Page 6 of Code Love
“Do we have anything conclusive on the edema? I don’t want to cut into this woman’s skull if I don’t have to,” Lillian said. Jade shouldered her way into the room allowing the nurses to assist her with gloves and the surgical gown.
“We do,” Jade said looking directly at Lillian.
“Did they get a CT?” Lillian asked.
“You don’t trust me?” Jade asked with a spark in her eye.
Lillian lifted an eyebrow, but her own decorum wouldn’t allow her to argue in front of the staff. Still her skin prickled with annoyance, why couldn’t the woman just answer her? Taking herplace at the head of the table, Lillian noticed that the woman’s head had been shaved, which likely indicated that she had been given a CT and it was deemed necessary for the surgery. She bit her lips behind the mask. Jade always got under her skin, but she couldn’t think of a single time that she had risked a patient for anything unnecessary.
“Scalpel,” Lillian said, holding her hand open as a surgical assistant handed her the tool. She traced her fingers along the curve of the patient’s skull and another of the surgical assistants placed CT images up in the lighted boxes along the wall. Lillian breathed a sigh of relief, and quickly located the best place to drill to relieve the pressure on the brain. The rest of the noise in the OR fell away as Lillian concentrated on what she was doing. She cut a square into the patient’s scalp, telling the assistants what to do with quick orders and gestures. She took the drill in her hands and placed it against the bare skull. Deftly cutting out a shard of the patient’s skull and placing it into a tray to be kept safe and sterile until she could replace it.
Almost immediately, all of the patient’s vital signs seemed to stabilize, and it was at this moment that Lillian was able to take in the rest of the OR. Jade was preparing to remove the rebar that had penetrated the woman’s chest. According to the X-rays hanging on the lights, the bar had just missed the woman’s heart, but it looked as though it had penetrated her left lung, so they would have to watch for collapse once the bar was pulled free.
Jade looked up at one of the assistants and nodded, the woman took the bar in both hands, clearly holding her breath.
“Ready?” Jade asked, and the woman nodded. “One, two, three!”
The assistant pulled the metal free and Jade immediately dove into the woman’s chest to control the bleeding.
“Suction!” Jade said, quickly tying and clamping each artery and vein that had been damaged. The patient’s vitals started dropping quickly. “I have a lot of bleeders,” Jade said. There was no hint of panic in her voice, but a certain urgency flowed through her words. “Get in here, Doctor Holder,” she said, giving Lillian the slightest of glances.
Lillian didn’t hesitate. She was handed clamps by another of the assistants and set to work trying to control the bleeding.
“There,” Jade said, and Lillian immediately clamped the spurting vessel as Jade made to tie it off with sutures. “Hold it for me,” she said, and Lillian kept her hand steady holding the clamp still. “I need to reconnect this one.” As soon as Lillian had the vessel clamped, the screaming machines monitoring the patient’s vital signs stopped their warning alarms. The nurses reported that her heart rate and blood pressure had come back within normal limits, and the air in the operating room relaxed visibly.
Lillian nodded, but she suddenly noticed her proximity. She had never been this close to Jade before; their cheeks were almost touching as they each held their place. The quickness and dexterity Jade showed as she sutured the vein together before nodding to Lillian to release the clamp was impressive but not surprising. They both let out a relieved breath as the blood flowed easily through the repaired vessels. Barring any other complications, Stephanie Sanderson was going to survive.
“Thank you, Doctor Holder,” Jade said, and Lillian couldn’t be sure if she heard Jade’s emphasis on her honorific. She smiled in spite of herself.
“Thank you, Doctor Lin,” Lillian answered. The other staff members seemed to be watching the interaction with interest, but Lillian did her best to brush them off. She stepped back from the table wiping at her forehead with the back of her arm.
“Go,” Jade said with a jerk of her head. “Inform the family.” Jade’s smile reached her eyes. “Check on the ER, get some rest if you can, the night is still young.”
Lillian narrowed her eyes at Jade unsure how to take the statement. It seemed that Jade would want to be the one to tell the family that she had saved the woman, but she was letting Lillian take the credit. It was true that the swelling on her brain would have killed her just as quickly, if not more so, as the rebar, but still, it seemed she would want to at least share the credit. She opened her mouth to say as much but changed her mind and instead she nodded and left the room, depositing her soiled gown and gloves in the compartment at the door. She went outside and pulled the cap from her head as she washed her hands again. The acrid soap was familiar, something that felt almost calming. She went through the steps of the surgery, preparing for her post-op report. Remembering Jade’s snide remark when Lillian asked about the CT irked her all over again.
Once she was clean, she checked in on the ER. It was busy, but not chaotic. It seemed that even though there were many injuries, most of them were minor. People were being quickly treated, then found space where they could rest for the night. No one on the staff was comfortable with sending anyone out in the storm, even if it was medically safe to do so. People were sitting and lying all over the waiting area and spilling over into the cafeteria. The storm raged on outside, but Lillian was hopeful that most of the wave of patients from the wreck had already been seen.
She spotted Stephanie’s family but hesitated before walking over. It still felt a bit unfair to her to give the family the good news, and besides, there could still be a complication while Jade was closing, so she made a snap decision and opted to wait until Jade came out to inform the family of Stephanie’s status.
She went to her office and checked on the status of the rest of the patients from her computer. Several more surgeries had taken place while she and Jade had been occupied, but they all seemed to have gone well. Stitches, reset bones, and the like, but the patients were doing well in post-op.
She checked in with each of her surgeons on staff; as expected, they were tired but making it. She jotted down the notes from her perspective for the charting later and checked Stephanie’s status again on the computer. When she saw that she was being moved to post-op, she headed back downstairs to find Jade and tell the family the good news.
Jade was still in the scrub station washing her hands. Lillian poked her head in as Jade grabbed a towel to dry them and turned to Lillian with a slight smile.
“How did the family take it?” Jade asked, her eyes sparkling.
“I wanted to wait for you,” Lillian said with a smile, but Jade furrowed her brows.
“Wait for me? Why?” she asked, her voice icy.
“I thought you might want to come with me,” Lillian said, suddenly defensive. “And I wanted to wait until the surgery was complete.”
“Come on,” Jade said and stalked out of the room, leaving Lillian to wonder what had just happened.
She fell into step next to Jade as they headed back to the waiting room, but Jade’s lips remained pressed and she didn’t say anything else. When they spotted Stephanie’s wife and daughter, Jade schooled her expression to the one she generally used with patients and their families. Lillian tried to make sure her expression matched, but she wasn’t sure if she had accomplished it quite as well.
Jade greeted them quickly, then turned to Lillian to make the announcement.
