knew her, and so I didn't expect anything less. Her bravery was admirable, yet in this context, it was unsettling to witness as well, and I distantly wondered how much of a comfort it could be to her. She couldn't see me from where she was - her head and neck were still being stabilized by the c-collar - but I was honestly thankful that she was temporarily immobilized, because I was sure that if I looked into her eyes then, the sight would break me entirely.
When the ringing in my ears finally subsided and I heard her voice, though - when I heard the tremor that painted it - I couldn't keep lingering in the doorway.
Rushing into the room, I approached Christine's side, capturing her attention and taking her hand in my own. With that contact, she stirred purposefully, still disoriented from so recently regaining consciousness, but at least able to recognize me. I tried to count that as a good sign, only to get distracted when she began to whisper, "Erik - "
" - Shh, don't talk right now. Just try to relax, I'm here...just relax," I said with affected evenness, and then to the nurse working close by, "Have y'all cleared her neck yet?"
A nod, "We were just about to take off the - "
" - It's fine, I'll do it," I said, reaching out carefully to remove the device from around Christine's neck - mercifully now proven to be uninjured - trying all the while to crush the instinct to take over as a physician and run this case myself. As much as I'd wanted to, there was just no way in hell that would be allowed to happen - legally, ethically...that wasn't a possibility - and so I'd have to settle for tending to my wife in the most basic manner I had available. Once I'd put the c-collar aside, I murmured absentmindedly to her, "That should feel better."
She nodded, but then added tearfully, "My chest hurts..." yet before I could say anything on that point, she gasped, attempting to sit further upright, "Where's Josephine?"
"On her way," I said, coaxing her to lie still without hurting her, and hoping that my worry over Josie wasn't as evident as it felt, "She's on her way - "
" - Dr. Riley?"
Assuring Christine that I wasn't going to be far from her, I turned when I recognized Dr. Freeman's voice, the attending that was on duty that afternoon. The older physician had been working in the emergency room for several months by then, but I didn't know him well - and I certainly didn't like that I didn't know him well. We hadn't had nearly enough encounters by that point for me to easily determine if I could trust him now, to decide whether or not I should when I'd needed to the most, and I absolutely hated that I wasn't in a position to do more in terms of medicine, forced instead to put my faith in this near-stranger. But then, all things considered, I really didn't have much of a choice.
So, albeit grudgingly, I stepped in as a husband, rather than as a doctor, "Tell me what's happening. What did the EMTs say on arrival?"
"Your wife and daughter were both hurt, but your wife's side of the car took the worst of the impact. Your daughter was faring well with the paramedics, the last I'd heard," he explained slowly, though I sensed that he wasn't going to try to avoid medical jargon with me just because I was so rattled, and if nothing else, I appreciated the implicit acknowledgement that he needed to balance my conflicting roles. Still, I made no indication of my gratitude as he continued, "They had a prolonged extrication on-scene, and so far we know your wife has some broken ribs, but she's stable."
I nodded, glancing over briefly at the nurse getting Christine set up with another IV, with all of the other standard preemptive care measures, and asked, "What's your treatment plan?"
"Scans for now, and an EKG. We need to rule out myocardial contusions, for one thing, but...you should know now, from what I'm seeing, I'm afraid that's what we're looking at here, so I want to treat this aggressively..."
Freeman's voice faded out steadily as he spoke, after he had said those hateful words, myocardial contusions. Meaning plainly, the presence of bruising to the heart...and, depending on how extensive the bruising was, this was a potentially fatal complication of the accident, the immediate aftermath of blunt-force trauma. I knew what the diagnosis entailed, and therefore I was instantly aware of everything that could potentially go wrong moving forward. Reflexively lifting my hands to cover my mouth, closing my eyes and taking a deep and unsteady breath - a desperate, last-ditch attempt to regain the composure that was quickly slipping away from me - I didn't directly respond to the attending physician; rather, I'd only nodded my understanding once more, before I turned away from him again, turning back to Christine and adamantly refusing to allow my mind to venture any further than a few moments ahead of us at a time.
