Disclaimer: I do not own Love Hina. Tokyo Pop and Ken Akamatsu do.
WARNING: Contains scenes of graphic trauma and surgery and a few "choice" words. Reader discretion is advised.
Note: There will be a few medical terms listed throughout the story to explain a few medical things that some of you may not know.
MINDS WITHIN A MIND
Chapter 7- Miracles at Work
Shinobu turns around and sees a bunch of doctors and nurses around a gurney working on someone. She walks over to the side trying to see who it is. Finally one of the nurses steps away for a second and Shinobu gets a clear view of who it is. She is shocked to see who it is.
"It's….me." says Shinobu with disbelief. "But, how? How can I remember this? I had blacked out not to mention I was sedated." she keeps asking herself. Then the same nurse gets in her way again and her view is blocked. She tries to look between the doctors and nurses but is too short. "Damn I hate being so short." she says with frustration.
Suddenly she feels herself lift off the ground. "What's going on!" she says with surprise. She rises above the doctors and nurses and starts to hover over herself. "First I can walk through walls and now I can fly. What is going on with me?" she wonders.
"Vitals still dropping!" says one of the nurses. "Shit! She's bleeding out faster than we can put more blood in. We have to open her up now!" commands one of the doctors as he gets through placing a plastic tube down shot Shinobu's throat. "But the morphine hasn't had time to take effect yet!" shouts another doctor. "If we don't she won't be needing the morphine!" shouts the first doctor. The other doctor thinks for a second and relents.
"Nurse. Scalpel." says the first doctor putting out his hand to the nurse to his right. "Yes. Dr. Haramara." answers the nurse as she reaches for the trauma tray. She grabs the medium sized scalpel and hands it too Dr. Haramara.
"Good God!" shouts another nurse as she wipes off some blood off of shot Shinobu's stomach. "What is it?" asks the second doctor. "Look! She has two holes in her stomach!" answers the nurse. They look and surely enough there are two holes in her stomach right beside each other. They all stare at them for a moment when suddenly the heart monitor goes flat! "V-Fib!" shouts one of the other nurses.
The other doctor reaches for the defibulator paddles that already have some gel on them. He places them on shot Shinobu's chest. "Clear!" he shouts. Everyone backs off quickly. The doctor presses the button and another shock goes through shot Shinobu's body causing her to jump. The monitor remains flat. The paddles charge up once more and the doctor places them on shot Shinobu's chest again. "Clear!" he shouts again. Everyone backs off again. He presses the button once again, sending another shock through shot Shinobu's body. The monitor starts to beep again.
"She's back!" says one of the nurses. "It's now or never! Ok let's open her up." says Dr. Haramara. A couple of seconds later the nurse finishes sterilizing the area and Dr. Haramara makes about a 1 1/2 foot incision from shot Shinobu's right hip up to her bottom left rib. As he does shot Shinobu makes a low weak moan.
"Oh God she can feel it." says one of the nurses worryingly. "Don't worry the morphine should kick in any minute now" says the other doctor. Dr. Haramara finishes his incision and begins to peal back the skin and muscles exposing Shinobu's organs. Shinobu begins to feel a little sick to her stomach because of all the blood and gruesome sight but surprisingly she doesn't feel like throwing up; maybe because it's her own organs and blood that she is seeing.
"My God this poor girl! And they say she walked after this?" says the other doctor in disbelief as he sees all the internal injuries. "Damn. Her liver looks like it took the most damage. We have to clamp it off it before we can even think about getting her to the OR." says Haramara.
"I'm surprised there isn't a lot of blood build up in her belly, I was expecting a lot more blood than this." says the other doctor. "Yes. Me too." says Haramara.
"Dr. Haramara! There's a large amount of blood pouring onto the floor by your feet." says one of the nurses urgently. He looks down and sure enough there is a small puddle of blood by his feet. He looks at the gurney and sees that the sheets are soaked through with blood. "Lift her up a second." commands Haramara. Three of the nurses lift shot Shinobu onto her right side.
He spots a two inch hole in her back. "I see the problem. One of the bullets went out her back. That's where all the blood went to. We had better close this off first!" he shouts. "Nurse. Suitcher kit now!" he commands with urgency. The nurse quickly hands him a suitcher kit and he takes out the pre-threaded needle and begins to sew up the hole as quickly as he can.
Within two minutes he has completely sewn it shut. As the nurses set her down he is already going into her with clamps and gauze. The other doctor is also going in with gauze and a pre threaded needle. "God her liver has been torn to shreds. How the hell did it miss the artery?" says the other doctor. "This is going to take a while to clamp off. There has to be a faster way to clamp it off." says Haramara.
