Charlie heard her pager go off and rolled out of the single bed in the staff room. She had only just managed to get six hours of sleep after reaching the halfway point of her 72 hour shift. The hospital was dreadfully understaffed because no one wanted to make the move to Santo Padre to take up the vacant positions. It left her and the few other doctors working dangerously long shifts and stealing cat naps wherever they could.
"What have we got?" Charlie asked Nurse Montana as she reached the surgical ward.
She pulled a face mask on and washed my hands thoroughly in preparation. Next she pulled a surgical scrub on over her clothes and let the nurse pull up the elbow high gloves on as they spoke. Both voices were muffled through the face masks they wore but both woman had long since learnt to understand the words beneath.
"John Doe - maybe a soldier by the tattoos. Two GSW, one to the left shoulder, one to the brain - 9mm is still inside both wounds." The young nurse explained.
"Jesus Christ." Charlie said shocked he was alive.
"It's insane, he was declared dead on arrival but the EMT swore he saw the guy move." Montana nodded excitedly. "Get this, he got up and drew on the ED room with his blood before they could sedate him. It was weird, like Gucci's symbol or something."
"Maybe it was the brain damage." Charlie replied unconvinced about the strangeness. "Let's see if we can fix this."
They stepped into the operating room where the anaesthetist had already prepped and sedated the patient. Charlie wasn't a specialist in brain surgery but she had a wide range of experience in almost every part of the body. Santo Padre didn't have the funds or resources to hire specialists so it was either chance it with Dr Adams or the two hour drive to the next hospital. Most people who needed to make that choice often didn't have two hours left to live.
The patient's head had already been shaved and so Charlie carefully took the outstretched scalpel and cut three quarters of a circle around the wound. Like a well oiled machine, she swapped the scalpel out as Nurse Montana dabbed away the blood that pooled along the open cranial bone. When the wound had been cleared it was back to Charlie.
"Drill." She said holding her hand out and the operating assistant placed it in her palm.
She needed to retrieve the bullet from the way it entered his scull but she couldn't do it freehand. First, screws needed to be inserted around the hole to hold the tube she would send the tiny forceps through. If she wasn't steady and the forceps nicked the brain tissue he could end up worse than he was now.
"In the pharmacy storage is a product called Ceros. It's a beta-tricalcium phospate in powder form with a vial of hydrogel. Find it." Charlie ordered and saw a nurse at the back disappear out of the room.
She had screwed the four corners of the device into his skull and lowered her stool so she was at the most comfortable height. Using a fine torch she lined up the tube until the line of light hit the bullet. Locking the tube in its position she held her hand out again.
"Micro-grasp forceps." She stated and felt them on her glove.
She checked to see it was long enough to go through the tube and into the cerebellum, which it wasn't. She handed them back after looking at the clock, one hour had already passed.
"Longer." She ordered and they were replaced with the 19 cm pair.
She took a breath and looked at the screen of the live x-ray of the man's brain. As she breathed out, she inserted the forceps into the tube and watched them appear on the screen. Very slow and steady, she continued to move millimetres at a time into the cerebellum area at the back of the brain. As she reached the bullet she opened the finger holes and watched the tip of the forceps open.
The whole room froze and she pinched the shattered butt of the bullet. The operating assistant wiped Charlie's brow to keep any drops of perspirant from blurring her sight. When he stepped back she took another breath and began to pull the forceps back. They were met with resistance as the brain tissue had swollen around it from the impact. Even slower than she had gone in, she retreated.
Everyone watched the screen as the bullet slowly made its way to the exit. They all sighed in relief when they saw it didn't leave any shrapnel behind. Charlie had finally made it to the edge of the brain and this was the riskiest part. She looked at the clock, two and a half hours had passed. In pulling the bullet out, the pressure vacuum behind the bullet could cause a haemorrhage. She couldn't prolong it any further, she pulled the bullet out of the bone and through the tube.
"Endoscope." She said as she dropped the bullet into the metal tray to her side.
She put the endoscope into the tube and watched another screen to see the brain tissue looking relatively unscathed. There was only two slight tears in the tissue so she used a laser to cauterise them. The nurse she sent to pharmacy had come back with the box a while ago and now she placed it on the table beside Charlie. She took the box and made the ratio of powder and hydrogel before setting it back down to cure.
"What is that?" A curious pre-med student asked.
"This is bone substitute. It will fill in the bullet hole and the will convert into actual bone within a year." Charlie explained as she pulled on fresh gloves.
She picked the putty up on an angle tip probe and built the putty up into the skull hole until it was filled completely. She placed the probe on the table and moved aside to let the nurses complete the stitches. She finally let the adrenaline rush her body now that she had done her part. The team congratulated her but she brushed it off, it was too early to tell if the surgery was going to be successful. He could still be paralysed or have neurological defects for the rest of his life.
She pulled her gloves and scrubs off and left the theatre to dispose of them in the biohazard bin. The rest of the surgical team could handle the bullet retrieval of the shoulder. Charlie was going back to bed. She still had 30 hours of the shift to survive.
She walked through the Emergency Department taking a shortcut towards the staff room and saw the mess the John Doe had made in the curtained room. She looked at the blood drawing he had left and could see where Nurse Montana got the Gucci idea from, it did resemble the GG. She would have said it was more like GC but still had no clue what it meant. She watched as other curious people looked as they passed through and she wondered when the cleaner would hurry up and arrive.
A shoulder bumped into Charlie as she turned away from the messy room. The man apologised quickly as he limped away and all she saw was the two braids that ran down the back of his head. She carried on my way and went to swipe her access card only to find it wasn't attached to her hip pocket. She figured she must have left it in the staff room, Nurse Montana must opened every door on the way to the operating theatre.
Climbing into the single bed once more she closed her eyes to the shining morning sun. Only a doctor could possibly sleep through anything but a pager. Sunshine? No problem. Loud music? No problem. Pager beep? Wide awake. So there she slept soundly until late afternoon when her pager went off yet again. The process started all over as she rolled out of the bed to find the new shift nurse.
"What have we got?"
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Chance Encounters
Fanfiction[COMPLETED] Everyone has grand plans for their life and Charlie was no different. She didn't know how those plans derailed so fast her head still spins. That's a lie, it all came down to one moment, a chance encounter. After that, nothing was the sa...