The nurses had her settled in entirely by then, had set her up with oxygen given through a mask to ensure her saturation levels were maintained, with a second IV and pain medication to keep her comfortable, with everything that could possibly be done then to hold her status of stability while she was treated. But even that was tentative, and all I could do for my part was just wait and watch and hope - all I could do was try to ignore the nagging voice in the back of my mind that kept insisting that stability didn't automatically negate the seriousness of the situation. Yes, Christine was relatively stable then, but I knew damn well exactly how precarious that status was for her, especially if it had turned out that her heart was bruised in the accident. Any known complications that might follow that kind of injury could take anywhere from moments to days to manifest in her, and so much could go wrong between those points of the spectrum; waiting out that time would be torture, I was sure. As it stood, I'd only been in the room for a few minutes in reality - hardly a substantial amount of time - and yet it still felt like time had slowed down, had nearly come to a full stop, and nothing was helping to alleviate that disturbing sensation.
Christine reached out for me again when I'd returned to her bedside, and I responded to her grasp just as tightly. I was so afraid for my wife, afraid for Josie and sick with worry for them both; I'd wanted to do something to fix this, anything at all, but I couldn't. I felt so helpless then.
Sighing, I finally thought to remove my surgical mask so she could see me clearly, then leaned over and brushed my free hand across her forehead, the motion soft as I stayed mindful of the gauze-covered laceration there - I'd hoped that the gesture would help to soothe her when she was otherwise so distressed. But for all her own former stubbornness and my best intentions, that simply wasn't enough for all she'd been through, and instead she wept miserably, each inhalation becoming more shallow, more forced as she cried, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't know what was happening, it went wrong so fast, and - "
" - Don't be sorry," I interjected quickly, absolutely unwilling to let her shoulder any blame for what had happened that day whatsoever. She had only been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and nothing else - she'd become a victim of a misfortune that she hadn't asked for, "Listen to me, Christine. Don't be sorry. None of this is your fault, alright? You don't need to apologize."
Nodding - although not without the lingering tears to accompany the seemingly hesitant acceptance of my attempt at reassurance - she whispered, settling for restating her misplaced guilt, "It's just...I don't understand. It happened so fast..."
"I know, but - " I began to respond, but before I could continue speaking, a nurse from the adjoining trauma room informed us that Josie had finally been brought in. Though even as I was immensely grateful for her arrival - if nothing else, then simply for the fact that I could now see her for myself - my dread returned tenfold regardless. Because this ordeal was far from over, and nothing would settle me down again until it was.
"You need to go in there with her," Christine said quickly, even forcefully, compelling my attention to come solely back to her as she all but demanded, "Erik, please, she was crying for us when I left her, she's so scared right now. You have to be with her, please."
Completely taken aback by just the idea of leaving this room - nevermind the unwavering determination in Christine's voice that I would do as she said, no matter how incredibly wrong it felt for me to leave her behind - and torn painfully between protecting my wife and protecting our child, I couldn't speak initially. There was no easy solution here, no simple answer in sight, and I could only stammer as I fought for the strength to do the right thing, "Christine, I - "
" - You have to stay with Jo," she nearly shouted, resolutely moving the oxygen mask away from her mouth in order to be heard without question, "I'll be fine here, just stay with her."
