Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
NYLA
Why is he staring at my boobs? ‘Hey.’ I snap my fingers. ‘Up here.’
‘So you’re Dr. Moore.’ Absentmindedly he lifts his lids, the green of his eyes flickering.
He shouldn’t look at me like that, so… I don’t know, so… unfathomably. Automatically, I clutch my mug tighter. ‘Is that a problem?’
The corners of his mouth twitch. ‘You don’t know yet.’
Unease rises up inside me. The worries about everything that might await me today are still with me, unchanged. Despite all my efforts, the thought of this rescue project kept me from sleeping.
‘Yes, that must be it, you can’t possibly know …’ Jaden murmurs to himself.
Inhale.
I can do this.
Hold.
I can do this.
Exhale.
‘What don’t I know?’ I sound stricter than I intended.
The corners of his mouth lift. ‘That we’re driving together today.’
He’s not going to fool me with that. I saw the names of the colleagues in my car and his wasn’t on the list.
For a moment I forget my fear and even have to laugh. ‘Only in your dreams.’
‘Well, sometimes dreams come true.’ His gaze rests on me. ‘Ask Mia, she just changed the assignment.’
I search his eyes for some sign that he’s pulling my leg, but I don’t find one.
He nods toward the door and reaches for the two cups of coffee he filled earlier. ‘If you don’t believe me, follow me discreetly.’
I do, and sure enough, a little later I find out from his colleague with the oversized zebra glasses that I’ll be spending today—and thus all the remaining thirteen days of the exchange program—with Jaden.
Now she points her index finger at him but keeps looking at me. ‘He has a tendency to do stupid things, so keep a close eye on him, okay?’
‘Stupid things? What an exaggeration!’ Jaden protests.
I throw his colleague a conspiratorial look. ‘Don’t worry, with me, he’s in good hands.’
‘I’m fine, I told you.’
‘And you keep an eye on his laceration, okay?’ Mia pretends she doesn’t hear a single one of Jaden’s words.
‘It’s just a scratch…’
‘Of course,’ I reply, as if it were only the two of us here. ‘I stitched the laceration yesterday, so I know what I’m dealing with.’
‘Oh, you already know our hero? Well then, nothing can possibly go wrong.’ She adjusts her glasses, amusement sparkling in her eyes, and probably in mine as well.
Watching Jaden beside us grow more and more frustrated as he tries to set the record straight is more than amusing. So much so that my worries don’t start crawling back up inside me until minutes later, when we’re running toward the ambulance—and then all the more violently.
In this vehicle there’s nowhere I can withdraw to recharge. I’m the only doctor; if we have a critical patient, there’s no one who can take over for me if I keel over.
‘You already know Ray,’ I hear Jaden say beside me, and I quickly lift my eyelids. ‘He’s driving us to the end of the world today, if that’s what it takes.’
To the end of the world? Please no.
‘You ready for the harsh reality out there?’ he asks.
‘Of course,’ I answer, and once again all the horror scenarios that have been building inside me for hours in ever new variations threaten to overwhelm me.
‘All right, then hop in.’ Ray walks around the vehicle.
As always before starting my shift, I take off my jewelry.
I’ve barely stowed the bracelet and earrings in my bag when Jaden gallantly opens the passenger door for me.
I get in, Jaden sits down next to me. The bench seat is so narrow that our thighs touch.
His warmth feels like safety, and yet I can’t get a grip on the restlessness inside me.
And that doesn’t change when we leave the headquarters parking lot.
Fortunately, the shift passes without any major incident, so I manage to relax more and more. We have no strenuous emergencies, no complicated locations, and good weather. Jaden chatters nonstop, debating with me in mock seriousness about which season is the best and which music fits which mood.
Three hours after we set off, we hand over a patient for evaluation of his breathing difficulties to the team at Halifax Harbor Hospital. I fill out the necessary paperwork and then step through the sliding doors of the emergency department and outside into the open air with Jaden and Ray.
‘How often do you have runs this relaxed?’ I ask, hoping that at least now and then I’ll be able to calm down.
Jaden buries his hands in his pockets. ‘Way too often.’
I wink at him. ‘You’re not happy unless you get to play the hero, huh?’
Ray claps him on the back in a friendly way. ‘You can definitely put the superhero costume away for today, you’re not going to need it.’
A cold gust of wind brushes against me, and I pull my jacket zipper up. ‘Why?’
‘Mia’s assigning the emergencies.’ With a meaningful look, Ray opens the ambulance door.
‘Got it.’ Since she was worried about Jaden’s condition earlier, she’ll do her best not to assign any stressful cases to our rig.
