Stay with me
August 13 th , 2022
Oliver’s slight snore was heard in the waiting area of the med-bay. It had been more than three hours since Lynn had been taken into surgery and they hadn’t heard anything from the OR yet.
After Nate’s breakdown Oliver had led him to the bathroom to clean the blood off his face and hands and then here, where Marta was already waiting.
The Deputy Director had explained that the emergency operator on the phone suggested they call their on-call doctor Toby, so that he could perform surgery on-site. With the severity of Lynn’ injuries and all the blood she had lost, it was uncertain if she would have survived the drive to the hospital. So Marta called Toby who arrived within fifteen minutes and started to prepare the OR together with Tia and Birdie. The female doctor was lying on an operating table in the OR ten minutes later and Toby immediately started to open up her abdomen to stop the internal bleeding.
It was Lynn’s only chance of survival.
None of them dared to say it out loud but they all knew.
Now, three hours after Toby took his scalpel in hand, Marta, Nate and Oliver were sitting, waiting for any news out of the OR, hoping that it would be good. Well, not all of them, as Oliver had managed to fall asleep in the most uncomfortable-looking position with his head on Marta’s lap. She carefully caressed her finger through Oliver’s blond hair while she watched Nate sitting on the other side of the room. His head was in his hands, elbows resting on his thighs while he watched the floor in front of him, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
It was a rare sight from over the last three hours. Most of the time he’d been pacing around the room, mumbling to himself and the others in a desperate attempt not to fall apart again. He probably looked insane and maybe he was.
Watching the love of his life bleed out right in front of him had catapulted Nate into a mental state that he’d never been in before.
The moment he visualized Lynn’s pale face again, his tears started to fall, dripping through the gap in his thighs and onto the linoleum underneath his feet.
“Butch,” Marta said quietly, but concern lay heavy in her voice when she saw him crying again.
The brunet man raised his head to lock his red and puffy eyes with Marta’s honey-colored ones.
Marta had never seen him so broken, nor had Oliver and he was the one who’d found him after az-Zawahiri had tortured him for three months. Yes, back then he had been mentally and physically destroyed, being in a medically induced coma for two weeks.
But this was different.
This was a different kind of broken .
“She’s going to be okay. I know it,” Marta added when she saw the empty look in Nate’s eyes. as if his body was only a shell and his soul had left to be with Lynn.
“Why are they not done yet? They should be done, shouldn’t they?” His jaw trembled while he mumbled into his hands and Marta needed to concentrate to understand his words.
“I don’t know, Butch. I’m not a doctor but maybe that’s a good sign. The longer they need to help her, the better she will be after the surgery.”
“You and I both know that’s utter bullshit,” he sighed in response, pressing his palms to his thighs and rising to his feet.
He couldn’t sit still anymore. His mind was driving him crazy, the demons telling him about all the worst-case scenarios that could happen. It became harder and harder for him to ignore them and believe in Toby, believe that Toby was able to save Lynn so that he would see her smile again. Would hold her in his arms again. Smell the peach of her perfume and feel her hot skin under his lips.
“I wish I could switch positions with her,” he said to himself, but of course Marta had heard him.
“What do you mean?” she asked confused while watching Nate pacing up and down the waiting area again.
“I wish I was the one lying on the operating table right now. She doesn’t deserve this. All that pain. It’s not fair.”
Nate punched his clenched fist against the wall with so much power that he left a small dent in the white surface. It hurt like hell so he grabbed the injured left fist with his other hand and rubbed his fingertips over the skin that had made contact with the wall.
He hissed in pain before another sigh left his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Oliver asked with furrowed brows.
He had almost fallen off Marta’s lap the moment Nate punched the wall. It was an old habit from their time serving together. He had always been a light sleeper but after joining the SEALs they were trained to always be ready to fight. Nate used to be that way too.
Until the kidnapping and torture that left him with nightmares.
Nightmares that appeared way too realistic and kept him in the dream no matter what happened around him.
“Ye- Yeah. It only hurts like a bitch. It’s probably nothing,” Nate responded with his eyebrows still furrowed in pain.
