Good and Bad
"Mendez, you're looking fatter than usual today." Shauna nodded, walking past AJ who was standing in the viewing room of the MRI department, looking on at the scan results of her patient.
"Thank you." AJ smiled, "Five months pregnant to the day." She nodded.
"Good for you. It's hard work making a baby." Shauna said.
"I feel great." AJ shrugged, "I actually feel like I have more energy than usual. Is that weird?" She asked, swirling around on the chair to look at her.
"Yes, it is weird. But that's because you're weird." Shauna nodded, "What we got here?"
"My patient has a knife stuck in his head." AJ nodded, pointing to the scan as Shauna looked on, "He's conscious and he's… speaking which is great, but the damage is gonna come when it's taken out." AJ nodded.
"Bet you're glad you picked neurology." Shauna said as AJ sat back on her chair.
"I don't think he'll make it." AJ shook her head, "I mean… how the hell it got there without him dying so far is just… insane. It's a miracle." AJ nodded.
"No, we don't use that word in this hospital. Miracles don't happen. Good doctors happen." Shauna nodded as AJ rolled her eyes.
"Miracles happen. This man should be dead." AJ nodded, "He's getting prepped for emergency surgery. I've got Doctor Wilson to page me if he makes it out of the surgery. I can take it from there." She nodded.
"Ok, in the mean time I got a consultation for you to do. Pregnant woman, Laurie, fell and bumped her head getting out of the car this morning." Shauna said, handing over the chart as AJ took it from her.
"Has an OB been to check on her?" AJ asked, leaving the viewing room and heading down the corridor.
"No, she says she didn't land on her stomach and she feels fine. I paged one of the doctors from maternity to come take a look, though-"
"Well I can do it." AJ shrugged, "I remember it from my first year residency." She nodded.
"Ok, good. I like when you make yourself useful." Shauna patted her arm, heading down a different corridor as AJ made her way to a new patient.
When she first started her residency, she was very overwhelmed by the workload and the fast paced environment. Learning on the go and making sure she was doing everything right was challenging, but now she felt comfortable, and she could see the finish line more clearer, even if a sweet little baby stopped her in her tracks for just a little while.
"Hey Laurie, I'm Doctor Brooks." AJ smiled, walking into the consult room where a pregnant woman was laying up on the bed.
"Oh, hey." Laurie smiled, noticing she was also pregnant, "Twins." She teased as AJ smiled.
"I feel like there's twins in here sometimes." AJ chuckled, "How are you feeling? I have here that you bumped your head pretty bad this morning, you blacked out and vomited everywhere." She read the notes.
"Yeah. I have a son, he's two and when I got out the car I slipped on one of his toys in the yard. I hit my head pretty bad and blacked out, then I threw up on the lawn and figured it was a concussion." She nodded.
"Did you drive here yourself?" AJ wondered.
"Yeah. My husband works out of state and I got no one around me to take me." She said.
"Are you still feeling dizzy and nauseous?" AJ asked.
"Yeah, a little." Laurie nodded, "It comes and goes. It's just a concussion, right?" She asked as AJ looked at her.
"It sounds like it but I'd prefer to know it's not something more serious so I'm gonna send you for a CT scan." AJ nodded, "And I'm going to check on the baby, just since you're so far along." She nodded.
"Yeah I'm almost full term." Laurie laughed a little as AJ smiled.
"Almost there." AJ nodded, putting on some gloves, pulling the monitor over to the bed, "This might be a little cold." She warned, squeezing the gel on her stomach before running the probe over.
"So are you a baby doctor or something?" Laurie asked.
"No… well I'm on residency so I can do a little bit of everything. I'm usually with neurology, though." AJ nodded, looking at the monitor closely. Although this wasn't her field of expertise, she was still a doctor and she still knew what she was looking for, what looked like a healthy baby with a heartbeat… and she couldn't find that.
"Is everything ok?" Laurie asked as AJ looked at the monitor. She could see this baby had no heartbeat, and she had no idea what to do.
"Uh… you just sit tight and I will be back in a minute." AJ nodded assuringly, hanging the probe up and wiping her stomach from the gel, leaving the room and taking a deep breath.
"Hey, are you ok?" Renee walked by, noticing her friend looked ghostly and upset.
"There's a woman in there and her baby has no heartbeat." AJ said quickly.
"Miscarriage?" Renee asked.