Relief floods through me as I climb into the rig. Just like before, Jaden joins me.
‘Well, look at that—a smile.’ He leans a little closer to me to fasten his seat belt. His aftershave clouds my senses for a moment.
‘5-8-1, this is Dispatch, come in.’
Jaden reaches for the radio. ‘5-8-1 here, what’s up?’
I watch the tension in his face and can’t shake the feeling that he needs what comes with this job. That he’s addicted to the hustle, the adrenaline, the challenge. And from everything I know about him so far, he loves risk. Maybe even more than his own life.
What a strange man.
‘Suspected heart attack. Male patient, 62 years old, severe chest pain, shortness of breath, clammy sweating. Patient is responsive. Home address: 145 Moran Street, third floor, no elevator.’
A cold shiver runs down my spine. If the man really is having a heart attack and isn’t treated immediately, his risk of dying is eighty to ninety percent!
Ray switches on the blue lights and hits the gas.
‘No one is on scene, he alerted the emergency services himself. No emergency doctor dispatched, as already in the vehicle. Priority level: Code 4. Understood?’
Jaden’s gaze flicks to the tablet display that shows our route and all the details of the call. He nods in concentration and presses the button on the radio. ‘5-8-1, copy. We’re on our way. Arrival on scene in fifteen minutes.’
We leave the hospital grounds, Ray activates the siren and swings sharply left onto the main road. Gravity presses me against Jaden’s side, I claw at the seat—and all at once it’s as if I’m driving into a tunnel.
The siren.
The jolting of the vehicle.
Blue lights.
The path that opens up for us between the cars on the road.
The speed with which the skyscrapers pass by the window behind Jaden’s face, as he looks attentively ahead and seems to be in a completely different world.
He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t crack jokes. Every fiber of his body is focused.
In a flash, he’s no longer the laid-back golden boy he’s shown me so far, but a responsible adult, ready to walk through any fire.
I don’t want that, yet my gaze still lingers on him. He doesn’t seem to notice; he doesn’t register me, his thoughts are somewhere else. Probably with our patient.
The vehicle swerves around a bend.
‘Control, this is 5-8-1, we’re on scene,’ Jaden reports over the radio, and not a second later the vehicle slows down. ‘You take the defib,’ he says to me, then grabs the emergency bag, yanks the door open, and jumps out of the vehicle even though it hasn’t come to a stop yet.
‘I’ll be right behind you.’ Ray motions for me to follow Jaden.
My pulse speeds up as I get out of the vehicle as well and enter the apartment building. Jaden sprints up the stairs to the third floor, I run after him and reach the top, out of breath.
He pushes the apartment door open. We’re already in the hallway, rushing toward the man lying on the sofa in the living room, and start with the initial treatment.
‘Where exactly is the pain?’ Jaden asks the patient, putting on the blood pressure cuff. ‘Is it radiating? Into your arm, into your back?’
The man’s answers are so incoherent that I can barely understand them. Not a good sign. He needs oxygen; I take the mask out of the emergency kit.
Meanwhile, Jaden measures the vital signs with practiced ease. ‘Pulse 100, blood pressure 85 over 55, oxygen saturation 88.’
Damn. The patient could collapse any second, and when that happens, we need to move fucking fast.
Ray has arrived by now, too.
‘He’s losing consciousness. Oxygen mask!’ Jaden shouts.
‘I’ll do it,’ Ray says, whereupon I shove the prepared mask into his hand.
We should be ready for the worst-case scenario, so I pull the pads for the defibrillator out of the bag and run behind the sofa. Jaden grabs the T-shirt of the now unconscious patient with both hands at the collar and rips it open so his chest is bare.
Now he gives me a nod, a fire blazing in his eyes. Ray pulls the oxygen mask over the patient’s face while I stick the defibrillator pads onto his chest.
‘Get him an IV line, he’s getting heparin i.v. and ASA,’ I say. Quickly, I connect the pads to the defibrillator, and only then do I breathe out for the first time since I got out of the ambulance.
Now that he’s hooked up to the defibrillator, he’s at least a little more secure. If ventricular fibrillation sets in, we can shock him immediately.
Jaden inserts the IV line, I grab the meds from the emergency doctor’s bag.
As soon as the infusion is running, Jaden and Ray lift the man onto the stretcher and secure him.
There’s nothing more I can do than snatch up all the bags the two of them can’t carry and follow the trio out of the apartment.
The two of them skillfully maneuver the patient down the stairs. Jaden’s instructions are precise and controlled, which weirdly fascinates me.