Oliver quickly looked at Marta who simply shrugged her shoulders before he responded.
“Maybe you should let Toby check your hand if it still hurts later.”
“You don’t think Toby has more important things to do right now, like saving Lynn’s life?” Nate hissed at his best friend.
His eyebrows were knit together, his lips in a thin line, and his injured hand clenched into a fist again. He didn’t even feel the pain anymore while his skin was burning.
“Come on, pal. That’s not what I was trying to say. I was just worried you’d broken your hand or something.”
Nate’s face dropped and from one second to the next his anger was gone. Oliver was right. His reaction was exaggerated and it wasn’t fair. His best friend and Marta had been by his side since the moment he was shoved out of the OR. Since the moment he had his breakdown.
“I’m sorry,” Nate mumbled, his gaze wandered down to the floor again.
He let himself collapse onto the chair, covering his face with his palms. The tears had started to fall again and his shoulders were shaking with every sob.
Oliver quickly sat next to his friend and wrapped his arm around his upper body. Marta watched the two best friends with tears glistering in her own eyes.
This whole situation was just so fucked up.
“I’m so scared,” Nate mumbled into his shaking hands.
Oliver tried to assure him while rubbing his hand over the top of his back, but it didn’t work.
“Everything’s going to be okay. She’s strong, she’s in a good physical state and she’s a fighter,” the blond Agent said.
Marta had risen from her feet as well and knelt in front of Nate. She placed her hands on his thighs.
“Butch, look at me.”
The brunet man with the ocean-blue eyes did as he was told.
“It’s Lynn we’re talking about. The woman that didn’t stop trying to help you with your nightmares even after you hurt her. The woman that lost her sister and still managed to find her happiness again. Because of you. She was so happy the past few months. Only because of you. She would never leave you right now.”
It was the first time that someone other than Lynn was able to calm the demons in Nate’s mind. The first time he didn’t fall into the devastating and destructive chaos that mostly ended with a panic attack.
Maybe Marta was right. Lynn wouldn’t leave him now. Not when he was finally willing to give their relationship a real chance.
“Why the hell won’t it stop bleeding,” Toby shouted through the operating theater.
He had already closed the stab wound on Lynn’s lower abdomen. Thankfully it had missed the large intestine so he was able to stitch it back together pretty easily. It would limit Lynn’s movements a lot because it was a nasty position but at least it was nothing severe.
The two stab wounds on the upper right side were way more serious. They had both punctured her liver and Toby was currently trying to stop the bleeding.
Lynn had already lost so much blood and they were trying to get as much of it back into her as they could via an IV but it was still a fight against the clock. It was imperative that Toby stop the bleeding in her abdomen soon.
With forceps in his hand he carefully lifted the liver to check for other wounds beneath it. He had closed one of the holes with stitches but out of the other one blood seeped like lava from a volcano.
“Shit. Tia, can you suction off some of the blood? I can’t see anything,” he mumbled and Tia immediately held the suction inside Lynn’s abdomen .
The heart rate monitor next to the operating table started to change its beeping, indicating that something wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Toby raised his gaze from the liver in front of him to the monitor and observed it for a few seconds.
“Toby,” Birdie said with a tremble in her voice.
“Give her some adrenaline. That should stabilize her,” Toby responded, focusing again on checking for other wounds than the obvious ones in her liver.
He cursed under his breath while Tia tried to give him a clear view with the suction tube.
Birdie grabbed a syringe and a bottle with liquid adrenaline in it. She filled the syringe and injected the medicine through the IV on top of Lynn’s hand. Her eyes watched the heart rate monitor but instead of stabilizing, her heartbeat became slower and slower.
“It’s not working,” she said with a slight panic in her voice.
The edge of the monitor started to blink with bright red lights and Toby was forced to stop again.
“It’s the blood loss. She is losing more than we can pump back into her. She’s hypovolemic.”
Toby’s hands were trembling a little while he tried to think of a strategy to save Lynn’s life. The doctor closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, ignoring the beeping and blinking of the heart rate monitor as well as Tia’s and Birdie’s words full of fear and panic.
