The Way My Heart Beats

Chapter 1

I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm frozen. I'm too stunned by what I'm seeing. It's just my first day. I want to give a good impression, but I can't move. I'm not doing what I was trained to do—act fast and move efficiently.

I can hear them calling my name, but my eyes are fixed on the kid. He can't be but fifteen years old. There's just so much blood. Blood never bothers me, but it is all I can focus on right now. I've tuned out the sounds of the paramedics giving the stats of this young victim. All I know is that it was a car accident—a bad one.

Suddenly, my whole body is rocking causing me to almost lose my balance. Faint sounds of my name ring in my ears, "CLARA! HELLO," I see a hand wave in my face, "Clara Jane, we need your help! Snap out of it." I take a deep breath coming up for air from drowning in my own thoughts, my brain and feet begin to communicate.

"Shit. I'm sorry. Where are we at with this fella?" I rush to put gloves on while listening to Amelia give stats, "BP sixty over forty, heart rate 30, parietal laceration, collapsed right lung, abdominal swelling."

With a firm shake of the head I grab the oxygen mask and strap it on.  The emergency doctor hasn't made it in yet. Leaving the scene, I run to the nurses' station, pick up the phone, and page Dr. Hudson once more. Before I can get the page out I see him running around the corner. "Call the OR. If this kid has any chance of making it he needs to go straight to surgery. He's gotta have that abdominal bleed stopped."

Without hesitation I pick up the phone again, but the line is busy?  Seriously? It's busy! You've got to be kidding me. Not wasting anytime I dash to the nearest elevator jamming my finger into the button. "Come on," I yell to myself frustrated. Shit.  It's taking too long. My only other option is the stairs. I run around the corner hanging onto the railing making sure not to slip. I see the door to the stairs. Reaching out, I sling the door open. The OR is all the way on the third floor. Carelessly beating my feet on the stairs I reach another floor in seconds. The breath is knocked out of me as I'm slammed into the wall, roll down the few stairs, and land where I'd just come up onto the platform between the conjoining floors. "Damn it," is all I can groan out.

My vision is blurry from hitting my head on the concrete steps. I see this figure in bright green coming towards me. It bends down to my level rubbing my shoulders trying to make me focus. The deep, rusty voice that comes from him cleared my thoughts and vision, "One of you two idiots go grab someone to help her."

"Did I die?" Confusion covers his features, then he laughs, "No. You're very much alive."

"You're very much," pausing because my speech isn't coming to me very quickly, "hot!" Throwing his head down in laughter, his hand still on my shoulder, "You very much have a head injury." He says in a way to joke at the way my speech came out. I feel his hands under my body lifting me up to his hard chest. Every bounce of each step down make my head throb. Then I remember what I was on my way to do in the first place.

I jump up in his arms so fast he almost drops me. I come to a standing position. "Shit lady. What the hell are you doing? You're in no position to be standing on your own, much less walking." But the only thing I can get out is, "The kid. The OR." The room begins to spin again and my body goes limp, but before I come crashing to the ground, his strong arms catch me whisking me away in his hold again.

The sound of monitors beeping all around bring me back to consciousness. I open one eye to look around. A few nurses, Amelia included, run up asking, "My God. What in the world happened to Clara?"

Leading us into a room, the guy begins, "A few of my guys and I were coming down the stairs with some materials when she comes running up the stairs straight into the sheet rock we were carrying." He pauses to lay my sore body onto the bed, "It slammed her right in the chest throwing her down the stairs and against the wall. She lost consciousness a few times."