Page 10 of Keeping Her Under
At my age, I doubt I’ll be able to get hard again for another few hours. But as an image pops into my head, of Summer lying in her hospital bed, in the black lingerie I bought for her last night, my cock twitches once more.
My breath catches as I stare at it, still in the palm of my hand.
A moment passes, but it doesn’t rise again.
Breathing out, I release it, then push it back into my pants.
Tying up the drawstrings, I finally manage to concentrate on my work. After flushing the toilet and washing my hands, I head into operating room number four and start prepping my area for my first patient.
After the surgery’s finished, I sort the patient out in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit, then quickly head to the cafeteria for lunch. Normally, I eat in my office given the food is better and there isn’t a long line eating into my break, but Ryan is on shift today, and he likes the hubbub of the place. Says it gives him a bit of reprieve from the depressing mood of the ICU.
Hurrying down the stairs –too impatient for the elevator– I pull out my phone to check my messages.
Nothing from Asher yet.
The fucker is probably balls deep down some new woman’s throat. Or maybe he’s scored a car with two occupants and is getting them to touch each other. He likes testing what people will choose. Get a speeding ticket or make out with your boyfriend’s brother, who’s riding in the passenger seat? Get arrested for drunk driving or let your cousin suck on your tits? Get charged with drug possession or jerk off your dad? Have your car impounded for numerous violations or let your brother finger you until you come?
A frown pulls at my lips as I recall the state of Summer’s house. I wonder what she would’ve chosen. Would she have seen jail as a temporary blessing, where she’d be fed and protected? After all, it’s not like any cellmates would have been worse than the people in her neighborhood, and at least in jail, she would have been in sight of a police officer rather than in an area where their calls weren’t prioritized.
Or would she have been desperate to stay free? Willing to trade one act of servitude for it? Even a few days in jail could have cost her her job, and given how little money she has, that could be a death sentence. A slow drag into Hell, tied to the back of a car as it drives her through the streets of homelessness, then into the dark suburbs of victimhood, through the back alleys where hope shoots up and overdoses, over the burning bridges of society, until it finally screeches to a halt at the last breath of life.
One bad choice leading to a life of misery.
What would she have chosen?
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I exit the stairs and walk the final stretch into the cafeteria. I look around the wide open space for Ryan. It’s peppered with people but not overly crowded, and I spot him in a few seconds. I make a beeline for his round, four-seater table.
“Hey,” he says as I get close. “Risking the line today?” He nods at the queue for food. Our breaks are barely long enough to eat, which is why most of the staff doesn’t bother to come here, so I know he’s curious about why I have.
“I didn’t feel like eating in my office today,” I say, my voice carrying tense, unspoken words. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts. Or perhaps, It’s too close to the ICU, where my fuck-up is lying in a coma.
Whichever one he decides I’m suppressing works for me.
“Though now that I’m here, I don’t feel like eating at all,” I say, purposefully glancing down at his lunch – a chicken breast that somehow still looks as dry as hell despite being smothered in a questionable brown sauce and a side of stale looking fries.
He laughs. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Mmm,” I say as he stabs at the chicken with his fork, yanking hard in an attempt to tear a piece off.
I glance away from him as he eats, letting a flood of emotions break out on my face. Flickers of guilt. A loss of confidence. Then worried contemplation as if I’m fighting within myself to breach a subject I don’t want to breach.
A woman would have taken pity on that display and simply offered up the information I want to know. Summer’s fine. She’s stable. Her vitals…
But most men need something a bit more direct. So I look him in the eye as he swallows. “You have a patient of mine, a woman with malignant hyperthermia,” I say. I hesitate. My voice lowers. “How is she?”
“Summer Wintry?” he asks.
“I don’t know her name,” I lie. “She was still a Jane Doe when I updated her chart.” After the surgery, I had to document the care I had given her and detail why I’d done what I’d done. The police hadn’t brought in her personal belongings by then; otherwise, a nurse would’ve added her name to her file or attached her to any records we already had for her.
He nods as he hacks at his chicken again. Our lunch breaks are too short to waste any time on just talking. Already, I’m a third of the way through mine, and I haven’t even asked the real question I want to know. Or eaten.
“She’s stable,” he says, “and she’s not showing any side effects of the dantrolene.”
When her malignant hyperthermia kicked off as I administered the anesthetic for her surgery, it triggered a dramatic increase in the amount of calcium being released in her muscles. That caused them to severely contract, leading her to convulse on the table.
Dantrolene is the only drug to counter the effects, working by decreasing the calcium content and allowing the muscles to relax. Without it, her chance of survival would be around thirty percent.
It was risky, doing what I did – taking a few seconds to “work out” why her end-tidal carbon dioxide was spiking, then calling out she had MH when her heart rate increased as well; if I’d left it longer than that, someone could’ve questioned how I had missed it. So I started mixing the dantrolene sodium with 60mL of sterile water in the vial, every inch the authoritative anesthesiologist, ready to play the hero.