They were all professionals but it was always different if you had someone on your table that you knew.
One final deep breath and Toby opened his eyes again .
“I’m just going to stitch the wound back together and then we close her. I’m not 100% sure if there are other veins or arteries damaged but she doesn’t have any more time. It doesn’t look like there are other casualties though,” he said as calmly as possible before locking his gaze with Tia.
She nodded in response before grabbing the surgical needle and sutures to give to Toby. He quickly closed the second wound on Lynn’s liver but before he was able to start closing her skin completely the heart rate monitor showed a code blue.
Lynn’s heart wasn’t beating anymore.
“Shit,” Toby hissed, placing the needle and suture on a metal table next to him before placing his hands on Lynn’s bare chest to start compressions.
“Preparing another shot of adrenaline, increasing the blood flow on the blood bag into the IV,” Birdie said while Toby was still compressing Lynn’s chest.
Up and down.
Up and down.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” Toby panted.
CPR was physically really exhausting, like a full body workout.
Tia was standing next to Lynn’s head with an Ambu bag in her hand.
Toby detached Lynn’s ventilator and attached the Ambu bag instead so that Tia was able to press a larger volume of oxygen into Lynn’s lungs in between his chest compressions.
One.
Two .
Tia nodded at Toby who continued pressing on Lynn’s chest. It wasn’t ideal that she had a big open wound on the right side of her chest and Toby had to be very careful while compressing. He didn’t want the freshly closed wounds to open again.
“Give her some Amiodaron and prepare the defibrillator,” he shouted towards Birdie.
Sweat was covering his forehead when he finished the second round of chest compressions. Tia squoze the Ambu bag twice again and Birdie wheeled a defibrillator on a small table next to Toby.
He quickly grabbed the external pads of the machine and placed them on Lynn’s upper body. The left pad on Lynn’s right shoulder and the right one under her left rib cage.
“Clear!” Toby shouted and Tia and Birdie raised their hands in front of their bodies before Toby pushed the button on the machine and shot an electroshock through Lynn’s fragile body.
They saw her jolt upward, before all three of them fixed their gazes on the heart rate monitor.
“, Lynn,” Toby whispered.
Thankfully her heart started to beat again.
“Get more fluids in her system, prepare another bag of blood and give her some sodium bicarbonate. I’ll check the stitches real quick and then close her abdomen. We gotta get her in an ICU bed and let her body rest as much as possible,” Toby instructed.
That was too close.
He didn’t have time to think about the “what if’s” right now as he needed to finish the surgery .
Lynn was still not out of danger.
The two wounds looked good and hadn’t opened again so Toby could finally check for other wounds around the liver, while Tia cleared the remaining blood from around it. Thankfully no new blood could be seen but Toby double-checked the area before he was 100% sure that Lynn didn’t have another wound. Finally he decided to close her completely. With steady movements of his hands he moved the needle through her skin and closed the wound with 15 stitches.
Afterwards Tia placed a huge dressing on top of it before she and Toby moved to Lynn’s head and inserted a central venous catheter in the side of her neck. This was for all the medicine her body would need to heal after this traumatic event.
Birdie had already left the operation room while Toby was still sewing to prepare a heart rate monitor, a saturation monitor including a ventilator, and multiple syringe drivers. She practically turned a regular patient room into an ICU.
“I think we’ve prepared her as best as we can. Now it’s her job to heal,” Toby said to Tia, before carefully brushing his thumb over Lynn’s cheek.
He had never seen his friend in such a miserable state and his stomach was about to turn. He quickly ran to the trash can and emptied his stomach inside it.
Tia watched him concerned but when Toby gave her a thumbs up she continued to prepare the gurney where Lynn was lying to wheel it out of the OR and into her room .
It was the first time in five hours that Toby’s body and mind fully realized what had just happened. That he’d had one of his best friends on the operating table and that she’d flatlined during the surgery. That he’d needed to quickly finish the surgery without being completely sure he didn’t miss anything, because Lynn’s body wasn’t able to take it any longer.
It was the first moment Toby realized that Lynn almost died under his watch. That it was still not certain that she would survive.
And that he had to tell Nate.