Even in her intense determination, her voice had broken at that, had broken in the same breath wherein I'd felt my conscience losing its race against time altogether - the terrible instant then punctuated as soon as we'd registered the distinct sound of Josephine's cries and pleas for us both from the next room. All at once, her voice was enough to sway me, the sound proving to be the last bit of persuasion that I'd needed to listen to reason, and step away without any further hesitation. And although it felt like a knife had been driven through me when I spoke again, I still made the promise that my wife had so badly needed from me in the following moment, "Alright, I will. I'll stay with her...I'll stay," I whispered, just barely noting the mingled resignation and resolve in my tone - because as much as this hurt, and likely would for quite some time, I knew from the start of this situation that she was right. My place was with Josie now, bar none. She was only a child, she couldn't be expected to be left alone with her fear. So I looked at Christine, looked into her eyes, willing her to stay safe while I was separated from her, before I leaned in and kissed her, murmuring a tremulous I love you before I turned and made my way toward my daughter.
From what I could tell in my brief passing - and only by glancing off to one side, out the half-shaded windows overlooking the rest of the space - the main sections the ER had remained just as overwhelmed as they had been when I'd first arrived there. Once again, I realized that so little time had actually passed by then, that there was next to nothing separating my entering the department and this last handful of moments; yet everything about my surroundings felt stalled and unreal, almost unnatural in spite of the constant din around me, in spite of the clear evidence of humanity that had taken up the small expanse with their crowds. The doctors and nurses and admin and patients...everywhere. There were people everywhere, just as they'd been every day that I continued to tread in and out of this hospital. But as I'd walked over the threshold between the trauma rooms to meet my daughter, I felt as if I was moving entirely by myself, set adrift in some unexpected and inescapable nightmare. And as long as Christine and Josie were here as patients themselves, as long as they were still in harm's way at all, I knew that I would be alone in that nightmare. It truly was a suffocating thought, one that was difficult to dismiss; I was only pulled out of that imagined isolation when Josie's voice sounded through the air again, less frantic now, but even that was just marginally so as she kept trying to ask the nurse tending to her where her parents were - namely, where her mother had been taken.
Initially, she didn't see me arrive, still too caught up in her tears to be able to consider much of anything beyond her immediate concerns - she was crying out for Christine, crying that she was hurting, that she was afraid. It broke my heart to hear any of that coming from her, and I'd actually had to pause where I stood, to force myself calm down again before attempting to talk to my child. The last thing that she needed then was to feed off my own mounting anxiety and grow more distressed herself as a result. So I took a deep breath and refocused, and once I indicated that I was more or less ready, the nurse made Josephine aware that I was there now, and she looked up quickly, hiccoughing and reaching out frantically when I walked in. And as I'd done with Christine, I took Jo's hand tightly in mine as soon as I made it to her side.
Unsurprisingly, she wasted no time in asking, "Where's Mom?"
"She's here, honey. She's fine, alright? Everything's fine," I responded softly, hating the half-lie but knowing that it was necessary, then to the nurse, "Her status?"
"Her vitals are borderline, and she complained of pain in the upper-right abdomen, some guarding there, and dizziness. No loss of consciousness, but the IV infiltrated en-route. I'm redoing it right now."
I nodded stiffly, fighting to appear outwardly composed, even though my tension had only increased with this new information as I asked, "Where's the attending?"
"Right here, don't worry," Dr. Khatari, the pediatric surgeon on staff, said sternly, startling me when she appeared in the doorway and commanded the room. Beyond that original shock, though, I was grateful to see her. Because unlike Dr. Freeman, I'd known Khatari fairly well, and for much longer - had worked with her several times in the past, seeing each occasion marked with consistent success and level-headedness on her part. So I was reasonably certain that my daughter was in reliable hands. Even though it was guarded, what followed that realization was probably the first semblance of relief I'd felt that day, and I took it in like a man drowning; noting that, I turned my attention back to Josie, prompting her to focus on me again as she struggled against the nurse restarting the lost IV line. I needed her to settle down before she managed to hurt herself.
"I don't want you to be afraid, just relax," I said softly, holding her free hand in mine again, running my thumbs over her fingers slowly, warming the skin there and starting to form a pattern that she could follow, as I explained, "You need that IV, sweetheart."
