Author’s Note: This is free fantasy; not a grain of truth anywhere in it. I’m not a pathologist, nor do I play one on TV. Some suspension of disbelief is probably necessary.
“But I’m a pathologist!” Natasha protested as she forced the door open and stepped out of her dented car. Looking around, she absently rubbed a spot near the top of her head. What on Earth had she hit it on? The pouring rain and falling dark made visibility less than great on the narrow back road, but she could see tail lights in a ditch across the intersection they’d been driving through moments earlier. Well, trying to drive through, before this asshole had clipped them at breakneck speed. So much for shortcuts. And Hannah won’t stop screaming, not that I blame her. Poor kid.
“So?" Vicky supplied, crawling out after Natasha and checking herself over. “It doesn’t matter, honey. You’re the most qualified person here by far, so come on.”
Natasha sighed and hesitated, but after a final look at Hannah, secure in her car seat, she started following her partner towards the other car – or whatever might be left of it. She knew Vicky was right, and yet she dreaded this. She didn’t want to be responsible for treating anyone when she felt so ridiculously far from everything familiar. There was no equipment here, no supplies, no one to help her, and she really had no relevant experience to speak of. Natasha never treated patients, she just took them apart after the fact. Also, to make matters even worse, she had no idea where her glasses had gone to in the crash. Natasha mentally shrugged, pushing some damp blonde locks behind her ear. It wasn’t important right now. She’d be ok for a while.
As they approached the other car, a very mangled old station wagon, Natasha tried to remember the emergency medicine training from her studies and internship, both more than a decade ago now. A, B, C… She could do this. She had to do this. Taking a deep breath, she stepped closer and inspected the wreck.
It seemed like the car had been flung off the road after grazing Natasha’s, the momentum spinning it around. Or maybe it had rolled, too? Yes, she decided. It probably had. They’d been plowing through that intersection like… like a fucking bat out of hell.
Natasha headed for the driver’s side first, having already seen someone slumped over the steering wheel. Through the broken window, she saw messy brown hair spilling over narrow denim-clad shoulders. Reaching carefully through the window, she shook the nearest shoulder. “Hello? Can you hear me?” Not getting a response, she turned to Vicky. “Help me get this door open.”
Together they managed to pry the dented door open far enough to pull the driver out of the car as gently as possible. Once on the grass, they realized it was a young man. A boy, really. He hardly looked 16, and the blood all over his face seemed completely wrong. “Look for more people,” Natasha told Vicky, then leaned down to assess whether her patient had an airway and was breathing. Feeling breath on her face and seeing his chest move, she straightened, relieved, and reached to check his pulse. He had one, but it seemed fast and not very strong. Automatically glancing at her watch to count his heart rate, she soon realized there was no way she could focus on the tiny second hand to get a correct count. Crap.
Moving on, some part of her brain told her to do a secondary survey. No limbs seemed to be at odd angles, but the blood on his face had to come from somewhere. Seeing a cut near his hairline she figured it probably looked worse than it was, knowing that head wounds tended to bleed a lot. In lieu of gloves, she pulled the sleeves of her jacket over her hands before feeling the area for any step that might indicate a displaced fracture. Nothing seemed amiss, although the sleeve-covered attempt at palpation was obviously anything but sensitive. Either way, he was going to need a scan to rule out an intracranial bleeding. Palpating his arms and legs didn’t give Natasha anything specific, so she moved on to his abdomen. It was soft, but when she pushed on it, the driver made a noise of discomfort. She pinched an arm to assess pain response and got a similar noise again, plus a small movement. It was something. She couldn’t remember the details of the Glasgow Coma Scale used to grade consciousness level, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t good. She felt his ribs and pelvis, which both seemed stable.
It was then she noticed Vicky half dragging another person over, by the looks of it another boy about the same age. He was on his feet but leaning heavily on the much shorter Vicky, and he was cradling one arm carefully to his body.
