Chapter 1 #2
“Danny!” Alysa Jennings’ wail split the air of the waiting room, causing the startled people sitting around to jerk their heads up and stare at her. The three Jennings boys got to their feet and hustled over to their mother, staring between her and Victoria.
The oldest boy spoke up first. “What’s happening? Mom?”
“Did you do something to our dad?” The middle son, with his mother’s blue eyes, was glaring at Victoria, placing a protective hand on Alysa’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
The youngest Jennings boy, only barely in high school as near as Victoria could tell, just let his glance bounce between his mother and the surgeon, saying nothing.
By now, Alysa was sobbing, and the more wound up she got, the calmer Victoria felt, more able to deliver the bad news rationally and clearly.
Trying to explain what had gone wrong wasn’t working, so she decided to simply spit the outcome out first, and then perhaps she could explain what she thought had happened.
Focusing only on Alysa, Victoria started again, trying this time to insert a bit of extra sympathy into her words.
“I’m very sorry. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to resuscitate your husband, and I am afraid he did pass away on the operating table. Daniel has died.”
She had to say it, to be clear about what had happened. She always remembered that instruction from medical school. You couldn’t be ambiguous, you had to say the words, you had to say the patient was dead. Not passed away, not departed, you had to use some form of the word dead.
But it seemed to the Jennings family, this was absolutely the worst possible thing she could have done. “Dead?” Alysa wiped tears out from under her eyes and blinked at Victoria in astonishment. “You just… you just spit it out like that? My husband is gone and you just tell me he died?”
Victoria blinked back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jennings, but I—”
“How can you say it like that? So blunt. So cold.” The hand was back to fiddle with the sapphire pendant. And as Victoria watched, Alysa’s upper lip actually curled. “You’re a disgusting human.”
Victoria took a step back. “I beg your pardon?”
“I beg your pardon?” Alysa said, mocking Victoria’s accent as she threw her hands into the air. “Your stupid accent, your horrible personality… how dare you! Is this a joke to you?”
“I assure you, I don’t find this funny at all.” Bewilderment flooded her. “I’m trying to explain.”
“You’re doing a shitty job,” sneered the eldest son, wrapping an arm around his mother’s shaking shoulders as she sobbed. “I mean, you basically killed my dad and this is how you tell us?”
She had no idea how this had gone so badly wrong, and it was triggering the memories of another time that she could not face.
“I am so, so sorry for your loss,” she began, holding on to what was left of her control as tightly as she could.
“Really, I am. It’s a terrible thing to have happen.
But this was always a possibility, and Daniel understood that. ”
Alysa looked up from where she’d been sobbing into her son’s shoulder. “Don’t you say his name,” she hissed, her face a rictus of grief and rage. “Keep his name out of your mouth! And get out of my sight.”
“Yeah. Get lost,” the eldest son growled, wrapping his mother up again in a protective embrace as she dissolved into tears. His brothers gathered around as well, the family all huddled together, glaring at her with an almost palpable hostility.
There seemed to be nothing else she could do. Victoria took in a long, slow breath through her nose, bobbed her head in a curt nod, and turned to walk away. But where to go? She felt herself going all to pieces inside, and she needed to find somewhere to pull herself back together.
She made her way to a corridor that would take her back towards the hospital’s main bank of lifts.
There was a stairwell in that vicinity no one ever really used, since there were so very many lifts.
Moving briskly, Victoria headed for it, not realizing until she was reaching for the door handle that she’d had her hands clenched so tightly into fists that her short nails had bitten deep into her palms, drawing blood.
Smoothly, she slid through the door, pulling it shut behind her.
Reaching into the pockets of her scrub trousers, she found a packet of facial tissues and pulled one out, dabbing at the cuts on her palms. She paid careful, close attention to the insignificant wounds, focusing on them and trying to beat back the flashbacks and the rising clump of panic in her throat.