Ray is totally focused and doing a great job, but Jaden’s effort goes far beyond that. He doesn’t seem to care that he just rammed his elbow into the wall. He doesn’t care that his shins keep slamming hard against the edge of the stairs over and over again.
Only one thing matters to him: the patient. He looks as if he would give his own life for this stranger if he had to.
Yesterday I thought I understood what Ray meant when he called Jaden a superhero. But this here… seeing him like this… so in his element, so present with every fiber of his body, so unreservedly ready to give everything, that’s something else again.
A thousand thoughts race through my head as I follow the team to the ambulance. The double doors at the back stand open.
‘On three.’ Jaden catches Ray’s eye, his chest heaving. ‘One. Two. Now.’
And already the patient is safely in the ambulance.
‘Get in,’ Jaden calls to me.
Ray hurries to the driver’s door, I jump into the vehicle with Jaden, who closes the doors behind me.
I register the blue lights and the siren only peripherally, just like the fact that the vehicle starts moving, the radio crackles, and Ray reports something to dispatch. I don’t feel whether my heart is racing, my legs are weak, or I have a fever. My focus is on the patient.
Jaden hooks up the monitoring screen. The readings are still critical, but at least the man seems stable. Even so, I keep checking all the values, making sure the IV is running properly, and trying to mentally prepare myself for every scenario that could threaten on the way to the hospital.
Even with optimal treatment, after our initial care his risk of dying is still between ten and thirty percent. The likelihood that he will suffer permanent damage is even between thirty and fifty percent.
Every second counts. Accordingly, we race through Halifax.
‘Is the ER notifying the cath lab?’ I shout to Ray.
He steers the vehicle around a curve. ‘Already done.’
That’s good. What else? What more can we do?
My gaze darts frantically to the monitor—the readings are stable. To the IV—running. To the patient—still unconscious.
Restlessness grips me.
Tonight my biggest worries were the stress and the question of whether my body was up to it. But I hadn’t considered the situation I’m in right now, even though it’s just as bad.
In the emergency room, I leave the patients once I’ve done my job and there’s nothing more I can do for them acutely. After all, there is always another emergency waiting, and the patients are in good hands with the nurses. Every second I spend with my patients, I am active. I am doing something.
Now I’m forced to sit idly beside this man who so urgently needs a kind of help I can’t give him here in the vehicle. To race through the city, with the siren in my ears and the jolting that seizes my body again and again. I can’t do a thing, I can only hope that we reach the hospital in time.
This is pure torture.
‘Hey, buddy, we’re almost there,’ I suddenly hear Jaden’s voice.
I tear my gaze away from the monitor and see him take the patient’s hand.
‘You can have someone tell you later how fast we were tearing through Halifax,’ he says, winking at the man as if he were already on the mend.
What is he doing? ‘He’s unconscious.’
Jaden shrugs, looking so confident it’s as if the man in front of us weren’t in mortal danger. ‘Maybe he can hear us. Maybe not. But if he can, at least now he can smile in his thoughts.’
Something in his words brings tears to my eyes, which I quickly blink away. ‘That’s lovely,’ I say, my voice thick.
He turns back to the patient and tells him a joke. How can he keep talking to him as if they were at the pub together, having a great time? How can he be so positive while one horror scenario after another races through my mind, risks and probabilities battle it out, and worry and fear reign?
Isn’t he afraid? Is that even possible?
At first, I don’t understand, but then it dawns on me what exactly he’s doing in this moment. He hasn’t stopped being a hero just because the medical treatment is, for now, complete.
He still is.
Seeing him like this is almost surreal. Between the frantic wail of the siren and the beeping of the monitor in the sober cold of the ambulance, he opens his heart to this stranger, gives him safety, confidence, and hope.
He doesn’t have the slightest doubt that our patient will survive. No, it’s more than that. He is convinced that the man has a future, even though his risk of dying is so high.
I watch him in disbelief.
It’s as if, for Jaden, the only thing that matters is that the man is alive right now. As if this single moment, right now, were enough to celebrate him.
It’s grotesque.
Even if he has never experienced a stroke of fate himself, he has seen many in his job. He knows how brittle bones are and how vulnerable muscles are. He knows that hearts can stop beating forever within seconds, experiences every day how fragile life is.
And yet he is not afraid.
Not of hurting himself, and not of losing this patient.
Maybe I was wrong. This attractive man with the tattooed forearms, the five-day stubble, and the moss-green eyes is not a typical one-percenter. Jaden is something else—something completely different—but I have not the slightest idea what.