NDE
Naomi's grip on the syringe was firm. This was second nature. Epinephrine, atropine- cocktails of lifesaving drugs. How ironic.
"A year. At best. Maybe six months." He pushed up his glasses. Looking at the floor.
A terminal neurodegenerative disease, caused by fostering GUILT in her own body. Karma for her involvement with Delphi. She had given up surgery months ago. It hadn't been as hard as she would have thought. She couldn't bring herself to care about much these days, let alone find her way out of bed. Apathy. A telltale sign that toxic proteins were already accumulating in her brain.
"Please don't forget. The genes imprinted in your cells will stay with you."
How could she possibly forget? A disease staining her every cell. She was thinking, walking, breathing on borrowed time. A reality she could hardly bear. Naomi never worried about the future and yet the inevitable played on repeat as she lay awake at night. Tossing and turning, sweating through sheets. Paralyzed, staring at walls, incontinent, mute. She'd have to grip her stomach.
Stiles had seized her hand."I'll come up with a plan, too. Please. Stay alive until then." His hair was messy. He reminded her of a young child who had rolled out of bed. He was indeed young- barely 28. She had saved his life, and now he was trying to save hers. Ridiculous.
They were helpless. Even if they had devoted their whole careers to racing against time for a cure, for anything to slow progression, they weren't even close to beginning to understand the biology of her disease. Her burden- a shadow she lived with, completely alone. The thought of turning to Tyler hadn't even crossed her mind- she was too ashamed. Her body was turning on her and he out of anyone would have empathy for her decision.
Chase. Niguel. Stiles. Thompson… Navel. What an end to a life in which she was always making up for something.
One pin prick and it was over. She administered the GUILT as swiftly as if she were injecting resuscitation drugs into a patient. Blue Savato was guaranteed to knock her unconscious within minutes. She'd be dead in half an hour. Good luck to any surgeon who tried to stand in its way.
This made sense. She deserved to die suffering the same way the sinners had. GUILT. She had already thought of that day a little over a year ago. Watching four eyes collapse. Somehow fate had made it so that she was there to save him. Too bad there was no saving Naomi.
Panic. She stood up. What have I done? Sudden terror. Why? Why? I wanted this. But she didn't want this. Naomi would never give up on a patient. How could she give up on herself when her body wanted so desperately to live. She herself had held patients' hearts in her hands- felt as they struggled against devastating injury to beat- again- and again. Derek. Angie. Tyler. Victor. Little Guy. She was more than just a patient. Her thoughts were a mess of contradictions and she wasn't ready. Too late.
She had to go. She had no choice now but to surrender. They would try to prolong her suffering if they found her. What was she doing in the break room of all places? What was she thinking? She had gotten ahold of the specimen from the ex Delphi liaison and lost all rational thought. It was almost laughable. He of all people would be the one to assist in her death. She never lost control yet here she was- a rash decision made in a moment of desperation. Her body still felt fine- It was hard to believe she was about to die.
Her stomach lept. Footsteps. High heels clicking down the hall. No!
Angie Thompson appeared in the doorway. Perfect timing. The blonde darted straight for the coffee pot in the kitchenette, filling a paper cup. She turned.
"Ah, Naomi! I didn't even notice you!" She forced a chuckle. "I just got off a 10 hour. Trauma arrest. 14 year old girl. I've been with Caduceus for over two years and It never gets easier."
How apropos.
"Are you ok? You look like you've seen a ghost."
She has.
Speak. Say something! "I-I'm fine." I'm not fine. I fucked up. Get out of here. "Did she make it?"
"Stable for now, but there's no way of knowing about any neuro damage until she wakes up. A twenty minute code isn't too promising though."
"You did what you could." Doctors were cold.
Get out of here. "I'll be on my way." Her own heels clack on her way to the door, desperate to hide and yet careful not to leave too quickly for fear of concerning Angie.
Thump.
White hot pain. It's so intense that there's some sort of fireworks show behind her eyelids. And the wind is totally knocked out of her. Some sound escapes her lips before she can stop herself and she stumbles. Then just as quickly as it came the pain is gone. Naomi's eyes water. Shit.
"Naomi? What's wrong?" Angie walks after her.
"Nothing." Naomi barely squeaks out. A breath. "Tell Stiles to finish the paperwork on his desk tonight." Paperwork. Like that'll work to distract her, Naomi.
