9. Emma
9
EMMA
“D amn it! Damn it!” I cried. I hadn’t meant to let my emotions get the best of me. It felt like I had been fighting all alone and the patient had just given up. We had a full team on this one, and yet, I had felt completely alone in the need for them to survive, as if my will was the difference between a heartbeat and nothing.
“Call it,” Marcus said in a low, even tone. He didn’t sound nearly as defeated as I felt.
I stared at the telemetry monitors. I barked out the time before slamming my palm against the base of the monitor. It continued to make its mocking, piercing tone. “Someone turn this stupid machine off.” I tried yanking at the power cable.
“I’ve got it, Doctor,” one of the nurses said calmly.
“Emma, why don’t you go clean up?” Marcus suggested.
I glared at him.
“Are you up for letting the family know, or do you want me to do that?” He still stood next to the patient, still calmly working.
I didn’t see the point and said as much.
“The family will ask to see them. It’s what we do for the families, remember?” he said as if I had completely forgotten every aspect of my job. Maybe I had. I hadn’t lost a patient in a long time. I hated it every time. It never got easier. I just grew more detached and numb.
Tonight, I felt very much tethered to that patient. I was far too emotionally impacted. I didn’t want to be the bearer of the worst news possible. Then again, maybe it would help me find the solace I needed.
“No, I’ll tell the family,” I said. I pulled off the PPE I wore for surgery. In the changing room, I dumped the garment and donned my white doctor’s coat. It had my name and the hospital’s logo embroidered over the left breast. It made me look official even though I was still wearing my standard hospital-issued blue scrubs and surgical cap.
It was late and the waiting room had dimmed lights, giving the pretense that people could relax and rest while they waited. No one was calm. The tension in the room was heavy and thick. The people here waited for the worst news of their lives or for blessed relief.
I felt the eyes of several people lock on to me the second I entered. I quietly crossed to the couple against the far wall. The patient’s mother was curled in on herself, folding her small frame completely into a tight ball on the chair. Her husband, the father, had been pacing back and forth in front of her. He stopped as I stepped in closer.
I didn’t have to say anything before the mother started sobbing. Her husband wrapped around her, comforting her in their mutual grief. He hadn’t come out of the same accident unscathed. He had a wrist cast, but his child had nothing. Nothing.
What was he thinking right then? Would he have traded places with the child? Would he willingly leave his wife alone but with their child if he had that choice? What was the mother thinking? Was she even capable of any thought beyond her pain?
Could I face a future without either my spouse or my child? Was it even a choice I could make if I were faced with it? I shook my head. They hadn’t been given a choice. They had to face their lives without an integral part now.
“Can we see her?” the father asked, just as Marcus had predicted.
“Of course. It will be a few more minutes. A nurse will come out and take you back.” I waited in silence for a few moments longer, in case either parent had any questions. When it seemed like they had forgotten about me in their grief, I left.
I walked slowly, processing my own grief. As a matter of professionalism, I did not get personally invested in the health of my patients. It was a harsh necessity for maintaining my sanity. I was there for the treatment and survival of the kids whom I specialized in because I believed that children were the key to a better future.
Right now, I couldn’t see the few feet in front of my eyes, let alone the future. This one hurt so much more than I remember other deaths hurting.
There were protocols I needed to follow, forms to fill out. I just wanted to be alone. I probably could have gone to my office, but instead I returned to the prep room, not really certain where I should go next. The automatic light flickered to life as I stepped into the dark room. I would have preferred dark, for my mood, at least.
I pulled my top off and turned the taps on the sink to hot. I was used to washing in hotter than hot water. I needed it scalding right now. What I really needed was a shower. I wanted to wash away all the unwanted emotions that stormed through my body. I wasn’t being professional. I wasn’t being myself.
I should have stayed and seen the patient all the way through, even if they hadn’t survived. I should have offered to get a hospital chaplain for the grieving parents. After splashing hot water on my face, I stared at myself in the mirror. I tried to stare straight into my own soul, through the eyes and into the brain.
I managed to see the collagen striations of my dark iris. That was all. Brown so dark that the nuanced details would get lost unless under the brightest of lights. Eyes were supposed to be the windows to the soul. Mine were brown and bloodshot orbs. I wasn’t going to find the secrets to my psyche by staring at myself in a partially fogged up mirror.
“You need to get your shit together,” I said.
“Is everything okay in here, Emma?” Marcus’s deep voice caught me off guard.
I jumped and spun to face him.
“Geez, woman, don’t you ever keep your shirt on?”
I looked down at myself. He was right, no shirt. But I did have a bra on. It wasn’t nearly as revealing as some of the other ones I could have selected that morning when I got dressed. I was buffeted in the chest with a wad of blue polyester blend.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I pulled the fresh scrubs top on. “I didn’t want to get all wet while washing up.”
“Washing your arms shouldn’t require you to strip down every time.”
“I like to wash my face and neck too,” I admitted. “If I could take a shower, that would be my preference. I could really use the feeling of scorching all of my skin off.”
“That bad?” He sat on the bench a few feet away from the sinks. “Need to talk about it?”
I shrugged. “Need to, probably. Want to…” I cast my gaze down the length of the room. There were sinks, hazmat and laundry hampers, open shelves with folded scrubs, and stacks of PPE for everything from surgery to insidious infection care. “I’m not going to find the answers I need here.”
“Are you sure? You were pretty shaken up back in surgery. You know I’ve been through some tough situations. Maybe I can help?” He lifted his brows, still dark and not showing hints of grey like the silver hair on his head. The dark brows contrasted sharply against his clear blue eyes. Eyes that if I stared into them long enough, I would be able to see all the definitive undulations and pigment spots that made irises a means of unique identification.
Our gazes locked, and I felt a pull to keep looking into his eyes, not as a means of biometric identification but because they were pools of clear understanding, and I wanted to get lost in them. Unlike my eyes that were a wall between myself and understanding, Marcus’s eyes really did seem to open up and let me see into the depths of his caring.
I didn’t move, didn’t take a step closer, even though I felt a tug in my chest to do so. Instead, I stayed where I was and started crying. Tears blurred my vision. The back of my throat burned. I gasped for air, and large swells of water dropped from my eyes.
“Hey, Emma,” Marcus started.
In my blurred vision, I could tell that he stood and approached. I didn’t believe it until he engulfed me in an embrace. Gently, he pressed my head to his chest so that I could cry against him.
I clutched the front of his scrubs top and released all the hurt and frustration from inside. It was as if a dam had kept my emotions in check, and tonight’s kid’s not making it had chiseled a chip into the barrier wall. Or maybe each kid I worked on was another chip against the concrete that held back my feelings, and tonight’s loss was the final blow that turned each tiny crack into a systemic failure.
I cried for the loss of my patient, and I cried for my loss of professionalism and ability to hold it together when I was supposed to be some stoic trauma specialist. It wasn’t pretty. I was angry that I was feeling self-pity because I was having a very human reaction to a bad situation.
I wiped my face against his shirt, not worried whether I got snot or tear stains on it. He could get a new one. After blinking a few times to clear my eyes, I looked up at him. His large hand was firm and warm as he cupped my face and gazed down at me.
“Are you feeling better?”
I nodded. His face was so close. Some emotion filled his eyes. I didn’t think it was concern, not the way his gaze kept darting down to my lips. I confess I looked at his as well.
I pushed up onto my toes at the same time I reached up and pulled his head down. Our lips pressed together, and one of us moaned softly.