"Why not just cut off the damaged area." says the other doctor. Dr. Haramara looks up at the other doctor surprisingly. "WHAT?" he says. "If you cut off the damaged area, then instead of trying to clap off at so many different places and angles, you'll have a flat side to clamp off. It maybe a drastic measure but it would be faster to clamp off. Besides the liver can regenerate itself."
"Normally I wouldn't even consider doing that! But desperate times call for desperate measures! Nurse. Start the adrenaline drip. We have to slow her bleeding to her liver and get the blood to her heart, other wise she'll never make it!" orders Dr. Haramara. He grabs another scalpel and begins to cut away the damaged part of the liver while the other doctor begins working or her intestine.
Shinobu watches on while hovering above the "action" wondering why she's being shown this. She watches as Dr. Haramara cuts off a large chunk of her liver. She is shocked as he places the chunk of liver into a metal pan. She can't even believe she was able to walk with such a major injury. Then she watches as he begins to clamp off all the major bleeding areas and yell out medical terms that she doesn't understand. Suddenly the heart monitor goes flat again! "V-fib!" yells a nurse.
"I'm glad we used plastic clamps! Nurse! Paddles!" yells the other doctor. She quickly hands him the paddles. He places the paddles on shot Shinobu's chest. "Clear!" he yells. Everyone backs off again. He pushes the button and sends another shock through shot Shinobu's body. The monitor begins to beep again. "She's back!" yells the same nurse. Almost as soon as she says it the two doctors are in shot Shinobu again working at a fast and furious pace to repair as much damage as they can.
"Damn I just realized if she was shot twice, where did the second bullet go?" asks Dr. Haramara. The other doctor searches around in shot Shinobu's stomach for it but because of all the gauze, blood and clamps he can't see much. "I can't see anything. We need the portable X-ray stat!" he orders to a nurse. The nurse leaves the room. After a minute or two she comes back in wheeling the portable x-ray. She wheels it into place and gets it ready to take a picture.
(You know I think I have watched too many ER reruns…..)
"Come on! More adrenalin! She's still bleeding too fast!" commands Dr. Haramara. "But two units are already in." answers a nurse. "Well then put in a third! We have to slow the bleeding down or she won't make it damnit!" he snaps. "Yes doctor." answers the nurse. The nurse hooks up a third bag of adrenalin into shot Shinobu's arm while another nurse hooks up another blood bag to her other arm. After a minute the bleeding in her liver begins to slowdown. "Good now I can see better to clamp off the bleeding areas." says Dr. Haramara.
"Doctor. We're ready for the x-ray." says the nurse by the portable x-ray. "Just a second." says Dr. Haramara. After a couple of seconds he finishes claming off another bleeding vein and he backs away. The nurse switches on the x-ray and after a couple of seconds she turns it back off. "I'll have the x-ray printed out in just a minute and bring it right here." says the nurse. She pushes the x-ray back out of the room and the two doctors get back to work.
Within a minute or two the nurse comes back with the x-ray and quickly puts it up on the lighted board. What they see horrifies them. They do find the second bullet but it's lodged in her right kidney and they can plainly see a major blood vein swelling looking like it could burst at any second, but what really scares them is that they can plainly see one of shot Shinobu's vertebra missing! They look again and see that it's not a mistake.
"My God! One of her vertebra is nearly gone!" shouts the other doctor. "What?" snaps Dr. Haramara. He looks up to see the other doctor pointing at the x-ray to a gaping hole in her backbone where a vertebra would be.
"Good lord! So that's where all these bone fragments are coming from! I thought they were coming from her rib here that has a chunk taken out of it from where the first bullet hit!" says Dr. Haramara in surprise.
"She may have a spinal cord injury! We have to get to it to stabilize it if she doesn't!" shouts the other doctor. To the shock of Shinobu, she watches as he reaches in and actually takes out her intestines and lays them on a rubber pad in a metal pan beside the gurney! She really starts to feel sick to her stomach, but still doesn't feel like throwing up for some reason.
(Medical Note: the Intestines are long enough to be taken out of the body for an extended period of time. It's not unusual in the ER or OR for the intestines to be taken out to get to other organs behind them such as the kidneys or spine in this case. It's just a matter of folding them back up when putting them back in.)
"You had better take care of that kidney's swelling blood vessel first. The last thing we need is another major bleeding area." says Dr. Haramara. The other doctor finds shot Shinobu's right kidney and begins his work. He finds the hole in the kidney where the bullet is lodged and is surprised to see that's it's not bleeding all that much.
"I see the hole, but not the bullet. It seems that the bullet is putting pressure on the blood vessel causing it to swell. I can't get to the bullet from here so I'm just going to clamp off the vessel and let the guys in the OR retrieve the bullet." says the other doctor. He grabs a pair of clamps and cuts off circulation to the vessel.