She speeds her way out the door and down the hall, forgetting to keep her cool. Too fast… what do I do? She needs to leave Caduceus now. Why hadn't she considered this beforehand? Stupid. Can't take the elevator, too much of a risk of running into someone. The stairwell. She'll make her way out of Caduceus as if she were escaping a building burning to the ground and collapse somewhere outside. By the time they find her, she'll be dead.
She makes it to the stairs. Pushing open the door, it's a race to the ground floor. She's panting, as if she had just run a mile. The parasite is gaining on her. She gasps- she can't seem to get enough oxygen. Down a floor.
Thump.
She barely reaches the next landing before the pain strikes again. Like a thunderclap inside her chest, she shudders. What the-? She clutches her chest. How can it hurt this much? I thought it was supposed to be quick. She's still descending, she knows she has to move. The pain becoming unbearable. A man-made parasite ripping her insides to shreds. Another floor down. Something chokes her and she coughs up hot liquid. This is what she wanted. Naomi doesn't have any more time to regret as her vision clouds over, the ground swirling up to meet her face.
Something's up. Angie watched Naomi run from the break room. She had never seen the surgeon lose her cool. Her eyebrows knit together. She held onto herself, deciding against her better judgment to chase after her. Arms crossed, gathering her racing thoughts. That was always a slow burn. Taking careful steps towards the doorway, she looked into the hallway. Kimishima was gone.
The surgeon had never asked for help, so why would she now? When she received her devastating diagnosis, she was stoic. If anything, Naomi was adaptive. She would alter herself as needed to fit the changing world around her. And it's really dealt her a shit hand. Derek's healing touch- Clarks would tell the Residents "That's his gift," his miracle surgeries broadcasted on national television. Meanwhile, Naomi was stripped of her medical license and deported to the US.
Naomi doesn't talk about Delphi. Nor the days when she was known as Nozomi Weaver. Their tool. Keeping their child hosts alive long enough to cultivate GUILT.
"Wait… why are you telling me this?" He was weak as he asked her in his hospital bed, glasses off his face.
"Trust is a crucial component of the Doctor/ Patient relationship."
He coughed. "Yeah, but it's usually the other way around…"
She chuckled. "You might have a point."
She joined Caduceus for a chance at atonement. But now this. She wasn't stationed more than a year before her curse, her gift and her future were robbed of her.
No… she's not okay. Before Angie could stop herself, she raced down the hallway, confused and urgently searching for the surgeon. To her left, the door to the emergency stairwell slammed closed. Naomi… What are you doing?
The woman who had saved the man she loved. Angie felt an unusual tenderness towards the surgeon. Naomi didn't like to hear it, but she was the strongest person Angie knew. And now she had become a ghost that haunted the halls of Caduceus. Private as she may be, she couldn't stay silent forever. It's finally caught up to her. While not always confident in her bedside manner, Angie was a nurse. If Naomi was suffering, she didn't have to suffer alone.
Angie pushed open the door to the stairwell. She couldn't remember the last time she had been here. Had she ever? The skeleton of the building, the concrete steps were cold and severe. She thought of fire drills in grade school, children giggling amid the organized drudge out of the school building. Angie hurried her way down two floors. If Naomi was crying somewhere, she wouldn't have any idea what to say. Down another floor.
She froze.
Crumpled in a heap on the third floor landing, Naomi was still. Her eyes were open, rolled up into her head. Her mouth slightly agape, blood dripping down her lip.
Angie's breath hitched. She couldn't move. As a surgical nurse, she thought she had trained any hesitation out of her. But this was different. Her limbs suddenly lacked sensation.
"Naomi," she whispered.
Move. Move! You have to move!
Angie finally reached her fallen colleague, trembling fingers grasping for a pulse in her neck. Thready, weak beneath her fingers, Angie's other hand rose to her headset.
"...This is Angie. I'm on floor 3 in the stairwell. Send help. It's Kimishima."
Focus Angie. She's a patient. The ABC's. Angie assessed the patient beneath her, gingerly turning her on her back. She leaned her ear over Naomi's lips. The surgeon gasped weakly. Blood gurgled in her throat. Angie gently turned Naomi's head to the side so she wouldn't choke. She was bleeding into the thorax, no doubt. But how? What is happening to you?
"Angie!" Looking over her left shoulder, Victor bolted up the stairs beneath her. That was quick. Thank God.
"What have we got?"