She listened to that - albeit hesitantly, and still clearly nervous altogether about what was happening in those moments - but she was listening to what I was saying, and that much more closely than she had been before. It was an improvement. And so I simply continued to talk her through the process as the nurse worked on the new IV, speaking slowly and quietly to my daughter, almost as I would have spoken to comfort the younger patients that I would occasionally come across when I was needed in the emergency room - for the time being, treating her in the same manner was really all I could do for her. I had no place in her treatment plan anymore than I had with Christine's. Yet while I hated the overall circumstances, to be honest I was grateful that my doing so appeared to serve as enough of a distraction for her to take some of the edge off of her anxiety, that it seemed to keep her full attention away from putting in the IV line itself, turning the majority of her focus around instead to take in the information that I was giving to her. If she could just think about those words and only those words, then ideally she wouldn't be upset any further by the relatively minor procedure.
By the time I'd finished speaking, the IV was secured in the back of Josie's hand - but rather than commenting on it any more than she already had, now that its placement was over and done with and no longer a direct source of fear for her, she'd only eyed it dubiously before saying insistently, "I want Mommy."
"I know. But her doctors are helping her, just like we're helping you, alright?"
Josephine nodded, assumedly in acceptance, yet spoke again shortly afterward, her voice growing more unsteady then, with every detail of the accident that she was apparently remembering, "I really want Mom. I couldn't talk to her before, she was in the front seat, and I couldn't see her, but I knew she hit her head and I couldn't wake her up - "
" - She's awake now, Jo. I was just with her, she's awake. But right now, Dr. Khatari is going to see why your stomach is hurting - "
" - Step aside, please," Khatari said, walking up beside me as if on cue, as she moved to examine Josephine without another word passed between us. But after only an instant had gone by, and exactly as I'd feared she would - exactly where I'd feared she would - Jo cried out when the surgeon applied pressure to her stomach. From there, Jo was sent for a CT scan, and upon her return, I'd watched carefully, almost methodically as Khatari performed a bedside ultrasound in order to confirm the suspected free-bleeding and organ lacerations in Jo's abdomen - another set of critical injuries that were consistent with the type of trauma that had taken place that day - and then a peritoneal lavage as a final confirmation of what she'd seen on the ultrasound. When we made eye-contact again at the end of that seemingly-endless assessment process, Khatari spoke for me to hear, "Possible splenic laceration. I'm red-lining her up for an ex-lap."
Dread threatened to suffocate me then as I faced off with reality, but I'd tamped it down once more, bit it back and schooled my features into evenness as quickly as humanly possible - regardless of how I was feeling, Josie could not see me falling apart now. When Khatari began explaining to her - in the child-friendly terms she had practiced so often by then - what the nature of the diagnosis actually meant going forward, I had turned around just enough to be able to see through the window of the door dividing the trauma rooms, scanning the space almost frantically all the while. Luckily, in spite of the constant activity in both rooms, I caught Christine's attention as soon as I'd done so, bringing her gaze to meet mine right when I'd needed to the most; at her questioning look, I nodded meaningfully upward, signifying with the sharp gesture that upstairs in surgery was Josie's next destination. To my relief, Christine had very quickly understood what I was attempting to say to her, what I had to convey without having to leave my daughter alone to do so, before responding in turn with a clear and determined command of go with her. And once again, even as badly as it was hurting to be torn in two completely separate directions, I willingly complied with my wife's repeated urging.
Outside of the elevator banks, as I moved with Khatari and the small transport services team to bring Josie upstairs, I heard Nadir calling out for me, the urgency behind his next words nearly as unmistakable as the nurse's had been earlier, when he reached me and said in a rush, "I just saw their names up on the board, what - "
But I cut him off, " - Can you go head Christine's trauma team?"
"You know I can't just take over another doctor's case, Erik," he replied evenly, glancing away distractedly as the elevator arrived. Then, stepping onboard with us, he looked back at me and said, "I'll oversee, and help Freeman if I can, alright?"