“Here,” Natasha patted the grass next to her, and got up to help get him settled. “Do you have your phone?” she asked Vicky. Her partner nodded silently, reaching into her pocket for it. “Call 911 and start explaining while I take a look at him. Are there more people?”
“No.” Vicky was already dialing as Natasha nodded and turned to the second boy.
“Where does it hurt the most?” she asked him, looking at his pale face and trembling lips.
“My arm. And side.” He indicated his right side.
“Ok. I’ll have a look at both in a second, but first I’ll just check the rest of you over quick.” She ran her hands down his legs and left arm, palpating for any injuries. Next she checked his pelvis and abdomen, before straightening. “Good. Now your arm.” She took it and pushed the sleeve up as gently as she could, realizing there was no doubt it was broken. Both ulna and radius, probably, and dislocated at that. His upper arm and shoulder seemed ok, but he winced when she touched his ribs. She couldn’t feel any obvious instability, but he’d likely cracked a few ribs too. “Any dizziness, nausea, sweating?”
“Nausea,” he replied weakly, looking a little green around the gills. “And I’m cold.”
Natasha nodded absently, hearing Vicky on the phone with the 911 operator. Indicating that she wanted the phone, she stood and headed over to her partner. “Keep an eye on these, will you? Have him lie down, and put something under the other guy’s legs to elevate them.”
Nodding that she got it, Vicky handed over the phone and crouched between the boys, talking quickly, but firmly to the one who was awake. Natasha was grateful she was there.
“This is dr. Natasha Saunders,” she explained to the operator. “I’m a pathologist at County and was in the car with the woman you just talked to. There are two injured, both teenage boys. The driver has a head lac and loss of consciousness. Some response to pain, and he also winced when I palpated his abdomen. Pulse rapid and thready, resp stable. No other obvious external injuries. The passenger is awake, somewhat oriented but looking shocky. Fractured right forearm – closed, but looks like both ulna and radius – and probably rib fractures on the right side. No shortness of breath.”
She listened for a second, then continued. “Their car rolled and is now off the road, out of the way of traffic. Ours is parked on the shoulder – dented, but probably not a total wreck – and our four year old daughter is in the back seat. She’s scared, but otherwise fine as far as I can tell.”
She listened again, then crouched by the driver, who was still unconscious. “Do we have a flashlight?” she asked Vicky.
“I think so.” She hurried over to the car to look, while Natasha checked the unconscious patient’s respiration and pulse again. “Rapid breathing, but not labored. Regular, but rapid pulse. Same response to pain.” Holding the phone with her shoulder, she palpated his abdomen again. “Abdomen definitely hurts, but it still feels soft to me,” she reported, just as Vicky thrust a flashlight in front of her.
Swapping the phone for the flashlight, she shone the flashlight in one eye, then the other, squinting to see how they reacted. Damn, she missed her glasses right now. “Equal and reactive, but sluggish,” she reported, hearing Vicky repeat what she’d said to the operator. Moving on to the passenger, she asked him to look at her and repeated the same procedure. “Normal.”
Knowing Vicky had things covered on the phone front, Natasha headed over to their car to find a couple of blankets for their patients. The passenger was lying down now, but his color still wasn’t too good, and she suspected his friend might have an internal bleeding going on. Neither of them needed a circulatory collapse, and the chilly rain wasn’t helping them any either.
Having set them up as best she could, Natasha got to her feet again and indicated that she wanted the phone back. “Could you go talk to Hannah?” she asked when Vicky handed it over after a quick “hang on” to the operator. “She’s still terrified.”
“Sure,” Vicky nodded, already turning.
“And hon? Could you keep an eye out for my glasses too? I don’t know where they went to. I just hope neither of us stepped on them.”
Vicky nodded again and left. Natasha returned to the phone call.
The ambulance reached them no more than a minute or two later, to both women’s relief. The patients didn’t seem to be improving any, rather the opposite, and there really wasn’t much else Natasha could think of to do for them.