"Looks like hemoptysis, pulse and breath sounds are weak. I need Trauma set up with a blood transfusion along with a chiral and CT"
Two more nurses were hurrying up the stairs.
"Bring a stretcher!"
"No time for that. Let's move." Victor swiftly lifts Kimishima up. She hangs from his arms like a rag doll. He leads the team into the hallway, where staff had prepared a gurney ready to wheel her to Trauma 1. Derek and Tyler are there waiting to meet them.
"Let's move her on the count of three."
"Get an EKG and a portable chest. Prepare to intubate if we have to."
With one look at her face, twisted in pain, Derek knew. His stomach dropped.
She did this.
Angie was at Naomi's side, tapping at her arm to find a vein. Victor was at her head, preparing to attach leads to her body.
Derek reached for her jacket, wrenching down the zipper and moving it out of the way so a nurse could cut through her blouse with a pair of shears. Taking the stethoscope from around his neck, he brought it to his ears and listened to her chest.
"…Breath sounds diminished on the left side, and oxygen sats are low. Definitely a hemothorax. Need a chest tube tray and a twenty-four French chest tube."
"U- ugh"
Naomi managed a small sound.
"D- Derek."
"Kimishima," Derek reached for her hand. "Don't talk. Hang in there. We're going to save you."
"Don't."
His blood ran cold again.
"Leave me alone. Please."
And he was lost. Derek was the one to diagnose her as terminal. "Every disease has a cure,"- he had been so naive, and had convinced himself that he could grab fate by the hands and twist it around. But this. If there was one thing he had learned in his time as a Doctor, it was that death will come, welcome or not. And here Naomi was, embracing her own death, some warped radical acceptance. A patient who wouldn't fight for him.
Derek knew what her future held. She had been the one to save his life. And he couldn't guarantee to return the favor. A shiver went up his spine and he shook his head. It didn't matter. His body would move, his training kicking in, regardless of his racing thoughts.
"Let's get that chiral reading. Now." He didn't need to see the reading on the machine to understand what was happening to his colleague. This was textbook. Meanwhile, he ripped the remaining clothing off her torso.
Lifting Naomi's left arm, Derek identified the insertion site between the fourth and fifth intercostal space. He disinfected and draped the skin. Angie handed him a scalpel from the sterile package. A quick incision through the skin and subcutaneous tissues, kelly clamp, steady, even pressure, and then the tube.
Naomi would scream but the pain sends her to another level of consciousness- her whole chest is on fire, a chest tube is nothing. She's drowning in blood and shame, and the involuntary need for oxygen eclipses her thoughts. She can only moan pitifully like a wounded animal. The surgeon always hid her emotions and yet here she is- desperately vulnerable, reliant on her coworkers for breath.
…Stop. Please.
Blood. And lots of it. Angie attaches another bag of O neg.
"Oxygen's coming up."
Niguel listens to the lungs. "Equal breath sounds."
Derek shakes his head. "Pressure is still falling." No. "And look at her neck." Veins bulged unnaturally.
He lifts his stethoscope to his ears. This was worse than he thought. Kimishima, what have you done?
He brings the bell of his stethoscope to Naomi's sternum, listening intently. Her eyebrows are still knit together in pain. He frowns. "I can barely hear a heartbeat. She needs an echo."
Unexplained internal injuries … Chase knew it was pointless to administer the test. It was just like Amy. Running Naomi's blood through the machine, he cursed."Chiral reaction positive."
The air in the room grew cold. The parasite they knew all too well and yet never seemed to know at all. There was no way of telling just what they were up against when it came to GUILT, but given Naomi's condition it was guaranteed to be bad.
"She's cyanotic…systolic of 80, rhythm looks abnormal."
"She's gonna crash," Tyler warned.
Derek ran the ultrasound probe over the chest wall.
"Cardiac tamponade."
"It's Savato."
"But- how?"
"She needs emergency surgery."
The monitor blares out an alarm.
Out of the darkness, awareness. Like life emerging from a primordial sea. Like when she was first born. There's sound. She knows there's some sort of sound. A voice. A cry? Something familiar. Then feeling. She recognizes sensations in her body.
It's so warm.
Sunshine on her skin.
Naomi blinks. There's a film over her eyes. Blinks again. It's more clear now… a ceiling she knows.
Naomi! Naomi!