Help, was all she could think as she bent double, wrapping her arms tight around her waist. Her breaths came in short, rasping heaves, nothing that filled her lungs adequately. Victoria felt as though she were suffocating, her face hot, throat full, eyes brimming with tears she refused to shed.
None of this should be happening. That surgery had been textbook, Daniel Jennings should have survived it.
She shouldn’t have had to tell a family that their father, their husband, that he was dead.
And as much as she was trying to give them grace in the wake of their loss, she didn’t think she deserved what Alysa Jennings and her oldest child had thrown at her, that venom, those harsh words.
She’d been matter of fact, she’d tried to give them as much information as possible so they could understand, had they wanted her to come flying out of the operating room wailing and beating her chest?
This shouldn’t have happened again… “I’m a good surgeon,” she whispered through her next stomach-churning attempt at a deep breath.
“Dr. Ellis?”
The cautious words and a gentle hand on her back cut through Victoria’s bewildered panic, snapped her out of her spiral into dark pools of bad memories, and she straightened up immediately, turning to see who had caught her in all this indignity.
The little blonde nurse from the ICU was standing there, all big blue eyes and concern.
Hayley Milton, Victoria remembered. She was the charge nurse for the ICU.
She had been meant to handle the transfer of Daniel Jennings from the operating team to her unit, but of course now she would be surplus to requirements.
And she was clearly worried about Victoria.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ellis, I don’t mean to bother you. ”
“It’s fine.” Though she felt far from fine, Victoria did her best to put on a calm demeanor, blinking back tears as she straightened up to her full height. “Did you need anything from me?”
“No, no.” Nurse Milton shook her head. “I know about Daniel Jennings. Dr. Proctor let me know.”
Victoria frowned. “Then…”
“I saw what happened with the family in the waiting room. It was uncalled for.” Her eyes searching, Nurse Milton stayed focused on Victoria. “I’m sorry you had to endure that. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
The concern, while Victoria knew it was meant as a kindness, felt like a knife to the gut.
She withdrew further and stepped back from the nurse.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking, Nurse Milton.
” She ran her hands over her hair, smoothing any little flyaways down and tucking them into her bun. “I certainly appreciate your concern.”
Hayley seemed taken aback, but by what, Victoria wasn’t sure. “Can I get you anything? A water, coffee, candy bar?”
“That won’t at all be necessary.” Victoria felt her mobile buzz in her pocket and pulled it out. A calendar reminder about her next surgery, a simple single stent insertion in one hour. “Do excuse me, Nurse Milton. I need to go prepare for my next procedure.”
“I think you should take a moment for yourself, Dr. Ellis.” The little nurse was earnest, Victoria would grant her that. “Go somewhere quiet and restful. There’s a group of Reflection Pods up on the Derm floor that—”
“Thank you, Nurse Milton,” Victoria said firmly, wanting to shut down any further discussion. “Your concern is noted, and I will be in my office if anyone needs me.”
I’m feeling better already, Victoria reflected as she exited the stairwell and headed for a lift that would take her to the Cardio floor and her office.
She’d spend a bit of time in there, make a cup of tea, and by the time she needed to scrub in for her stent insertion, she would be fully collected and fine in herself once more.
She didn’t notice Hayley Milton continuing to watch her through the little window in the stairwell door, concern still written all over her face.
“We need to check again,” Victoria instructed through gritted teeth, her scalpel held frozen in the air over her patient. “We have got to be absolutely sure the veins are clear.”
“They’re clear, Vic, I promise they are.
” Ashley’s voice was soft but unyielding.
“We do not need to check again. You and I both checked the blood thinner levels, we did the CT scan, there are no clots. I promise, you can make the cut, we can do this surgery. It’s a nothing surgery, you’ve done so many of these. ”
“Check. Again.” Her jaw ached with how hard she was clenching it.
And she knew she was being unreasonable, but she could not, would not make her hand move to open up this patient until she felt completely sure it wouldn’t all end in disaster again.
