Omake Chapter: The doctor is in, Part III
0945hrs, 25 August 2012, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.
"As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body." Lewis Thomas.
"Ms. Kuroi, thank you for coming so quickly."
Dr. Kobayashi was settling in nicely at the "Top Secret" medical facility, and he had most of the staff positions filled. Everyone from nurses, orderlies, medical assistants…even some security personnel, although that would be up to another security company that would be coming in. He was surprised to hear that the Nakanishi Group's own in house security nor the government would be providing security, which made him wonder how much they valued the project. The security company would be hiring the people, but Kobayashi had to go through them and check them off. He wasn't too happy about that, since it involved more paperwork.
"Thank you for looking at my application, Doctor," Kuroi said back to him. She was in her late thirties, with nice black hair and a thin figure. Her CV was impressive, to say the least.
"I will say, I am quite impressed by your line of work," he said, looking over the sheet of paper in front of him. "What would you say was your most challenging experience?"
"Well, the tsunami, of course. I was working at the Tohoku University Hospital when the earthquake hit. We started to receive patients almost immediately; some were hit by falling debris, or were trapped under cars, suffered burns from fire, and the so on and so forth."
Dr. Kobayashi nodded. "Anything else?"
"Then the tsunami hit. Our hospital was fine, but we lost power, mobile connections, landlines, internet…it was very disturbing at least. We went for a week without rest, without adequate power, communications, or anything else that we needed in order to save patients. We had to turn away cancer patients because we had no medications to treat them with. We were reusing IV tubes, and needles…"
Dr. Kobayashi held up his hand. "That's quite alright . I'm sure that's one of the more difficult examples. There's no reason to continue on."
She nodded. "Thank you." The tsunami had changed everything, and she had left Sendai after about a year after it had happened. She just couldn't bear to live there anymore. It was time for a change in scenery, one that would have fewer memories of death and destruction.
Moving on, Dr. Kobayashi moved down the list to the "skills" section.
"So, I see here that you've also done Intraosseous infusion before," Dr. Kobayashi noted, looking at her CV. "That's a relatively new procedure, right?"
"Well, in comparison to IVs, yes."
"Hmm." He looked back down at the CV, and was about to continue on…
"Dr. Kobayashi!" An orderly burst into the room, out of breath. "Sir, there's a problem downstairs!"
He stood up from his chair behind the desk. "What is it?"
"There was an accident! One of the techs is bleeding out really badly!"
"We'll be right there." He turned to Kuroi. "Well, how about some hands on work?"
"I don't think I'm authorized to…"
"Come on," he said, putting on his white lab coat and walking for the door. "There's a life to save. We don't need paperwork to do that."
Nurse Kuroi agreed with that statement fully. "Fine. Let's go practice medicine."
The patient was in the basement, with a crowd of staffers and technicians surrounding the patient.
"Move out of the way!" Kobayashi yelled. The crowd parted, revealing a couple of people trying to stabilize the patient.
"What's going on?" Kobayashi asked to the people treating the patient.
"A piece of metal fell of some scaffolding and punctured the left subclavian artery," an EMT said to him, holding pressure over the wound on the left side of the patient. The gauze he was holding was completely stained in blood, and he added a couple layers of gauze onto it; any reduction of pressure would only result in the loss of more blood, which they certainly didn't need. The patient himself was slowly turning pale, and he was sluggish in his movement and speech.
"Blood pressure dropping, 80/60, heart rate, 50 bpm."
"Hey, hey!" the EMT snapped his fingers in front of the man. "Stay with me!" The man could only nod.
"He's lost lots of blood and we can't get a good IV in," another technician said to Kobayashi. There were some IVs nearby, and evidence on the right arm that they had tried to start an IV flow, but like he said, there was difficulty inserting the IV.
"Do we have any IO devices?" Kobayashi asked, looking at the patient continue to lose blood. It was bad.
"We just got these EZ-IO devices yesterday," a medical assistant said to him, pointing to a first aid kit that EMTs usually carried with them. "But we don't know how to use them."
"Well then, Nurse Kuroi?"
"You know how to use these?" the EMT holding the gauze on the patient asked her.
"Well…yes. Yes I do. Please assist me," she motioned to the MA that had been talking to them earlier. Putting her gloves on, she retrieved the EZ-IO device from the kit; it was a very small object, which fit easily into her hand. She attached a needle to the device, which looked like a small power drill.
"Please clean this area," she said to the MA, pointing to a spot on the right humerus. It would be unwise to try it on the left, and get in the way of the EMT who was holding pressure on the wound.
"Done."
"Please stand back." Nurse Kuroi aimed for the spot that the MA had cleaned, and after a couple of seconds, she inserted the needle.
Unlike IV infusion, IO infusion does not go to a vein; it goes directly to the bone. The needle drilled its way down until it hit the humerus, making a sickening noise as it did so. Once the needle had been inserted, Kuroi fitted a stabilizer and an adapter for fluids to be directly pumped into the patient. The fluid would go directly into the vascular system, preventing the patient from dying from blood loss.
It was a tense couple of minutes as fluid was squeezed from bags and into the patient; one of the EMTs kept a watch on the vitals.
"Blood pressure is stabilizing…100/60…heart rate…75 bpm. I think he's ready for transport!"
"Coming through!" A medical team immediately appeared, with a stretcher and all. That made Kuroi suspicious…where had all these people come from anyway?
"Who put in this IO?" one of them asked, lifting the man on the stretcher.
"I…I did," Kuroi replied, after some hesitation.