The sound takes on meaning. It's her name she's hearing, cutting through the haze of this new existence. It's distant, as if she were imagining voices in total silence.
Mother… Mama…'Kasan.
This is familiar. It's overwhelmingly familiar and it feels so good. Somehow more real than reality. The room materializes around her. She's lying on a futon. The sun shines in through the window. A flower sits in a small vase on the windowsill. Camellia. The petals have already fallen in heaps. Can't I just stay here?
Naomi!
She bolts upright. Crestfallen, it's not her Mother. Rather, it's thousands of voices. Whispering. Singing. Screaming for her to follow. There's something she needs to see.
She stands up and finds that she can stand up. She's strong and alive. She walks across the tatami mat.
The home where she grew up. Where she said she would never return. But now she's reminded of the tenderness of her own girlhood and she's a child again- when there was nothing beyond this small world she could hold in her palms. She pushes the screen door open, moving through this familiar space. Simple, blissful, precious. Where she lived some other life. Where she learned how to walk and talk. Where she fought with her sisters. Where she watched her father die, swore she would become a doctor and never let anyone suffer again.
What a crock.
She could never fulfill her promises. She was always escaping some mistake. And suddenly she remembers.
I'm dying
Naomi is a scientist. There is no fairyland, no heaven for a machine like her human body. But as a scientist, she's curious. Why does this feel so good? She makes her way to the front of the house, then the courtyard.
Naomi!
The voice is louder and somehow smaller.
Of course. Who else? One of her friends calling her out to play.
A young girl stands before her. She isn't Japanese. Her hair is smooth and light brown. Her eyes are green and large and inviting. Her small smile is warm. Upon seeing Naomi she bursts into a huge grin, running up to her. "Naomi! You came! You came!" The small girl embraces her.
"Come on!"
Naomi takes the hand outstretched to her. She's a child again, or some honest part of herself, and she knows there's some secret waiting for her. The girl winds Naomi through the garden. She recalls summer days, jumping the porch railing to catch up to the neighborhood boys. The cicadas humming in waves like the ocean, lulling her to sleep. This world, something she could only grow to love so much because she had had a childhood in it, and spent twilight hours gathering daisies on this same lawn, and feeling the coolness of the sunset on her skin long before noticing the sky. All of it part of her.
Why would I be here?
There's nothing left here for me.
Yet still her fingers dip into the cool water in the birdbath, Trace along the petal of an iris. Childhood rituals.
If she was dying, why was all of this a comfort?
Then they sit, criss cross applesauce, on a grassy plot in the garden. The child holds her hands, still beaming.
I've seen her before. I've been here before.
Shit, My brain chemicals are going crazy.
Naomi doesn't believe in God. And yet- it's so strange. This girl is pure otherness- like looking into a distant galaxy- and some strange sort of deja vu. Maybe Naomi knows her from somewhere in a past life, an alternate reality. Staring at the child, she suddenly knows what she's doing here. How she ended up somewhere in between.
Derek doesn't have to look up at the monitor to know her heart's in chaos. The monitor screams.
A breath. And then the machine sets to work. Stiles rips off his lab coat and begins compressions, headset around his neck bouncing with every thrust. Victor holds an Ambu bag to her face. A cardiopulmonary GUILT infection with arrest- everyone in the room knows Naomi's chances are slim.
"Defib at 200." It takes everything in him to remain calm.
Angie preps the paddles. The Doctor and nurse work in sync, wordlessly- running a code together is second nature. She hands them to Derek. He places the paddles firmly against the chest.
"Stand clear… shocking."
Naomi's body convulses, then settles limply on the table.
"No change." Rhythmic compressions continue immediately.
"Epi and sodium bicarb."
Victor lifts Naomi's chin, prepping the laryngoscope to begin intubation.
Derek knows it's useless to expect ROSC with Naomi's heart in a straightjacket of blood.
"Let's proceed with the Pericardiocentesis."
Derek pauses the compressions and holds the ultrasound probe to the chest. Tyler rummages through the crash cart for the needle. Antibiotic gel over the xiphoid process, and he confidently inserts the needle. Angie watches, glancing between the surgeon and the ultrasound monitor tracking the path of the needle into the pericardium.
The heart continues to tremble, no perfusing rhythm.
"V-tach. Pull back a little."
Dark blood becomes visible in the syringe. "That's barely anything."
"Can't get anything else."