That she wouldn’t lose a patient for no good reason, that she wouldn’t be accused of being a cold-hearted killer.
“Think logically,” Ashley pleaded as the rest of the staff in the OR exchanged uncertain glances.
“We’re here, the field is sterile, the patient is under.
We’ve done all the checks, Vic. We are good to go.
You know I of all people wouldn’t let you proceed without knowing you had determined that to as close to 100% as you can get. ”
It was that as close to 100% that kept her hand from moving, that had frozen her up so completely that the scrub nurse for this procedure, Lindsay, had had to send one of the observing interns to go get Ashley out of her office, have her scrub in, and stand before Victoria pleading for her to just do her damn job.
That little bit of uncertainty that it was impossible to erase because no surgery could ever be a completely known and guaranteed entity had her standing still, demanding their sterile and draped patient be dragged unconscious into the CT room and scanned one last time.
For a stent insertion, a procedure Victoria could perform in her sleep.
But she couldn’t move.
The scalpel fell from her motionless fingers and clattered to the OR floor. Lindsay bent down and retrieved it, setting it aside on the tray reserved for used instruments. She stared at Victoria, shocked. Everyone did.
A dozen pairs of eyes on her and that was just the people on the OR floor with her.
Victoria slowly turned her unwilling gaze up towards the observation gallery, where faces familiar and non were all staring at her in consternation.
Among them was Dr. Elaine Martin, Oakridge’s Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, whose lips were pressed into a thin, concerned line.
Victoria’s heart dropped into her stomach.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped out, and then turned to run out of the room.
As she hit the doors, she heard Ashley calmly informing the room that she would be taking over.
Humiliation bloomed in Victoria’s cheeks as she ripped her second set of surgical garments of the day off and stuffed them into the bins.
She had two more procedures scheduled for today, but she ran for the big whiteboard and scrubbed her name off of them, ignoring the outraged shrieks of the charge nurse.
Normally, she would feel awful about causing this kind of chaos…
normally, she would never behave like this.
But she just heard the same words repeating over and over in her head.
You’re a disgusting human. You’re doing a shitty job.
You basically killed my dad.
And underneath them, a memory she did not want to deal with was whispering a siren song of despair and guilt and shame.
Victoria kept running, up to her office to grab her purse, then heading out of the hospital towards her Mini Cooper.
She just wanted to be home, to flee into her condo and lock the world out behind her.
Fumbling in her purse, she yanked out her keys and threw herself into the car, peeling out of the parking garage as if a thousand demons of hell were pursuing her.
It was dangerous to drive so distractedly, so upset, she knew that, but she didn’t live too far from the hospital. Keeping to quieter streets, she made her way to the condo she’d called home for ten years now, parked her car and stalked inside.
Robotically, Victoria pulled a wine glass out of the cabinet and a bottle of a good Australian Chardonnay out of her stainless-steel refrigerator.
She belted back a full glass almost without tasting it, doing a great disservice to an excellent wine she normally loved to savor.
She poured a second glass and moved into the minimalist sterility of her living room, sinking down into the sleek cream leather of her sofa.
Belatedly, she realized she’d left the hospital without changing out of her scrubs; she would have to return them tomorrow.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed. Victoria pulled it out to see who wanted her attention. She half-anticipated a text from Elaine Martin instructing her to be in the Chief’s office first thing in the morning.
To her surprise, shock, and utter disgust, she saw it was in fact a message from her healthcare portal. Mandatory Evaluation, it said. Dr. A. Monroe, Staff Wellness Center. Tuesday 9 AM.
“Absolutely not,” she said aloud, gulping down another mouthful of wine as she tapped and swiped her phone open with her thumb. Once in the app, she navigated to the appointment and canceled it without a second thought.
I don’t need therapy, she seethed, tossing her phone down onto the sofa. How bloody dare they. I’m fine. “I’m fine,” she repeated out loud, sipping at her wine.
She almost believed herself.
Almost.