Saving My Hope

Chapter 10- The Heart Lies

Dedicated to: @Ninkeg & @shouraeking

*2 weeks later*

Ambulance rushes in right at noon with a gunshot victim.
Im paged to the main floor and I rush to the scene.
I get to the unloading station ad throw on a yellow plastic covering for my torso and arms. I slap on gloves and hook a mask at my neck.

"Speak to me" I say as the brunette male attendant hands me this girl's chart.
"16 year old female shot in the chest at highschool. Seems to have broken ribs on left side and she is having trouble breathing, maybe something to do with her lungs?" He tells me as he quickly wheels her to already prepared nurses.
"She needs a breathing tube, an I.V., x rays and then get her in the room asap!" I tell the nurses who have grabbed her stretcher.
They nod and jog her down the hall.
I rush to the nurse station and tell the desk nurse, "I need an orthopedic in surgery right now! Please".
Then I too, jog down the hall.

The warm water rushes over my hands and I scrub all the bacteria off from my elbows to my fingertips.
My breath heats up my mouth from the mask confining the air and my head feels heavy from the messy bun my hair is in so it would fit in the cap.
I let the water drip off my skin and then use my back to push open the heavy door.
When I turn around, I am shocked at the surgeon I get to work with.
"Hey" he says with his British accent and his gloves snap once they are pulled onto his hand.
"Youre out!" I smile, even though the mask is covering it.
"Yes, darling. And thank goodness for it!" He chirps.
I walk over to the stable, where the teenage girl is sedated and covered in blue surgical cloths.
A nurse comes to me holding open my latex free gloves.
I slip in one hand at a time.
With my hands pointed to the ceiling, I turn to Nate and tell him, "Patient broke left ribs 7, 8, 9, & 10. Patient also has a 1 caliber bullet lodged in the pluera of the left lung. Would it beneficial for you to move the ribs out of the way of the lung first so I can tend to the pluera?".
He nods and looks up to the x ray the nurses put up for us.
I look as well.
Nate takes a cotton ball soaked in povidone-iodie and rubs it gently over the skin below the breast, where he plans on making the incision.
He then tosses the used cotton ball, into a silver tray and holds his hand open as he says, "scalpel please".
The chunky black nurse hands him the little knife like object.
"Thank you" he returns and then places the blade to the skin, near the bullet wound, visualizing the cut before he actually does it.
I come beside him with sponges to clean up his work space so he can see better.
The ribs are broken at the curve.
"The bullet went inbetween two ribs. She must of fell afterwards. Thats what may have cause this breakage" Dr McCall tells me, carefully pulling out the broken ribs and setting them on the table on the other side of him.
"Most likely" I reply.
Nate switches places with me once I can easily and safely reach this girl's pluera.
"Tweezers" I say and hold out my hand as I watch the lung struggle to inflate.
Dr McCall puts them into my hand, his fingers touch mine by accident.
I look over to him, my cat like eyes peering up at him.
He does the same.
A few seconds like that and it felt like eye-sex.
Unfortunately I had to continue this and drop my gaze back to the struggling lung.
The monitor calmly beeps, alerting me to a stable patient, for now.
With the tweezers in my left hand (because Im left handed) I place them in the hole of the bottom of the lung where the bullet struck.
I dig around until it hits something hard.
I place the small tong parts on what seemed to be the bullet, and pulled it out.
I drop the tweezers and metal into the silver tray as I quickly stick my index finger over the hole and ask for the stitch kit.
Nate gets passed it, who then prepares it for me.
I get an attendant to take my finger's place and I greatly take the dissolvable stitches with a hook needle and a fresh pair of tweezers.
I begin with doing a knot at the end of the hole, then gradually tie each side together by doing whats called the suture knot. Its like doing figure 8's with a sewing needle and thread.
"She'll be getting a two week vacation just like you did" I tell Dr McCall.
"Ah, she'll love it" he says sarcastically.
* * *
Surgery went as planned. Woohoo!
Dr McCall and I give our hands a light wash and toss our masks and plastic yellow coats before heading to the nurse's station to fill out forms for when our patient awakes.