Page 39 of Scorched Hearts

“YES, now get it STAT!”

Maya fastened Elle to the ambulance’s operating table, ready to perform this surgery on her own, if no one else showed up quickly enough. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, and she got everything started properly. Then a dizzy spell took over her. This was Elle she was about to dive into the head of, cut open and sew up, see her damaged skull. But if she were to look for a replacement, they’d lose time that Elle really didn’t have much of. No. She had to push through. She’d pretend it was someone else. She had to get this right. The damage took her aback. This would be one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, and they were still waiting to get the blood. She couldn’t begin operating without it.

Furious, she left the ambulance, looking for the medic.

“Where is the blood? We have to start operating, and we have nothing for her,” she shouted, completely on the edge.

“I’m working on it, but we don’t have the type here.”

“Well then where’s O negative?”

“We’re running low, so I thought I’d--”

“Don’t talk. Get me the blood. We don’t have any in the ambulance anymore.”

She went back inside to check Elle’s state. The situation was dire, and she had to have the new supply of blood. At long last, the medic came back with bags of it.

“Finally!” Maya quickly began working.

She had to supply the ambulance’s system with the new blood and get it flowing to Elle so they could start operating without any risks of making her bleed out. The time came where Elle’s life depended completely on Maya’s skill as a surgeon. She worked tirelessly without any sense of passing time, knowing that as long as she was applying everything she knew, Elle had a chance of surviving.

Stepping away from the table and letting the EMTs take her away and drive her away to the hospital, Maya felt as if in a daze. Shakily, she stepped outside, unsure whether she was going to vomit or collapse.

“Dr. Monroe, are you not getting in?” Fleur pointed to the ambulance, encouraging.

“I still have work here--”

“Dr. Monroe, get in the ambulance. You should stay with her.”

Maya understood and got back into the car. She stroked Elle’s hand, terrifyingly limp, decorated with streaks of dried blood. While the ambulance sped through the traffic, sirens wailing, she thought how scary it must’ve been for Elle to see a building crumble above her head, to feel trapped within its collapsed walls. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her face for too long. She knew she couldn’t fall apart completely now. She had to stay strong, but the sight of Elle tethered to the operating table and unconscious was close to being too much for her mind.

The hospital was full to the brim, overcrowded. They said they couldn’t admit another trauma patient. The crew was furious hearing that there’d been such a case of terrible miscommunication and bad organization. The hospital had been shown to them as available. They had to turn around and drive to the next closest one. Maya’s nerves got the better of her, and she vomited into a plastic bag.

The next hospital admitted Elle. Maya ran in with the hospital’s crew, unaware of time and space, aware only of the burning need to be close to Elle.

“What are you doing, Doctor?” The nurses looked at her, irritated and surprised.

“This is my partner,” she managed to say.

“We will operate. You have to leave her now.” The nurse took her by the hand, leading her out of the room.

Maya knew they’d have to actually fix Elle’s head far beyond what she’d done back in the ambulance, but the thought of letting her go, of letting her be treated by other surgeons, terrified her. She sat in the waiting room, feeling her body go through a thousand stages of panic.

The hours went by, yet she sat still. She couldn’t go back to work, not now. She wouldn’t be able to. The only thing for her to do was to wait. Wait until they finished the surgery. Wait until Elle woke up.

“Dr. Monroe, where are you?” Her superior called her, sounding on edge himself.

“I’m sorry, my partner suffered a grave injury. I operated on her, and now she’s in the hospital. I can’t leave.”

He had no choice but to let her be. This was no state in which to rescue people. She had to make sure that the person she cared about the most actually survived. In those hours, she knew Elle was the most important person in the world to her. She knew by the way her chest tightened as if to crush her heart when she saw her being carried out of the building. She’d never unlearn that.

The evening came, and the surgery was over. The first one, anyway. She knew they’d have to operate on Elle many times to get her back. The nurses stopped her from running into the room. She needs rest. She needs rest. They gave Maya a blanket and she drifted off to sleep.

15

ELLE

The jolts of pain came to her in waves at first. White foam of a teeth-grinding sensation would wash over her, then leave for a moment. In those moments in between, she would experience a rush of memories, some of them recent, some long forgotten, dug out from below the heaps of more relevant ones.

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