"Nice work. We'll take it from here." The left in a huff, wheeling the man to the elevator and for more advanced life care.
Kuroi was exhausted by the ordeal. She had come for a job, not to treat other people…but that was her job, what was she thinking?
Kobayashi came up behind her and clapped her on the shoulder, surprising her.
"I think you did good," he said, a sly smile on his face.
Everything went white.
Kuroi woke up in the basement, and a very scary, black lid was rising up above her.
"What…what was that?!" she exclaimed, as she was gingerly helped out of the…thing that she had been laying in just moments ago.
"There are our VR simulators," a man next to Kobayashi said.
"Nurse Kuroi, this is Dr. Kawasaki," Kobayashi said, gesturing to him after helping Kuroi out.
"Why did you do that to me?!" Kuroi asked, not exactly happy with being strapped into a big, scary machine like that. "How do I know you're real?"
Kobayashi moved to reassure her. "Nurse Kuroi, I know you must be confused. We've all had to undergo this sort of experience. Even me. I was the first one they tested the VR system on when I first took this job a month ago. I was exactly the same way, but these are some of the most advanced technology that we can provide in order for this program to succeed."
He smiled. "Now, how would you feel about a job?"
Nurse Kuroi immediately got the hint. "I…"
"There's no reason to rush," Dr. Kawasaki added. "You can think on this, if you want."
She shook her head. "Well, even though I don't approve of you drugging me, and I do remember the water bottle you gave me when you picked me up from the train station." She glared at the two doctors, who could do nothing else but shrug, "I will take this job. It seems that you have quite the operation here, and I'm willing to overlook your more…cowboy aspects of the job, if you let me do things my way."
That got the mostly taciturn Kobayashi to laugh. "Of course. We wouldn't have it any other way."
"Good."
"Well, now that's settled, I'll have Dr. Kawasaki here help you with the paperwork."
He gulped, mainly because the VR thing had been his idea. Everyone else had been more surprised than angry, but Kuroi was a special case.
"Ah...sure…of course," he stammered. "Right this way." He started to walk toward the exit.
Nurse Kuroi glared at him, but proceeded to follow.
Well, at least I have a job now, she thought to herself. Hope that I don't have to do anything else like that while I'm here.
"Dr. Kobayashi," a voice over the phone said. He was back up in his office after that entire ordeal, and the hiring section of the job was finally coming to a close. "How goes the hiring process?"
"We just hired our last applicant today, General Ishimura," he replied, looking over the data on his iPad. "A Yuki Kuroi. She wasn't very happy about being put in the VR trainers, that's for sure."
"I'm sure she wasn't," Ishimura said. "So, that concludes that section, huh?"
"It does. Now all that's left is to find volunteers for the program."
"That's the problem." Ishimura's voice got very serious all of a sudden. "We can't seem to find any volunteers right now."
"Really? I was certain that they would find someone too…"
Ishimura seemed hesitant to give out any more information. "Kobayashi, look. It's a bit more serious that you think."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The PM doesn't know about the program yet."
That actually didn't surprise Kobayashi; the PM didn't know about a lot of things, and this was no exception.
"Why doesn't he know?" Kobayashi asked, wondering why that was the case.
"We're still trying to find people, but they have to meet a certain criteria."
That did surprise him. "I haven't heard of any sort of criteria," he said, his eyes narrowing. He didn't like being kept out of the loop.
"Well…we're still trying to come up with the criteria, based on some other research, but I can give it to you right now, if you want."
"Sure."
"Ahem." There was some rustling of papers in the background, and then Ishimura came back on the line. "Um…we need people who are female or male, aged fourteen through eighteen, and…"
"What." Fourteen through eighteen?
"Yeah, that's what it says here."
"General." Kobayashi leaned forward on his desk. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anything. That's what the criteria says."
"Who. Came. Up. With. This." Kobayashi growled into the phone, not exactly happy with this development.
"Look, that's above your pay grade."
"I have the highest security clearance known to mankind," Kobayashi snapped back. "There's nothing that's classified to me."
"With respect, Doctor," Ishimura retorted. The conversation was becoming more and more icy by the second. "You don't need to know who came up with it. They're long dead, and that's all I can tell you."
"Hmph. Well, good 'luck' finding people for that." What a joke, Kobayashi thought to himself. This program won't even get off of the ground, and we'll be closed up by next year. "And next time, please don't keep me out of the loop. I still don't know the specifics of the job, and I would like to be better informed before I start hiring lots of people."
"I'm sorry," Ishimura replied, his tone warming significantly. "It's just the way it is right now."
"Right." Kobayashi didn't say anything for a moment, pondering if he had any more questions.
"General, has there been any more development on the healing solution?" Kobayashi asked.
"Some. We're outsourcing right now to the Nakanishi Group to help speed it up and…"
"Why are we doing business with them?" Kobayashi interrupted.
"Because they gave us the best deal," was the response.
"Uh-huh."
"They did, and that's my statement," Ishimura said. "Did you have any other questions?"
"No. No I don't. Um…" Kobayashi didn't want to ask the next part, seeing that they had an argument.
Ishimura finished his sentence anyway. "We're still on for golf next Thursday. Despite our differences."
"Good."
"Take care." Ishimura hung up.
"Dammit." Kobayashi wanted to ponder over what had just happened, but there was simply no time. He had to look over the mission plan, and to get all these people ready, and…
Fourteen through eighteen. The criteria echoed through his head as he worked on some more paperwork. That's just messed up.