The other doctor then looks at shot Shinobu's back and is amazed to see that just over half the vertebra gone leaving only the back side of it just barely in tacked holding the backbone together, but just barely. "Looks as if the back side of that vertebra was jammed between the one above it and the one below it." He looks again and is shocked to see the spine itself exposed but without a scratch on it! "How the hell this girl isn't paralyzed I'll never know!" he says in disbelief.
He is just about to put some vert-spreaders in between the other two vertebra when suddenly the monitor goes flat again! "V-Fib again!" yells the same nurse from before. He immediately grabs the defibulator paddles again and places them on shot Shinobu's chest. "Clear!" he shouts. Everyone backs off and he presses the button to send another shock through shot Shinobu's body. The monitor stays flat. He goes to shock shot Shinobu for a good two minutes before finally getting he heart to beat again. As soon as the heart starts to beat again he is back in putting in the vert-spreaders.
(Medical Note: a Vert-spreader is a device used to help stabilize the backbone incase of non paralyzing back injuries to prevent injury to the spine from happening.)
Some time goes by and Shinobu looks up at the clock and realizes it has been over an hour since she first came into the ER. Thankfully her heartbeat has remained stable as the two doctors and several nurses work on repairing the damage with in her shot self. She is amazed at how long it's taking to clamp off her liver even though Dr. Haramara is working at a fast pace. She knows that he wants to get her shot self up to the OR as soon as possible.
The time wares on slowly now and Shinobu has gotten use to the sight of seeing her organs "splayed" out in front of her and ER not as loud and hectic as it was a while ago but still very, very busy. So much so that she actually begins to nod off some what.
"Ok that's the last clamp! Let's get her to the OR STAT!" commands Dr. Haramara as he covers the shot Shinobu's chest to give her some decency and snapping Shinobu out of her sleepy daze. Shinobu looks up to see that's it has been almost two hours since her shot self was brought into the ER. Just then one of the OR doctors comes in and grabs a hold of the gurney with some of the nurses and begins wheeling shot Shinobu to the elevators. Shinobu lands and follows them.
But she gets there to late. The elevator doors close before she can get in. But just before they do she sees her shot self sit up and look right at her. Once again the bright white light comes and blinds her again.
The scene changes quickly and the light fades. As she opens her eyes she notices she is standing in a rather dark room.
"I want to thank you Dr. Jackson for taking your time to help with this surgery." says a voice from behind Shinobu. She turns around to see a lot of people in blue operation gowns by a rather large table with a lot of lights shining down on it. She also notices the tall man near the center that has to be at lest six inches or so taller than the other people in the room. She walks over to them. As she does she notices the tall man is white and not oriental. She heard the name "Jackson" so she figures he is an American. But what is an American doing here in a Japanese hospital she wonders.
"I know you were only supposed to speak to the med students here tomorrow, but I'm glad you decided to take a tour of the hospital today." says a shorter doctor beside Dr. Jackson.
"Me too. I know a lot of you her in Japan don't have a lot of experience dealing with gun shots, so consider this some hands on training. After all being the head surgeon of a Los Angeles hospital you see at least one gun shot victim every other day or so. Some times more." says Dr. Jackson.
When Shinobu hears "dealing with gun shots" she knows that it must be her about to go under the knife, even though she can't see who is on the table. She suddenly rises into the air again and hovers above everyone over the table.
The doctors remove the covering from shot Shinobu's chest and begin their work. As Dr. Jackson peers inside of shot Shinobu he is actually impressed. "For people with out a lot of experience in gun shot trauma, your ER people did one hell of a job clamping off everything they could." he comments.
Shinobu watches as Dr. Jackson takes out her shot self's intestines and also places them on a rubber mat in a metal pan beside the table. He first goes to the kidney and carefully cuts it open. He grabs a pair of surgical pliers and gently pulls the bullet out of the kidney and places it in a small metal bowl where one of the nurses takes it out to a couple of waiting CSI people. Almost instantly the pressure in the swelling blood vein is released. "And now for the liver." he says.
One of the other surgeons begins closing up the kidney while another begins working on her intestine in the metal pan.
The surgery is actually going at a smooth, calm, but steady pace. While this is all going on Shinobu is thinking hard about why she is able to see her own surgery. "If the surgery went this well then why am I seeing it? Am I really dead and I'm just seeing what all they did for me to try to save my life?" she asks herself. She keeps trying to figure this all out.