The blood suffocating Naomi's heart has clotted. "No choice. Scalpel." The team has to perform a pericardial window-a hole in her chest to try to relieve the tamponade. Tyler makes the incision under the breastbone, snipping the pericardium with scissors.
"Derek, look at this clot. Got some major lacerations going on to cause this."
"We've gotta suction that,"
Angie is on it, and the gelatinous clot makes way for fresh blood to trickle into the pericardium. Angie gasps- a change in rhythm. Through the hole in her chest, Naomi's heart beats weakly once. A long pause. Twice. Angie bites her lip. Life is so frail.
"Pressure's coming up,"
"This rhythm isn't sustainable."
Gloved fingers coated in blood reach Naomi's groin for a femoral pulse, "I got nothing."
The rhythm disintegrates into v fib once more.
Derek is quick to assess the situation. "We can't stop compressions any longer. This is GUILT we're dealing with. Let's try another shock. If we can't get a pulse in two minutes, we'll crack her."
Paddles back on the body. "Stand clear." The chest contorts with the shock- defibrillation is brutal.
Moral fades as v fib becomes fine v fib becomes asystole. The surgical site covered by a thin layer of gauze, CPR continues. The center of Naomi's chest is bruised purple.
Tyler grits his teeth. Victor squeezes the ambu bag feverishly. They've watched their colleagues suffer from GUILT before, but Naomi. Hadn't she endured enough?
Naomi… is this how you want to die? Choking on your own blood, your last heartbeats not even your own?
When it came to medicine, Derek was used to thinking in black and white. Amy. She was infected with GUILT before doctors knew how to surgically treat it. Tyler had wanted to end her suffering. A ten year old girl, bound to a bed on life support, every moment awake spent in pain. At the time…. maybe it wasn't so wrong. "What's the point? It's not really living. You're just sticking around so other people don't feel bad."
Derek, she wants to die.
Like always, Naomi was full of resolve and agency. He could walk away now and let her die with some semblance of dignity. He thinks about stopping compressions. Calling it, pulling off the leads, leaving her. Watching GUILT tear her apart. He pictured her body, cold and dead and alone. Her blood on his scrubs. A breath. He feels her cool skin beneath his hands.
"Shouldn't we do everything we can if it might save a person's life?"
He couldn't.
Not if he wanted to.
"Tyler, take over."
New gloves, a surgical mask, and Derek reaches for the scalpel.
"I'm glad you came, you know?"
"...It's been so long since I left this place. I never thought I would see Japan again."
"You've been strong for so long, Naomi," The girl murmurs.
"For what? No one has needed me for a while. Not since I stopped operating"
"You were meant to save people's lives."
Naomi laughs.
"Blackwell took a chance on me. I should have given up back then. Anything to get my license back. Even medical terrorism. There was nothing else I wanted. I swore I would never get married or have children."
Why am I telling her this?
"It was so new to me… Delphi wanted me for my Healing Touch, not in spite of it. They thought they were doing God's work, but I was the one who was playing God. I operated on the Sinners when Delphi was refining GUILT. I had sworn to save lives and yet there I was, keeping them somewhere between life and death. I remember their bodies. All of them. Pale, emaciated. Their lips and fingernails blue. None of them were a day over 12 and yet they looked as if they'd lived a hundred years. Like death was already creeping onto their faces."
She knows all of this.
A cold and dark laboratory. Delphi's headquarters in Santa Balboa. Nozomi Weaver was never far off in her mind. She shook her head at the small daisies growing around her. The same ones her sister used to braid into her hair. She didn't deserve the tenderness of this world.
"Gangliated Utrophin Immuno Latency Toxin. I was there when they classified it. GUILT exists because of me. Savato… it's not the first time. Caduceus Europe harvested samples from my body in exchange for legal immunity. I had nightmares back then- If I had forfeited my license I could have avoided becoming a criminal. But I wouldn't have. I was too proud."
"But without your license you never would have been able to use your gift to help people."
A breath.
"I wanted to atone for my sins. Now it seems that karma has finally caught up to me."
"Oh, Naomi,"
The girl traces patterns into her palm.
"It's not your fault."
Naomi's universe is chaos, but somehow there is clarity in these simple words. Here in this girl… this apparition of something within her… a requiem for all her nightmares.
Maybe someone can forgive me.
Naomi wants to cry, but the tears don't come.
"I don't think this is your last stop."
