Page 47 of Unforgivable Ties

“Time to call it,” Cesare said, stepping away from the man.

He said it so casually, like he was talking about the weather. Not like he was talking about how we failed to save someone else’s life.

“B-but, he’s...” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

Cesare and I had other critical patients come in like this, but we had always saved their lives. Things were stressful, and it took a lot of work, but we had always saved them.

“Ah. First time?” Cesare stripped off his gloves. “It is unfortunate, isn’t it? But, it’s a cold reality in life. People die.”

His words were harsh, but his tone wasn’t unkind. It was a tone of resignation, of acceptance of a fact that was as bitter as it was inevitable.

“And one that you must come to terms with very soon into this profession.”

It was as though I had swallowed a bitter pill, one that was hard to digest.

“Yeah...” I said quietly.

Seeing death was so much different from all the media I had consumed in school. I had read books, watched videos, and dissected pigs, but nothing had prepared me for the real thing.

It didn’t feel real; it wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t supposed to end with the patient dying on the table, and us unable to do anything about it. I stared at the lifeless body beneath us, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

“Well, let’s take this learning opportunity.” Cesare said, tearing me from my thoughts.

“Huh?”

I hadn’t even had time to process the cold reality of death and Cesare was throwing this at me.

“Let’s perform an autopsy. School always takes too long to teach the hands on things.” Cesare launched into a long-winded rant about his days in medical school, and how they needed fewer concepts and more practice.

I felt my stomach churn at the thought. “Now?”

“In this line of work, death doesn’t wait for you to process your feelings.”

Cesare was right, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. I looked back at the patient on the table, his skin already turning an unnatural shade; this was no time for me to wallow in my feelings.

“So you make the Y incision, which we won’t be able to do perfectly given his injuries.”

Cesare took a scalpel and started to make the cut, his hands steady as ever. The sharp blade of the scalpel split the pale skin with ease, revealing the organs beneath, a world I had witnessed countless times in textbooks and on screens, but never in its raw, unfiltered state.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s see what’s available to save.”

My stomach twisted in nervous knots. We weren’t in a hospital; there was no reason for us to try and save the organs for removal.

“Uh, Cesare...” I said, inching away from him. “There’s no reason for us to do that here.”

“It’s training,” he said sternly, looking directly at me. “It doesn’t matter if they get tossed after; we’re pretending like they need to be preserved.”

I nodded, trying to keep my face passive. Cesare was right, after all. This was a training exercise, and I was supposed to learn from it.

I hesitated a bit before stepping up to him. The scent of blood and death was overwhelming, but Cesare seemed immune to it. He looked at me expectantly. I swallowed down my apprehension, took a deep breath, and watched what he was doing.

“His heart won’t be salvageable. Neither will the left lung,” Cesare said, motioning to the organs that had been pierced by the bullet. “Now, we need to clamp the blood vessels.”

His hands moved confidently and without hesitation, grabbing a pair of hemostats from the tray beside him. With precision guided by years of practice, he located the major arteries and veins and clamped them off.

A chill ran through my body. At first, I thought it was from experiencing the harsh reality of death. But then I realized theA/C had definitely gotten chillier. The warehouse was quite old, and the electrical wiring was most likely malfunctioning.

“And then remove them one by one. Be careful with where you make the cuts.”

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