About 45 minutes go by and the other two surgeons are finishing up their work on the kidney and intestine while Dr. Jackson is busy suturing up one bleeding vessel after another carefully. His expertise is making this surgery look like child's play almost. Shinobu and a few of the other doctors watch with a bit of amazement as Dr. Jackson seemingly works on her liver like it's second nature to him.
Shinobu watches on while the doctors work hard, but then something on the heart monitor gets her attention. She looks in horror as the part than monitors blood pressure starts dropping fast! After dropping about 40 points it goes off alerting the doctors and nurses that something is very wrong. "Shit! She's crashing fast!" yells Dr. Jackson. Suddenly the monitor goes flat!
"She's in V-Fib!" shouts one of the nurses. "Come on! Paddles! Paddles!" Dr. Jackson yells and he motions to the nurse to give him the paddles. He places the paddles on shot Shinobu's chest. "Clear!" he shouts. He presses the button on the paddles and sends a shock through shot Shinobu's body. The monitor stays flat.
He does this over and over again. The minutes go by agonizingly slow as they tick away. Four minutes have gone by when her blood pressure hits bottom, and also goes flat on the monitor which means that her heart has completely stopped pumping all together. "Asistaly!" shouts the nurse.
"Shit not now! Come on!" shouts Dr. Jackson. He tosses the paddles aside. Shinobu and some of the other doctors and nurses watch in shock as Dr. Jackson actually reaches inside shot Shinobu up to his elbow and takes shot Shinobu's heart in his hand and begin to massage it.
(Medical Note: Massaging the heart when it is stopped acts like a manual heart beat. It will sometimes get the heart to jump start itself and then again it might not. This is commonly used as a last resort to get a heart restarted. Also V-fib is where the heart's electrical pulse short circuits causing it to flutter instead of beating properly, the defibulator shocks the heart and actually stops it giving the brain a chance to restart the heart properly. Asistaly is where the heart stops altogether.)
He does this for about a minute with no response. "Come on! Come on! Don't you die on me!" he shouts to shot Shinobu's face. Another minute goes by when the heart goes in V-fib once again. Dr. Jackson pulls his hand out (which is now completely covered in blood) and he grabs the paddles. He begins to shock shot Shinobu once again, but the monitor stays flat.
Shinobu is now crying almost knowing this is where she dies. (Or at least she thinks that she dies but we all know she hasn't) "This….This must be where I die! That's why I'm being shown this! I guess who ever is doing this, shows everyone the way they died before ….passing on." she says to herself while crying hard.
She suddenly notices that she is beginning to float away from the sight of the surgery. It's not like floating away to a higher elevation but more like watching a T.V. turn off only in slow motion. (You know the light from the T.V. when you turn it off converges to the center and it fades away.) She also notices the sound of all the yelling and the flat line sound of the heart monitor is getting fainter and fainter as she pulls away. Finally she can't hear or see the room anymore.
Everything is silent and very dark. Shinobu can't see anything even though she knows that she has her eyes open. Then she spots a small point of light in the distance. It looks as if it is getting bigger and bigger by the moment. She starts to see little specks of light zoom by her and with in a couple of seconds she is enveloped by a grayish spinning cloud like tunnel with a lot of those light specks going by.
She feels like she is standing still even though it looks like she if flying down this "tunnel" at a high speed. Suddenly a light at the end of the tunnel envelops her and she sees that she is standing in a familiar gymnasium.
"Ladies and Gentlemen please come on stage when your name is called to receive your diploma." says a man's voice over a speaker system behind Shinobu. She turns around and sees that the gym is packed with people on the bleachers and people in green and red gowns sitting in chairs on the basketball court.
Shinobu looks around for a second and realizes something. "No. This can't be. This can't be my graduation ceremony!" she says with a lot of shock.
End of Chapter 7
To be continued in Chapter 8- OH! The Possibilities!
Author Note: Wow! I made this chapter even shorter than the last one. Alright! At 1st I never even considered doing this chapter. But as time wore on it became very apparent that I needed to do this chapter to help explain the story in a later chapter. (if that makes any since to anyone) Everything will start to come together in one of the last chapters so be calm and keep reading. Also I'm sorry that this chapter was delayed. I had several Mid-term papers and projects due in some of my classes. When it comes right down to it my class work comes 1st. I hope you all understand.
Story Note: I guess all those years of watching ER reruns came in handy after all! I'm sorry if the many medical terms explanations disrupted the story but sometimes it's helpful to have someone describe what something is in the story so you won't get confused or lost some where in the middle of the story. Also the hole in Shinobu's back explains why there was so mush blood that had stained Naru's dress and pantyhose. Just to let you know. Also I would like to thank my Aunt who has been an ER nurse for more than 20 years now for helping me with all the medical terms and all that happens in an ER. And no she's isn't from Los Angeles.