"There's nothing left for me back there. I've worked hard enough. I'm tired. Please. Let me stay here."
"Someone needs you."
Naomi pauses. She had tried so hard to forget. To need someone. To want someone. She was only human. Little Guy –it's still a fitting nickname. Professional, sure, but could never pull off serious for very long. Like Naomi, Navel was a lost soul. Despite her past, he saw her, he loved her.… she could see the blonde, straightening his tie and smirking. She knew then and there that she would choose him, every day, him. Nothing but him.
"I can't leave him."
Her colleagues. She knew Derek. Disorganized, a mess really, and a man who valued life above all else. He would be gutted if she died now. She was his senior, his mentor, and she needed to protect him. She had brought him back from the brink of death for a reason. Two brilliant surgeons with the Healing Touch- they had relied on each other to perform Hoffman's surgery, after all.
"And he needs me."
The girl laughs. A full chested, hearty laugh.
"You may have given up, but no one has given up on you. And there's everyone you haven't met yet. Do you really want to leave it all behind?"
"Even if I go back…I don't have much time left."
"You wouldn't choose life for five more minutes if you could?"
Silence.
"There's something waiting for you. I don't know what. But I feel it. "
Something… but fate doesn't exist and faith is a fairytale, not enough to learn to live with the disorder of reality. Naomi can't begin to imagine what the girl means. She refused a higher power. But in this moment she trusts whatever is trying to speak to her through this child.
"Maybe. Maybe I can be brave." The words slip out.
Her vision splits. she can see her body. Broken and battered, still bleeding from the mouth. God, she had really done a number on herself.
Derek. Good CPR is taxing. If this all means nothing, why are they trying so hard?
To choose sensation, whatever it may be. To lean into the chaos and chance. To love life for its surprises. She's powerless and powerful all at once.
"We will all die someday, but we still live on."
A year. If this was her time left to do something, she would do it.
I don't ….want to die.
I don't want to die!
A sound like a plastic bag being ripped through space and everything is melting.
"Will we meet again?"
"I promise we will."
Her vision is failing. Some chrysanthemum of color replacing her line of sight. She gasps, she's being shown some celestial toy box.
"What's your name?"
Darkness,
"Alyssa."
Chase stops CPR
No time to open the chest through the sternum. Derek needs access to the heart immediately. A quick incision under the left breast, from the sternum to the posterior midaxillary line, trauma shears separate the intercostal muscles, rib spreaders, Angie hands him tool after tool, the two work together in perfect harmony.
Derek reaches into the chest with both hands until he's holding Naomi's heart, her life literally in his hands. Tyler is assisting, clamping the injured lung tissue and the aorta to control some of the bleeding, but Derek is focused on creating a heartbeat where there is none. His hands wrapped firmly around the organ- Massaging the heart to the necessary rhythm is sense memory. It doesn't even cross his mind- there's no web around the pericardium.
Derek feels Naomi's heart shudder weakly. His own heart pounds. "I got something. Charge at 250."
Someone hands him the internal paddles. He grips them tightly, pressing them against the muscle, hoping that this time, the shock will be enough to stun the heart into motion.
"Stand clear."
Come on, Naomi.
The heart jolts with the shock. It's still. Then it contracts. Derek reaches in, prepared to restart massage. But the heart beats again. The leads on Naomi's chest send electrical signals to the monitor. The rhythm is slow, but it builds momentum in Derek's palms.
"She's in sinus."
"Drain please,"
Angie reaches for a femoral pulse. "She's back."
But the team hasn't even gotten started.
Derek looks at the operating field , mapping out his plan of attack. He can't risk transporting her- he has no choice but to continue surgery in the Trauma bay. The Savato still waits, poised at any moment to hijack her heartbeat once more. Lights refocused. New gloves, gowns tied around necks.
Stiles is in his element. The rest of the room lost on him as he imagines a star.
I will save this patient.
The first sign of awareness is cold. Her body is frozen- she can't shudder. Then sounds. Familiar beeps and tones. Then thought. I'm not dead. Blink. Another ceiling. This one is unfamiliar. Naomi's chest hurts. She realizes she's not breathing on her own. The beeping increases. The blonde nurse leans into her sight, mouthing words.
"-omi. Naomi! Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."
She discovers, through effort, she is able to squeeze a hand at least.
A light bright as the sun shines in her eyes. Discussion somewhere in the room.