She gave the bullet again to the EMTs as she helped get the patients on the gurneys and into the ambulances.
“You all need to get checked, too,” one of them told her as they loaded the second patient. Natasha considered it quickly. They probably should, and their car wasn’t going anywhere right now. “Can we go with you? I can go with the driver, and my wife and daughter with the passenger.”
“Fine, but hurry.”
Natasha nodded and jogged over to their car. She was so wet she didn’t care about the puddles she splashed through. “Get Hannah out. I’ll bring our purses. We’re going with them.”
“What about the car?”
“Nobody could steal it if they wanted to, and there’s nothing valuable in it. We’ll call a tow truck.”
“Ok.”
“Glasses?”
“No, sorry. Haven’t seen them.”
“Ok.” Natasha reached for their things, then helped get a still crying Hannah out of the back seat. “Come here, honey. You’re going to drive in a big ambulance with mommy. I’ll be in a different one, and I’ll see you again once we’re at the hospital, ok?
The little girl looked at her with Vicky’s big, blue eyes, lower lip trembling. “Promise?”
“I promise. Cross my heart.”
Heading over to the ambulance, Natasha was waved around to the back. “You a doc?”
“Pathologist,” she answered, doubting she could be of much use.
“Pity, but you’ll have to do anyway. Get in.”
Shrugging, Natasha climbed in and buckled up as directed. Unceremoniously, she was handed a stethoscope and told to make good use of it. “Good heart sounds, but rapid,” she reported. “Equal breath sounds.” She moved lower. “Reduced bowel sounds…”
“Hear any at all?”
Natasha was still listening, pushing her dripping wet hair off her face. “Not yet, anyway.” Not that the damned howling siren is making this any easier.
The EMT slipped an oxygen mask over the patient’s face. “BP 95/60, pulse 117. He needs volume. Doc, behind you there’s a cabinet. Slide the door up, grab some saline.”
Natasha turned, taking a second to identify the cover and finding out how it worked. Saline… didn’t that have blue print on it? she wondered. At least I think it did a decade ago. Or was that Ringer? She’d have been hard pressed to read it then, and knew it was a total lost cause now.
She picked up a bag and turned to the EMT, squinting at it just as it was snatched from her. “One more. Can you start an IV line?”
“I can try.”
“Good enough. Here.”
Natasha got everything set up to start a line in the patient’s left arm, while the EMT was working on the right. With his blood pressure being so low, chances were this was going to be difficult, so she wasn’t even trying for the hand or wrist areas. She wasn’t close to qualified to attempt a subclavian or jugular line either, so the crook of the elbow was her best bet.
Tying the rubber band around the patient’s upper arm, she looked for a promising vein. Yeah, not much hope of that. I can’t read half inch-tall letters, but I somehow think I can visualize a vein in a patient in shock? Good one, self. Concentrating, she closed her eyes as she gently felt for one instead. There? Opening her eyes to make sure she didn’t stick herself with the needle, she felt some more, and then tried sticking.
Holy cow. Score.
She pushed the catheter slowly over the needle, trying to remember what came next. Pull needle out, obviously, but did she need to close it somehow? She hesitated, and the EMT took pity on her. “Compress vein against catheter with your finger, pull needle out, tighten stopper, then fix and flush.”
Natasha completed the first steps as instructed with not a drop of blood spilled, then hesitated again as she looked for something to fix it with. The EMT wordlessly handed her the roll of tape, and she felt stupid. Of course, that was completely overshadowed by the following moment when she discovered she couldn’t find the free end of the tape for anything, and she’d need two hands to do it by touch. Her head was starting to really hurt, a sure sign she’d already been squinting enough for one night.
“Please take it from here,” she said, throwing in the towel.
She ignored his exasperated look and just closed her eyes for a moment once he’d taken over. When she opened them again, he’d finished flushing it and was connecting the line from the bag of saline solution. Natasha reached for the bag and hung it next to the other one, then sat back down.