"She's thirty eight weeks pregnant." AJ shook her head as Renee sighed, "I can't… I can't tell her, I mean I'm not… I can't do that." She panicked.
"Ok, just calm down." Renee nodded to her as Shauna walked over.
"How many times do I gotta separate you two?" Shauna asked, looking on at AJ who she could see was upset, "Ok, what's going on?" She asked.
"We have a… still born situation." Renee nodded as Shauna looked at AJ.
"Ok, Renee you page one of the doctors from OB and go wait with the patient until they come." Shauna said as Renee nodded, "You need to go downstairs and get some fresh air." She nodded to AJ.
"No, I'm fine." AJ shook her head.
"Go get some fresh air and take a seat." Shauna made clear as AJ looked at her, "That's an order."
"There's a huge shelf blocking the upstairs hallway, I can't get past." Punk took off his mask, gasping a little at all the chaotic running around they were doing within a heavily burning house.
"I'll come help." Dean told him, "That's everyone out." He looked back to the trucks and the ambulances where they'd safely gotten a family out.
"Not everyone, there's a baby up there." Punk shook his head, putting his mask back on, "Come on." He said, going back into the burning house, making his way upstairs as Dean followed, being faced by a shelf which was blocking the corridor.
"How did this even get here?!" Dean yelled.
"I don't know, but what we gotta lift it up. You take this side." Punk said, taking a hold of the edge of the shelf, "After three, alright?!" He yelled over the burning and crashing over the house. They knew it was so bad that the ceiling was going to start concaving soon, and that wasn't good for their situation.
"Alright!" Dean yelled.
"1… 2… 3!" Punk shouted, pulling the large shelf up with Dean's help, using all the strength they had.
"It's not gonna stand up straight!" Dean yelled.
"You hold it and let me get across. Drop it once I'm through." He told him.
"How will you get back?!" Dean yelled, it was hard to hear through the flames.
"Just do it!" Punk yelled, "You got it?"
"Yeah, go." Dean nodded as Punk let go of the shelf, quickly running through to the other side as Dean let go, not being able to hold it on his own.
Punk got through to the other side, making his way down to the nursery, stopping at the crib where he saw the small baby boy crying, which was a good sign.
"Ok. Ok" Punk nodded, picking him up, grabbing one of his blankets and wrapping it around him, covering his face without smothering him, "You're ok. You're gonna be fine." He promised, looking back out at the hallway which was just flames.
"Phil! We gotta get outta here, man!" Dean yelled with concern.
"I've got the baby! I can't lift it!" Punk called, "I can use one hand!"
"Ok we gotta try." Dean nodded, grabbing the edges of the shelf, pulling it up with all his might as Punk pulled with one hand, managing to get it up as he quickly ran through before it collapsed again.
"Ok go!" Punk yelled, going back down the stairs and making it out of the house.
He took the blanket from the baby's face, so relieved to hear him still crying, making his way over to the EMT who took him right away.
Punk collapsed down on the ground with exhaustion as Dean sat at the back of their truck. The rest of the guys were back and forth putting out the fire.
"That was close." Punk took his mask off as Dean nodded.
"It can really just all change like that, huh?" AJ shook her head, sitting at the entrance of the hospital as Shauna sat down beside her, "One minute your two weeks away from having a baby and then… the it's all gone." She nodded to herself.
"Are you ok?" Shauna asked seriously. Which wasn't words that came out of her mouth usually.
"My job doesn't affect me like this. I don't know what's going on with me." AJ shook her head.
"Well you're pregnant. Your emotions are different. You handle things different." Shauna nodded, "Everyone always goes on about it being such a magical time, and it is, but… it's tough. It's like getting transformed into a different type of person overnight." She nodded.
"I've been feeling fine." AJ assured her, "I just froze in there. And it's not like I've not seen that type of thing happen before. I've been here for a while." She nodded, "I need to quit being a baby." She shook her head.
Being a doctor sometimes came with a harsh outlook on things, the idea that they had to just get on with it. She very much felt that in her job but being pregnant was making that difficult for her.
"No, you don't." Shauna shook her head, "You're about to be a mom and you see this other woman who… just like you is going to be a mom. There's a connection there." Shauna nodded, "This job sometimes makes you forget how to feel things. But that baby in there is making sure you do." She nodded.
"My mom always said I was too sensitive to be a doctor." AJ nodded, "That I would never be able to separate business from personal." She shook her head.
