Chapter 3
Lillian
W alking slightly behind Jade, Lillian found her eyes drawn down to the sway of her hips as the Chief of Medicine moved purposefully down the hall.
Scrubs were never flattering, yet she couldn’t help but notice the alluring curve of Jade’s waist and hips, the slight muscle definition of her thighs through the linen material.
Lillian shook her head; Jade had to be doing that on purpose, and the slight smirk Jade tossed over her shoulder as they entered the emergency department only confirmed it.
Lillian’s cheeks heated having been caught ogling Jade’s ass, but she lifted her chin in defiance.
They both moved to the trauma station and donned the yellow gowns to wait at the doors for injuries to come rolling in.
Shouts sounded through the room as the first wave came through, the first few patients looked like they were in pain but nothing too serious.
Some lacerations, a couple of fractures, maybe a concussion.
Jade latched on to the next patient who was pushed through the doors.
It was a youngish woman, twenty-nine according to the report, with a serious head injury, but that wasn’t what Lillian immediately reacted to—it was the foot-long stretch of rebar sticking out of her chest. Lillian’s eyes grew wide as Jade waved her over.
“We are going to need to tag-team this one,” Jade said without leaving room for argument. “I need to get this bar out of her, but there is a real possibility of a cerebral edema. We need to relieve that pressure.”
Lillian nodded and turned to the nursing staff. “Have her prepped and get her to OR six as fast as possible.” She turned to Jade.
“I’ll let her family know,” Jade said and turned to walk away. “Go scrub up.”
Lillian headed toward the OR, her long strides eating up the corridor’s distance.
She wanted to be ready to go as soon as they brought the patient into the sterile field.
By the time she made it to the operating room, it was already in a flurry of activity.
Nurses and techs had already scrubbed and were in the operating room preparing for what was going to likely be a grueling surgery.
She quickly tied her hair up and slipped on the cap that covered her head, then tied the mask around her neck. She adjusted the top and tied it around her head, checking her dim reflection in the window. Her eyes were bright, focused. She would not let this woman die.
Lillian checked the timer that sat just above the sink and started scrubbing her hands and arms with the sterilizing soap.
As she scrubbed, she mentally went through the steps to relief pressure from a cerebral edema.
She had noticed that the woman had long hair, but the prep nurses would likely shave the top of her head for Lillian to drill.
As the timer counted down the last minute of scrubbing, Jade entered the room, her hair had been pulled up into a cap and the mask draped around her chest. Her dark eyes sparkled with something akin to excitement.
This was a challenging surgery, to be sure, but not the first time Jade had performed something like this.
Lillian knew she had both military and civilian experience in trauma-related injuries, and as much as Jade bothered her professionally, there was no one she would rather have assisting on a surgery like this one.
Lillian used her forearm to cut the flow of water and slung the water from her hands into the sink before lifting them into the air. Jade was tying off her mask, making her eyes that much more intense.
“Ready?” Jade asked, the smile on her face visible through her eyes.
“Ready,” Lillian answered with a nod and pushed through the doors with her shoulder. A nurse dried her hands and put on her gloves while another tied the surgical gown around her back. They rolled the patient in as Lillian adjusted the tools on her table.
“Name?” Lillian asked.
“Stephanie Sanderson,” a nurse answered holding her chart.
“Stats?”
“Twenty-nine-year-old female with a penetrating wound in the upper right chest, clear signs of a concussion and high risk for cerebral edema,” the nurse continued.
“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 her place 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.