The EMT checked the patient’s vitals and asked the driver for their ETA while palpating the patient’s radial pulse. Natasha merely looked on, feeling useless. Then again, this wasn’t nearly her area of expertise in any circumstance.
“I’m not actually that much of a klutz,” she blurted out as they approached the hospital with sirens still blaring, not sure why she gave a crap what he thought about her. “Just missing my glasses.”
She fully expected an I don’t give a shit, lady look, but to her surprise got a quick smile. “I feel your pain. Contacts,” he explained and pointed to himself. “Plus or minus?”
“Plus.”
“Same here. So, not a thing in here is actually in focus?”
Natasha shrugged. “Depends how bad I’m willing to make my headache.”
The EMT laughed. “Know what you mean. In that case, I’m impressed.”
Natasha smiled, grateful. Now that she had a moment to take stock of her own body, she realized her head was still tender where she’d hit it, as were her left knee and elbow. Obviously nothing fractured, but she must have hit her side against the door. The wet clothes were distractingly uncomfortable and the headache was nearing the same level. A friendly smile felt pretty good right now.
“I wish I could have done more. But I tend to come in after people croak, not so often while trying to keep them alive is still an option.”
“Ah. Yeah. Well, you did what you could for this kid. No one without emergency training and equipment could have done much more.” He paused and shot her a glance. “Even with glasses.”
She actually smiled at that, then their little moment came to an abrupt end as the ambulance slowed and they prepared to get out.
“Please sign in,” the nurse at triage said mechanically, handing over three clipboards. With a soft sigh, Vicky accepted them and headed back to her seat.
Natasha eyed the clipboards with the dark, smeary blobs she knew was writing. “Please fill in mine too?” she asked softly. She couldn’t hope to read that even on a good day, and today was anything but that.
“Of course,” Vicky nodded, having expected that already. Natasha took Hannah to the restroom while Vicky wrote, then got them all something to drink from the various machines along the wall. Finally, she managed to get some blankets. Hannah was starting to droop, and Natasha cradled the girl on her lap so she could relax for the moment. Now that she was safe and warm - she’d hardly gotten wet at all - her body needed a break.
There really was no big rush with the paperwork, it turned out. They had to wait over an hour before Vicky and Hannah were called back, and Natasha had to sit there nearly another half hour before it was her turn. Bored out of her mind, she stared at the wall clock for a good ten minutes before she grabbed a magazine and flipped through it for the colors. An ER waiting room wasn’t exactly the place to people watch, and she anyway couldn’t do that either without becoming even more uncomfortable than she already was.
“How are you holding up?” Vicky said softly, covering Natasha’s hand with her own as they sat in the taxi later.
“I’m ok,” she replied distractedly, reaching to tuck the blanket around their sleepy daughter.
“Your head, too?”
“Why, because of the glasses? Or the bump?”
Vicky smiled sadly. “Both, really, although I was thinking about the glasses.”
Natasha shrugged. “It’s been better. It’ll be fine. What time is it now?”
“Nearly 1.30 am.”
“Great. Tomorrow will be so wonderful.”
They were both silent for a while, then Natasha squeezed Vicky’s hand gently. “I’m sorry about bossing you around earlier.”
“It’s ok. You were in work mode. I’m so grateful you were there. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything useful except call 911.”
Natasha looked over at her. “That is the most important part, honey. And it’s not like I could really do much either, between what they’d injured and what I had in the way of equipment and experience.”
“But you were there, and you tried. I’m so glad we’re all ok. The driver… he was hurt pretty badly, wasn’t he?”
Natasha merely nodded, and they both remained quiet for the rest of the drive.
When they got home, Natasha gave Hannah a quick bath while Vicky made something to eat. Once fed, their very overtired and cranky daughter was soon put to bed. The adults followed right behind her, knowing their alarms would go off way too early for their liking in the morning.