"Can you follow my finger?" GCS. Ok. Her brain still works. That's a good sign.
"Naomi, we're going to extubate you. On the count of three I need you to cough for me, okay?"
In a moment Naomi attempts a cough. Pain explodes in her chest, her throat, her mouth, she makes a noise like a tortured animal. But the tube is out. She breathes on her own, with the help of a nasal cannula placed gently on her face.
So this is what my patients go through.
Angie delicately lifts her head, placing a pillow behind her. She sees now exactly which hospital room she's in.
"I'm alive."
"You've got one stroke of luck, Kimishima. You should have seen what your heart looked like."
Luck.
"Four eyes really has a gift."
"I don't know how he did it. You were so sick. What were you thinking? You know there are patients fighting every day to just take a breath. And you tried to throw everything away."
Naomi smiles, her eyes on the wires sticking out of her gown. "There's not much ahead of me, Angela."
The blonde stops. "That's where you're wrong."
Naomi's confused.
"The Blue Savato you injected yourself with mutated."
They've got me all figured out. Naomi's embarrassed.
"I see. So, it was a challenge indeed."
"The specimen burrowed into your heart and lungs. There were lacerations everywhere, but there was no web around the myocardium"
The stitches are tight. It hurts to talk. There's nothing to say.
"Dr. Kimishima. When Dr. Stiles removed the GUILT from your body, he removed your disease as well."
Her heartbeat in her ears. "What- what do you mean?"
"You're genetic disease- the cause of the mutated GUILT. It's completely vanished."
"What are you saying? I mean, I'm-"
"You're not going to die. We believe that your cells, their disease factor was expelled by the mutated GUILT."
"That means I-"
"Dr. Kimishima, I have a message from all of us who helped you. There may be relapse. We'll need to monitor you. There's no way to know the future. But still. We want you to keep looking forward to living your life."
Naomi is staring into a galaxy.
"Angie- hold my hand again."
The nurse obliges, and Naomi finally cries.
Derek yawns and rubs his neck, kneading to get the knots out. Another day hunched over paperwork. Being a doctor is just like being an adult, he thinks. The work never ends.
"You never stop complaining," Mary would probably say to him. Maybe she's right. Still, there's no better relief from the endless grind. He stretches.
It's been three days since then, but he's still sore from using his healing touch. He had to activate it three times to save her, but it worked. And what was left in its wake was a miracle. How they had even gotten a heartbeat in the first place was a mystery. A testament to the body's will to live. There was a reason he became a doctor.
He hadn't spoken with her yet. She had just woken up. But she was in good hands, he could be sure of that.
"Stiles. Got a visitor for you." Great. Just what I need.
"Buzz 'em in." Derek taps his pen restlessly on the desk.
He bursts through the door, giving the artificial plant a rub on his way in. "Real homey, Stiles. I'm surprised to not see you in a bed yourself given what they told me."
He's in casual clothes. Tie undone, hair a mess, per usual. An old buddy from med school. An upperclassman, he'd pull the anxious freshmen out to bars and teach them how to kick 'em back.
"You can't smoke in here."
"Hey, I'm a Doctor. These things are just for show these days." He flicks his cigarette into the trash.
"You couldn't have just given me a call? You know I'll be at this all day,"
"I'm in town for a bit, I thought I'd pay my old friend a visit. I'll get right to the point-
there's nothing I can do to make you change your mind?"
Derek smiles.
"Sounds to me like Resurgam First Care is in great hands already."
"We're reorganizing. I know it's a lot to ask- you've got your whole life here. But we can't take just anyone. You know I don't operate anymore. Not that I was ever a genius like you."
"You're not the first to offer me a change of pace."
He makes himself at home in a chair. "Listen, bioterrorism hasn't slowed down. Our surgical unit needs to be prepared for the worst. Think of the clout when I tell the Director we got the guy who defeated GUILT on our team! I know you think you're on the forefront of medicine now but wait till you see what we're up to. You can even bring the girl." It is enticing.
"To be honest, I don't know if I have the attention span to sit through any more symposiums."
"I get it, I get it. Your home is here. How sweet."
"I know you requested me. But I got someone else in mind for your team. I'm off at 6. What do you say we hit the bars like old times and discuss?"
"Sounds like just what the Doctor ordered. I'm just saying', If we don't have someone good by the end of the month, we're fucked."
Derek smirked.
"I have a feeling she's just what you need"