"Alright…"
"We'll talk more about this in a while," then to Josephine, "What's the matter, honey?"
"I need an operation."
He reached out and took her hand, responding gently, "Well, we'll have to take off this nail polish for your operation, then," he said, his voice close to conversational as he gestured to the chipped and sparkling neon-blue monstrosity that Jo had worked so hard to perfect just days before, "But, when you're done, I think I can help you redo your nails. Does that sound good?"
"I guess so," she said, her tone as unsure as her reply had been.
Up to that point, though, she'd stopped crying entirely - had gotten herself to settle down enough to ask a series of questions, and to allow their answers as any other curious child might, rather than retreat into herself as a fearful patient often would - and I continued to be hopeful that her reassurance would last throughout the rest of the time she had to spend here. For the most part, I was confident that would be exactly what was going to happen as the day dragged on.
That was, at least, until the elevator doors reopened to reveal the surgical department itself. Nadir stayed on the elevator to return to the ER, promising to keep me informed of everything that was going on down there, and for the briefest moment the chaos was reined in. But immediately upon entering that particularly unsettling environment, upon taking in each of the sights and the sounds that were largely unfamiliar to her, and ones that were understandably frightening even at the best of times, Josephine inevitably started to cry again. But this time, her tears came on nearly to the extent of triggering an all-out panic attack. As it stood, she was well on her way to having one to begin with, and the prospect of surgery was clearly only worsening that anxious state of mind for her. Calming her down again after the fact had proven to be its own battle, and there was only so much I could do for her while she was prepared for her surgery; by the time I'd gotten cleaned up and changed into surgical scrubs to stand beside her in the OR while she was put under, she wasn't any more reassured than she'd been when she first arrived at the hospital. She was so beyond terrified, plain and simple, and I honestly wondered, even as she was being carefully tended to by her nurses, if she might still hurt herself if she kept carrying on this way.
"Daddy, I want to go home," she sobbed, "Please, I want Mommy! I want to go home!"
"Easy, easy," I murmured in response, hesitant at doing so, and yet having to offer those generic words of comfort that I absolutely loathed, even as I said them - even though they were necessary - because there wasn't one single promise I could make her regarding the outcome of her ordeal. So I'd just continued, and prayed that she would hear me, "It's alright. Look at me, Josephine, everything's going to be fine. Just calm down, babydoll."
And, to my mingled unease and relief, she grew quiet in that instant - but that quiet only came about because the anesthesiologist had begun her work by the time my voice had faded into the background.
Afterward, I'd stayed in the operating room for as long as I was allowed to, but when my mounting nervousness had become almost palpable to everyone else in attendance, I'd had no choice but to step out and leave my daughter - to leave her behind me and to trust that she was being taken care of all the while. And for an immeasurable time, as I relentlessly paced the waiting room, my arms wrapped tightly around my chest as I fought to breathe properly with every step that I took, I began to grapple with an intense guilt over having to leave the OR at all. A significant part of me sincerely felt as though I'd effectively broken my promise to Christine, and that I had done so in a matter of seconds, simply by not staying by Josie's side during every single moment of her care. However distantly, I knew that I wasn't being reasonable with myself, I knew Christine would certainly understand that my forced absence was solely for Josie's wellbeing - as much as I was compelled to do so, I couldn't act out on my restlessness and become a distraction to the people that held her little life in their hands. I needed to ease off, needed to be the parent and not the doctor. Yet even so, reason be damned, whatever sense of rationality was left within my mind was very quickly overpowered by that lingering and consuming guilt, and deeply in my mind the guilt stayed from then on. Therefore, lacking an outlet for it, I just continued to pace.
Nadir returned to the surgical service after checking in with the ER some time later, although I couldn't say exactly how long after my own arrival that had been. Instead, I struggled to collect my thoughts and moved to speak to him.
