Page 4 of My Heart Before You

“Hi, I’m the nurse caring for patient Robert Shaw in 516. I’m calling about an order you just wrote to ‘hose out his chest.’” She paused, waiting for him to explain himself.

“Yes, what about it?”

“You want me to remove his dressing and wash out his wound in the shower room?” She knew she was new to cardiothoracics, but she’d never heard of anything like this, and it seemed wholly unsanitary.

“Just put the shower nozzle into his wound and flush it out.” The sound of rapidly clicking computer keys indicated that he was typing as he was talking to her.

Her jaw stiffened. “I’m sorry, doctor, but I’m going to need you to come and give me this order in person. I don’t feel comfortable completing this without speaking with you face to face.”

She heard a huff of breath. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

The phone cut out as he hung up on her.

Ten minutes later, a taut male voice pulled her from her chart. “Are you the nurse for 516?”

Pinning her shoulders back, she pushed off from the high computer chair to stand in front of the tall man in surgical scrubs and a white coat. “Yes, I am. I apologize for calling you to the floor, but this order sounds unusual, and I’ve not done anything like this before.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t seem irritated. “I understand. It is unusual, but in cases like this, the best thing is to get rid of all the exudate and start from scratch. I’ve also ordered a slew of antibiotics to hang.”

Some of the internal armor she’d put in place loosened. She was used to dealing with difficult doctors and kept forgetting that the Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Boston, or CTSB as everyone called them, were known for collegial camaraderie.

“So you want me to just put the shower head right into his chest?” She pantomimed putting a detachable shower head into a person's chest.

A barely contained look of amusement quickly passed over his face, lifting his mouth into a slight smile that he straightened before speaking. “Right into the chest.”

The subtle warmth in his blue-grey eyes somehow made the tightness between her shoulder blades soothe. “And I’ll know that I’m done when . . .”

“When the water runs clear.”

“Aren’t you worried about introducing new pathogens?”

Shaking his head, a few wayward strands of his wavy hair fell into his eyes, and he quickly whisked them away. “There’s nothing in the water that’s worse than what’s already in his wound.”

“Okay.” That actually made sense to her.

He pulled a folded bunch of printed papers out of his coat pocket. “Do you also have 512?”

“No, I don’t, but the assigned nurse will be listed at the charge desk.” She gestured behind her.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes reading his paperwork as he headed towards the desk.

Emilie went into the medicine room and found Ash pulling up an antiemetic from its vial into a syringe. “You’ll never guess what I was asked to do.”

“What?”

“Take Mr. Shaw to the shower room and hose out his infected chest.”

Her friend raised a golden eyebrow over her stylish glasses. “You better tell the other aides. Half of them are pre-nursing students. And grab that new grad.”

“Good idea,” she said, pulling the door open, and striding straight into Dr. Abernan.

She was glad she wasn’t carrying a handful of syringes like Ash as her body bounced off the wall of green scrubs. Almost immediately, his hands framed her biceps, steadying her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.” She brushed back her still damp braid that sprang over her shoulder in the collision.

“It’s okay,” he said, letting go of her.

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