"Well from what I hear when you and Young are talking, when you shouldn't be, your mom isn't a very nice person." Shauna nodded as AJ looked at her, "So don't let it keep you awake at night. You're a good doctor. And you're gonna be a good neurologist." She said as AJ smiled, "And you're gonna be a good mom." She nodded, patting her thigh as AJ smiled.
"Thank you." AJ nodded as Shauna stood up.
"Ok, can you gather yourself together soon? We got a man upstairs in surgery with a knife in his head." Shauna stood up, bouncing back into her usual self.
"Yeah, I'll be up in a minute." AJ nodded to her.
"Ok." Shauna nodded, walking off as AJ took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair.
"Hey, you." Punk smiled, getting home later that night, finding AJ in the kitchen eating some dinner.
"Hey." AJ smiled tiredly as he walked over and kissed her hello, "You good?" She nodded.
"Yeah. You?" He asked, taking his jacket off, lifting the other half of her sandwich and taking a bite as she gasped.
"You know when you do that you're stealing from your child." AJ slapped his hand as he sat it back down.
"They won't mind. They love me." Punk smiled.
"Go make your own sandwich." She ordered.
"I'm starving." Punk groaned, walking over to the kitchen area as she watched him, "Guess what?"
"What?" She said, digging her hand into the bag of chips she had beside her. She'd found in this stage of her pregnancy, five months in, she didn't want proper meals, she just wanted snacks, and so that's what she had.
"I saved a baby today." He nodded, raiding the fridge as AJ sighed a little. It was definitely a different day to hers that was for sure, "And it was a close call."
"What happened?" She asked.
"There was a house fire but all this shit was everywhere in the house. Police are investigating it. Anyway, the baby was in the nursery but there was this shelf blocking it so we had to get that up, took two of us to move out. But I got him." Punk smiled happily. It was always a good feeling, "And they're all safe." He nodded as AJ smiled.
"Good job, babe." AJ nodded as he looked over at her.
"I'm guessing your day was not as successful as mine." He said. He could just tell by how she as acting, the tone of her voice, that she'd not had a great day.
"Not really." AJ shook her head, "Pretty awful day, actually." She thought to herself.
"What happened?" He asked, walking over to the table with some leftovers from the fridge, sitting down as she sat her half eaten sandwich down.
"Well first of all I had to treat a guy who had a knife in his head. Literally sticking in his head, through his brain." AJ nodded as Punk raised his eyebrows, "Then I found no heartbeat for a thirty eight week baby, in the womb." She looked at him, "And I had to leave the room." She shook her head.
"It was dead?" Punk asked as she nodded.
"The mom fell getting out the car. She only came in because of her head, cause she suspected she had a concussion." AJ shook her head, "Instead she got told her baby was dead."
"Yeah, that's a bad day." Punk nodded.
"I don't normally get affected by my job. People die around me all the time. It's just… I don't know, it felt different." She looked at him.
"Well… I don't think it takes a genius to figure out why." He nodded, "You're part of that mom club now. You get it."
"Not yet. The baby isn't here yet." AJ said.
"No but you're still a mom. I hear you talking to it in the shower every morning." He smiled, "You get to be upset when you hear stuff like that."
"It's just so sad. She woke up this morning and she was two weeks away from meeting her baby." AJ shook her head, "And now she doesn't have one. Life can really change that fast." She sighed as he nodded.
"Yeah and life sucks." Punk sighed.
"So you get to save a baby and I get to… discover a dead one." She nodded to herself as Punk sighed.
"I'm sorry your day was so rough." He placed his hand on her shoulder.
"Knife in the head guy made it through surgery, though." AJ nodded to him, "I for sure thought he'd die in there, but they got it out." She said.
"Well that's good." Punk nodded positively.
"Gotta wait now and see if he can still move and talk when he wakes up. Pulling a knife out of the head leaves a lot of room for, you know… paralysis and stuff." She shook her head, "Not that I see people recovering from knives being pulled out their head often."
"No, it doesn't seem like a regular occurrence that would happen." He smiled a little, looking over at her as she picked apart her sandwich, "You ok?" He asked her as she nodded to him.
"I'll be fine." She nodded.
"I'm gonna go run you a bath." He nodded.
"No, you should eat." AJ shook her head.
"I can eat later." He stood up from the table, leaning over and kissing her head as she smiled, watching him walk off and head upstairs to do his best to turn her shitty day into a better night. He always succeeded in that, and she felt lucky to have him by her side.