"Any news?" I demanded as soon as I approached, "Is Christine coming up, or - "
" - She's in CT now. Her status is all over the place, and Freeman wants to have a clearer idea of what's going on with her heart before he moves her anywhere. I told her that Josie's up here, that she's doing well."
I nodded, but then said absentmindedly, "Maybe I should go back - "
" - You can't go downstairs, Erik. It's not a good idea, you need to let everyone work."
"That doesn't feel right, though," I snapped, then laughed humorlessly, helplessly, sinking into one of the chairs nearby and holding my head in my hands. I was afraid, and so exhausted, and that exhaustion echoed in my voice when I continued, "I need to stay with Josie, I need to be with my wife. It's like I have to abandon one for the other. I don't know what to do," I admitted.
"You need to stay with your daughter," Nadir insisted, "If you go back to the ER, you and Christine will only get more upset, and neither of you can afford that. You have to stay with Jo."
"Right...You're right, I know that…" I conceded, and likely much faster than Nadir had probably assumed, but I ignored his questioning look as I asked wearily, "Just...can you just stay with Christine, then? Keep an eye on what's happening?"
He sighed, "Of course. I'll page you when I know more."
Nodding through my tension but otherwise unable to speak, I accepted his words as calmly as I was able to, all things considered.
Then, before I knew it, he'd left the department altogether, and once again I was alone - once again, I found myself surrounded by so many familiar and sympathetic faces, the people that I'd seen and worked with every day, and yet I still felt abandoned in near-complete isolation just the same. It was a terrible notion, and it truly seemed inescapable then. Though I tried to control it, my anxiety was through the roof as a result of every last overwhelming detail I was just barely working through, and I remained in that uncomfortably heightened state of anxiety at every turn. But still...in spite of having to suffer through it with each moment of its presence, I never actually did anything about it, either - all that time had already passed since I parted ways with Christine, since Jo's surgery had started, and I didn't once bother to correct the issue of my steadily rising distress. For one thing, any attempts that I might have made then wouldn't be effective whatsoever, I was sure; and anyway, somehow it was almost better for me to have the anxiety present now, simply for the fact that, after too long spent trying to fight it off, in the end I had just recklessly determined that I could focus on it instead, rather than dwell on its source.
Although, to be perfectly honest, my doing so then had really only masked the overlying problems that were surrounding me. I wasn't naive - that slight abatement had happened mainly in intervals, but in reality, nothing helped me with any sense of consistency. Nothing was solved, nothing had eased my fears. Pulling focus away from the sources of my anxiety and back to the sensation itself was never a constant experience, nor was it enough to settle me down for very long, and therein was part of the dilemma I was facing off with. Every time a flash of movement would pass nearby, whenever a voice caught my attention from somewhere beyond the waiting room, I would feel my heart pounding in anticipation for something, beating erratically as if it was actively trying to break out of my chest. Not having any further information about Christine or Jo was absolute torture. My attention had shifted repeatedly all the while, ran full-out toward every possibility that I was trying to avoid, and almost violently back and forth between my wife and our daughter, so much so that I was having trouble processing everything that had happened to them that day - everything that was still happening to them. I really just didn't know what else to expect anymore, and that lack of clarity left me miserable.
Turning my wedding ring nervously as I set to pacing again, I flinched when my pager went off in the pocket of my scrubs, the distinct and shrill sound startling me badly, though effectively pulling me from my spiraling thoughts. And all at once, as soon as I looked down at the screen and recognized who was contacting me, I rushed straight to the admit-desk in the next instant, pleading with the nurse working there to call me as soon as there was any news about Josephine - anything at all - before I began all but sprinting out of the main department and over to one of the stairwell entryways, to the fastest possible route back downstairs. Once I was out the doors and moving through the confining, echoing space, I took the concrete steps two at a time, damn near breaking my neck more than once as I stumbled downward. The page I'd just received, of course, didn't offer me any specific information about why I was being sent for - the message was only marked as urgent, and that didn't sit well with me.