A Second Chance

Chapter 12

It's been almost a month since I had that nightmare of Atlas at school. My second full moon is coming up and Melissa helped me have the night before and the night of the full moon off for work. I worked tonight then had the next two nights off. I had some scrubs on. I just did little things here and there, wherever I was needed. Whether it was at the front desk or helping with a patient.

Tonight was a busy night since it was getting closer to the full moon. There was a small pile-up on one of the main roads into Beacon Hills. It was a five-car pile-up, mostly single occupants with one vehicle having a family inside. So far no casualties but all are injured some a bit more than others. One of the vehicles was a semi that caused the most damage. At the moment no one knows what caused it.

Everyone was getting things ready because we're not sure how bad this may be.

"Have you dealt with a car pile-up before?" Melissa asked me.

"No. I did more office work than nurse work. But I will help wherever I'm needed. I've watched and learned a lot there and here."

"Good because we may need you. We've been having a lot of people not showing up for shifts."

"Wow. Good thing I know how to get a round for the most part in an ER."

"Yes. Here they come now. You can stay with me."

We had gloves on and whatever we needed at the moment. The first ones were the worst-case.

"Lacerations on the face and scalp, a broken arm that was splint in the field, and a piece of debris got lodged in his abdomen," the EMT said.

The guy was out of it, in shock. He had blood all over him. There was packed gazed around the debris on his abdomen, and it was already red from the blood.

"Trauma one," Melissa said.

We started walking to it.

"Want me to get blood?" I asked her as we walked.

"I can have someone else do that. I need you here," she said.

She nodded to another nurse to get the blood. The EMT left the room so we could work on him. I started getting the blood pressure cuff on him as Melissa listened to his lungs and diaphragm from the debris.

"The breaths in the left lung are shallow. Probably a collapsed lung. He needs to be taken into surgery," she said.

The doctor finally walks into the room.

"What do we have?"

"He needs surgery. He's bleeding internally and has the beginning symptoms of a collapsed lung, as well as a broken arm."

The room was quiet as the doctor looked him over. I could smell the blood that overpowered the room. But behind that, I could smell something rotting. It was coming from him, the patient. I looked at Melissa and motioned to the door vaguely. We stepped out just enough that no one could hear us.

"He's dying," I whispered.

"Yea. He's bleeding internally," she said like I had missed everything that was said in the last fifteen or so minutes.

"No. Like he's rotting from the inside out. You might want to do blood tests first. Somethings wrong with him," I said.

"You can smell that?"

"Yea. It smells like rotting meat, I guess is the best way to explain the smell."

"Okay, I'll try to have some blood work done."

We walked back in.

"We should get some blood tests done in case he was under the influence since no one knows the cause of the accident and he was driving one of the vehicles," Melissa suggested to the doctor.