My interest today is not with her but with her patient, Griffin Smart, the driver of the van. I owe Ivy an update. That Nurse Jimenez didn’t immediately return puts me on my heels. His injuries won’t be fixed with a few stitches and Tylenol.
I enter the exam room and remain by the door. Dr. Carmichael is head of the Ortho unit on the sixth floor. Her appearances in the ER are becoming rarer and rarer as she climbs the hospital hierarchy. These days, they are restricted to consults, which she continues to humor me with strictly due to our history, and on days like today when it’s all hands-on deck.
I cross my arms across my chest and enjoy the view. It remains a treat to this day. She’s standing on the opposite side of the bed, head tilted down, her dark hazel eyes focused on her patient. She’s ten years my junior but is as skilled and practiced as anyone in the hospital. Growing up with a dad who was a legendary medical icon will do that for you. She once joked that movie nights in her house growing up were watching VHS tapes of her dad’s mentors performing surgery. She is our best and brightest, and I’m honored to have her as my friend.
“Watch the BP,” she calls out to the team, and my eyes drift to the monitors. Griffin is under duress. His BP is still elevated. I take a step forward to get a better view. He’s a kid, early twenties, with dark curls, and he lifts his knees up as a wave of pain hits him. I focus on the grimace on his face. He looks like he’s gone ten rounds with a boxer—blackened eyes, a distant,confused stare of a person not sure what is happening to him right now.
Nurse Jimenez steps next to me, shoulder to shoulder. “Dr. Carmichael told me to wait here while she finishes the assessment.” I nod, now understanding why she didn’t return with the update. “Said it would only be a minute.”
I snicker. We doctors are all the same. We have little concept of time when working on a patient. We always feel we are a minute away from an answer. “I get that.” I let Nurse Jimenez know everything is good.
“Griffin, I’m going to increase the dosage of your pain medicine, but only after I complete my examination. I know the pain is intense. The steering wheel bruised your abdomen and ribs, but shockingly, nothing is broken. The air bag did its job, but it nearly broke your nose. You’re going to be black and blue for some time.”
My eyes flit to the monitors. Outside of the elevated BP due to the pain he’s in, nothing out of the ordinary. Another freaking Christmas miracle.
“We’ll need to monitor you for the next few days to verify you don’t have any internal bleeding. All is clear for now. Once you’re more stable, we’ll move you upstairs to a room that will be more comfortable for you.” Angie lays a hand on his forearm, which seems to settle him. His legs stretch out, and he stops thrashing. She has that effect on people.
Griffin groans and shifts his weight, attempting to push up. Angie, rightfully, lays her hand on his chest to tell him to stay put. He runs his hand over his face. “No cuts?”
She gives him a short laugh. “No, for the third time.” Apparently, this isn’t the first time he’s asked. “The girls will be pleased.”
A half smile flits across his face for half a second, gone quicker than it appeared. “But I was covered in blood. I thought…” His voice trails off, and Angie slips her hand into his.
“It wasn’t yours.”
“Whose?” he asks.
She shakes her head, unsure, and I step to the bed. “Coach Springwood’s.” Angie turns, her brows rising as she notices me in the room for the first time. “She was in the passenger seat next to you. I’m Dr. Morgan.”
I stride toward the bed, Angie pressing hard on Griffin’s chest as he attempts to rise.Keep still.
“Is she… okay?”
“Barely a scratch on her,” I ease his concern and turn to Angie. “Scalp laceration.” I give her the diagnosis and step back. Griffin is her patient. Early in my career, I stepped on a lot of toes, dominating every room I entered.
“Underneath the scalp is a lot of blood,” she says, holding him in place until he settles. “It looks worse than it is. She’s in good hands with Dr. Morgan.” I hear the phrase we hand out like jellybeans during Easter.
“She wasn’t buckled in. We thought we were safe. Somehow, we had avoided the car accident in the middle of the road.” His eyes gleam over with the memory, and I fear he’s about to break down, just like Ivy. “We thought we were safe. We were laughing at how lucky we were, and that’s when I saw the truck. It headed right for us, skidding on the ice. The coach had her back to it, but she must’ve seen my face, the headlights of the truck.” He slams his eyes shut, and I picture myself in the van with them. The screech of a truck, the anticipation of the collision.
“She yelled something to the girls, and then she jumped on top of me as if she could protect me from a truck. A freaking truck.”
My mouth hangs open as I take in every word. Ivy so committed to her team, her first and only instinct protectingthem. A calmness under pressure that I associate with surgeons, soldiers, and firefighters.
“But she did.” Angie says the words I’m thinking. She lays a hand on his abdomen, and he immediately recoils as if her hands were fire. She shoots me adid you see that?glance. “I’m going to order up that pain medicine for you now and will send in the tech for another set of X-rays.”
She raises the railing on the bar, the familiar click echoing through the tiny exam room. She tosses the exam gloves in the bin, and I follow her out.
“I suspect splenic injury,” she says two feet outside the door.
“Not a deep bruise.” My words are a statement, not a question. Given the amount of pain medicine he’s already on, a deep bruise wouldn’t cause that reaction in a healthy, athletic man his age.
“The X-rays won’t confirm it, but it will rule out any fractures or breaks that the initial scans might have missed. The only way to confirm a splenic injury is to monitor him closely. Looks like he’s going to be with us for a little while. I’ll start the paperwork.”
“And I’ll update the coach.”
I step away but stop when I feel the tug on my elbow. “Wait, whoa? You weren’t in there just to watch my brilliance.” She shoots me a quick smile and steps to one of the standing workstations by the nurses’ station.
I watch a nurse stroll passed us as Angie pecks away on the keyboard; she’s a two-finger index-finger typist. Her fingers move in a blur, her speed twice that of my ten-finger approach. “As much as I enjoyed seeing you in action, I promised Ivy an update.”