Despite being tired and feeling beat up, Natasha was somewhat relieved to arrive at work the next morning. Not because she felt ready for the day ahead, far from it, but at least she could finally get to her other glasses. They weren’t progressives and only intended for computer use, but they were at least current. She’d found her old glasses when they got home last night, but they were unfortunately two prescriptions back because Hannah had broken her previous pair. They did still help some, but didn’t nearly cut it. This had been her first pair of progressives, and the reading add was small enough that reading turned out to be quite a challenge now.
As soon as she entered the department she went straight to her desk and found her computer glasses, gratefully slipping them on. Ah, better. Sort of. As soon as she stood, she remembered how walking or really any moving around with these glasses didn’t work at all. She put them on her desk while she got changed, then stuck them in her hair as she left the room with the old pair on her nose.
“Dr. Saunders! Hi!” Bianca, one of the residents, greeted her cheerfully as the exited her office, then did a double take. “Are you ok?”
“Just tired. Vicky, Hannah and I were in a car crash last night, and it got way too late by the time we were all home and in bed,” she explained. “We’re all fine, but my car needs some work. A lot of work, actually. And the people in the other car… I don’t know. The one wasn’t looking too hot.”
“Wow. Did they hit you?”
“Yeah. Ran a stop sign.” Natasha debated saying more, but decided against it. She really didn’t know where to start.
Bianca gave her a long look. “I’m glad you’re ok,” was all she said, and Natasha was grateful the resident didn’t ask any more questions..
Realizing it was her turn to lead the meeting this morning, Natasha hid a sigh. She really just wanted to go hide until she could go home.
She was soon reminded again why she never used the computer glasses for anything other than sitting quietly in front of a monitor. While in the meeting she needed to look over them at the other staff members sitting in their little auditorium, as they were too far away else. But, she reminded herself, at least I can see the monitor perfectly.
The morning meeting was followed by the department’s monthly update, after which Natasha went and sat down in front of one of the workstations and pulled up the first email of the day. Now we’re talking, she thought, satisfied.
As usual, the peace and quiet didn’t last long. “Dr. Saunders?” The voice was quiet, low. Natasha turned to face Anna, the quietest tech she’d ever known. “Would you please come look at this hand? It’s hard to get a good picture.”
“Sure, just a sec…” Feeling the woman still standing behind her, Natasha finished the email she was in the middle of before standing. Oh. Glasses. She removed them as she followed the other woman out of the room and down the hall to the control room for the x-ray lab.
Looking at the picture on the monitor, she agreed that it was a challenge. The patient had an old fracture of his 5. metacarpal, which had healed very crooked and made the standard projections not show what they wanted - the more recent fractures of his 3rd and 4th metacarpal that were in the process of healing when he died.
“Could you do a reverse oblique view, say… 45 degrees?” she suggested. “Or maybe just 30… and center on the middle of the 3rd metacarpal?”
Back at her workstation, Natasha went to the work list where everything that had been read was waiting for an attending to review and sign it before it was final. Waiting for an item to load, she read through the referral. Lower right quadrant abdominal pain for the past three weeks, general feeling of malaise, palpable mass… guy in his fifties… The tumor in his colon had been easy to spot on the colonoscopy, right where the mass and the pain were located. Damn. And then he dies the next day. Question is whether it was complications from the procedure or the widespread cancer that got him. Tumor necrosis, maybe? I’ll need to look at his CT, too. It could also be a perforation with intraabdominal hemorrhage.
She scanned the tissue sample in its various stains, noting architecture, cell morphology, division rate, nucleus to cytoplasm ratio and then specific surface markers.
Only then did she read the resident’s description. Jason had seen the same things. Good. He is really improving lately. Natasha changed a few words here and there, then approved the description. Next…
“I so need to get new glasses,” Natasha sighed over dinner. “My head hurt less yesterday than it does right now.”
“You mean you’re better off not wearing those?”
