divulgence // luke hemmings au

44

**trigger warning. Mentions of death**

After the emotional time in labor and delivery,Luke took a job down in the operating room. His roll would be a surgical nurse which basically means you're assisting the surgeon and handing them supplies and monitoring the patient throughout. It sounded simple and less stressful which made jump at the opportunity.

So far this week, he assisted in a few procedures, some examples of that was exploratory surgeries, bariatric surgery, liver tumor removal and gallbladder extraction. It was cool to say the least and everything ran smoothly.

Today was going to be a bit more intense, today's surgery was for a child and Luke never assisted in a pediatric surgery before. He's only conducted anesthesia on a few kids but that was about it.

This was different this was a ten year old girl named Layla undergoing open heart surgery to repair one of her ventricles.

Surprisingly when she came into the OR she was calm, only for Luke to find out that the anesthesiologist gave her anxiety medicine prior to coming in the room and Luke didn't know that you could do that until that moment.

Everything started out smoothly once the patient was under general anesthesia and appropriately prepped for the procedure. Luke and the other nurses took turns assisting in giving and getting tools and watching the monitors.

Luke was fascinated by the sight in front of him the fact that he was actually seeing an actual human heart being repaired just a couple of inches in front of him was a surreal experience. It put some things in perspective for himself.

He handed gauze and sponges and even held onto the suction tool at one point. When it go to the end, Luke was helping with the prepping of sutures to close up the patient.

The surgery went well until the surgeon actually started to close up the patients chest, Laylas vitals tanked, and the anesthesiologist jumped up from his seat grabbing emergency medications sticking them into the child's IV.

He thought, as well as others that that was the end of that and that everything was starting to stabilize back till it was until Laylas vitals tanked again, her heart stopping halfway through the stitches being applied.

"We've got a code blue!" The surgeon shouted dropping his tools to the floor and the room suddenly turned chaotic. And Luke watched for the very first time ever in his career, chest compressions being performed on a half open chest.

The surgeon tried pushing down a few times realizing there was resistance, "hey we gotta cut her sternal wires so we can do adequate compressions!" He explained making Luke hand him cutters and right before his very eyes he saw wires and sutures being cut and blood started dripping everywhere. The surgeon moved out of the way trying to pack guaze and sponges into the fresh surgical wound.

He whistled for Luke to take over CPR, Luke pressing down on the bloody chest feeling the weirdest sensations as he did them. Other nurses did meds and tried to help with the blood control.

After Luke did two rounds he stopped picking up his hands which were drenched in the patients blood in fact it was on his shoe covers and down his gown too.

He let someone else jump on and he tried to do meds and bleeding control while the anesthesiologist struggled to put the defibrillator pads on the girl's chest. They kept coming unstuck because of the blood.

Another person added a blood transfusion during all this and for around forty minutes everyone in that room took turns doing different roles in hopes that it would save Layla's life.

No matter how long or what techniques the team used they were never able to obtain a pulse or shockable rhythm.

The surgeon and anesthesiologist officially called it after the forty minute mark everyone retracting their hands from Laylas body stepping back a little bit.