“Not exactly. I’ve juggled these and my computer glasses about a million times today. It’s worked in that I can mostly see what I need to see, but it’s given me a whopping headache. Reading especially is just really not comfortable.”
Vicky nodded, curls bouncing. “Do you want to go tonight?”
Natasha considered it. “I should. It’ll still take nearly a week until I actually get them.” She sighed again, closing her eyes for a second. “It’s going to be a long week. What I should do in the meantime is probably get a pair of those cheapo reading glasses.”
“That might work.”
“I’ll go after I put Hannah to bed.”
“Driving in the dark with those glasses won’t be a problem?”
Natasha stared at Vicky. She hadn’t considered that. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s been a while since I’ve tried.”
“Guess we should go now, then.”
Natasha sighed. “I guess.” She sounded none too happy. “Looks like I should also get some cheapo distance glasses.”
“Could be useful.”
“God, I feel old.”
“Oh, stop it.” Vicky reached across the table for Natasha’s hand and squeezed it. “You’ve worn glasses for years. This is no different.”
Natasha still disagreed, but wasn’t sure how to explain.
“Heck if I can remember my prescription. I’m going for the empirical approach – if they work for what I need them for, that’s good enough,” Natasha shrugged. Vicky merely rolled her eyes at her before turning to stop Hannah’s determined path towards the display racks.
“We do have your prescription on file,” the optician told her laconically, one eyebrow raised. “Although since it’s been a couple of years I’d recommend you get tested again.”
She thought about it, considering the logistics. “I guess I should… could you do it now, and if so how long would it take?”
“It’ll be at least an hour before we’re done, maybe two.”
Squinting at her watch, Natasha shook her head and gave up on it. It was too late, and she was far too exhausted. “Seven fifteen,” Vicky supplied, and Natasha smiled gratefully at her. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to come back tomorrow straight from work. My daughter needs to get to bed soon and I need the ride home.”
She turned to the optician. “Do you have anything open from 5 pm? I’ll just get the single strength pairs today, whatever you have ready made that actually do the job… somewhat.” She paused, thoughtful. “I do hope my reading prescriptions isn’t a problem.”
“I’m home!” Natasha felt far better as she got home from work the next day, and was looking forward to a nice evening with her family.
“We’re upstairs!”
Natasha hurried up the stairs, hearing a strain in Vicky’s voice. Was there a problem?
As she entered the bathroom, she realized Vicky had her hands very full with one contrary Hannah who didn’t want to finish her bath and who had instead splashed water all over the bathroom and Vicky. Oh, won’t this be fun to clean up, she thought.
“Why don’t you go get changed?” she offered, and Vicky nodded gratefully. “Now you, missy…” She took her socks off and rolled her pants up before walking over and squatting next to the tub. “Not only are you very clean, you’ve washed the entire bathroom too - and mommy. It’s bedtime. If you get ready for bed quickly, I’ll read you a story. A short one.”
“Ok. Can you read the one about the pencil?”
Natasha smiled. “Sure, baby.”
“Mama! I am not a baby!”
When she came downstairs after tucking Hannah in and mopping up the water in the bathroom, she found Vicky curled up on the couch with a book and a glass of wine. “Hey you,” she said softly.
“Hi, honey. How was your appointment?”
“Oh, fine. The usual.” She shrugged. “It’ll be a few days, maybe a week.”
Vicky nodded. “I’m glad you got it done.”
“Me too. Right now I’ve got no less than four pairs in circulation, and none of them are more than halfway decent. It’s a pain. Is there more wine?”
“In the kitchen.”
Natasha went and got a glass, then settled down on the couch and turned the TV on to watch the news. She’d taken to wearing the reading glasses on a string around her neck to have them easily available, but now she pulled the string over her head and put the glasses on the table before getting comfortable again.
After a while, Vicky closed her book and put it down on the table. “Tasha, would you mind turning that down for a little while?”
“Sure.” She muted it and turned to Vicky. “What’s up?”
Vicky looked at her wine glass for a moment, thinking. “Why is it Hannah always listens to you, but she’s a hellion with me?”
They’d been over the whys and wherefores a number of times before, and Natasha recognized the fragile edge in her partner’s voice well. “Come here,” she said softly, opening her arms.
They hugged for a long time, then Vicky snuggled close and put her head in Natasha’s lap. With a soft smile, Natasha stroked the dark curls gently. This day was finally starting to look up - not because she enjoyed Vicky being in emotional pain, but the snuggling was definitely nice.
It had only been four days since her appointment when Natasha got the call that her glasses were ready. “Yes!” She surprised herself with the exclamation after hanging up. Relieved, much? Oh yes. I’m going during lunch, she decided. I’ve had it. Fuck the lunch meeting.
At least it was finally Friday, but the workweek had been arduous to say the least. She had mostly managed to see what she needed to see, but not without a low-level headache hounding her every single day. She was ready to get rid of it.
Natasha wasn’t exactly surprised that her prescription had changed in the last two years, but she somehow hadn’t expected the new glasses to feel quite so strange either. She asked the optician to double check it just to make sure, but they were made exactly to her prescription. “My guess is you’re noticing the astigmatism correction,” the young man volunteered. “It’s not that big, but the axis changed a little bit, and the add went up some. I understand you’ve struggled through the past few days with some… suboptimal correction.”
Natasha almost snorted. “That would be correct. Let me see… two over the counter pairs of reading glasses - for actual reading and for distance, progressives from probably… six years ago, and computer glasses that are actually current, but you know. I’m exhausted.”
He did try valiantly to hide his amusement, but it wasn’t particularly successful. Natasha didn’t care. It was funny, really, and a year from now she might even be able to laugh at it too.
Reentering the hospital, Natasha was happy it was Friday. Just a few more hours, and then she’d have all weekend to relax and have fun with Vicky and Hannah. Not to mention hopefully get used to these glasses. The world was a little wonky and had moved unexpectedly a couple of times, so she was grateful for public transportation. Not that her car was back from the shop yet either, so driving was out on two accounts. At least she could easily take the bus to work - Vicky’s job at the publishing company was far more difficult to get to without a car.
“Oh, hey. There you are!”
Natasha slowed down and looked at Bianca coming towards her. “Here I am. What’s up?”
“Oh, you look nice. I like your glasses. There’s a new customer for you. Well, us.”
Natasha tried very hard to smother the sigh that wanted to escape. “I’ll be there in five minutes, just need to get changed.”
Damn, damn, damn. Fuck. Hell. Goddamn Fridays. Fuck this.
Not even five minutes had gone by when she met up with Bianca in the prep area after having given herself a mental kick in the behind. “What do we have?”
“Male, 18. Five days post-op from a splenectomy due to grade 4 injury with massive blood loss. Also liver laceration, grade 3. CT yesterday showed beginning abscess formation intraabdominally despite antibiotic coverage. He took a sudden turn this morning and died before they could figure out what was wrong. Requesting cause of death. Differential: sepsis, bowel perforation, massive pulmonary embolism, arrhythmia, intracranial bleed, increased liver bleeding. Other.”
Natasha nodded automatically, something niggling at the back of her head. “PE or bleeding? Or the ubiquitous other,” she commented dryly. “Covering all their bases much? Clinicians. What a bunch.”
She flung on an apron, then grabbed a cap and mask. Ooh, the mask fits better with these glasses. Excellent. I like them already.
“Ok, let’s go.” She picked up a pair of gloves on her way to the door, seeing that Bianca was also ready.
She got almost all the way to the table before the visual in front of her met up with the niggling feeling and made her freeze.
Oh. No.
No.
“I tend to come in after people croak,” she whispered softly, staring at the messy brown hair. “Not so often while trying to keep them alive is still an option.”