Bold Bella (Book 4)

Chapter 1:

The patient was coding.

            “Charge to 300!” I yelled holding the paddles and the nurse obliged and I pressed the paddles to the patient’s chest, shocking her. I watched the vitals monitor and in particular I watched her heart rate and I breathed out in relief as the flat dead line started jumping up and down in a normal pattern again.

            “She’s stable,” I announced and we all sighed in relief.

            “Doctor Bell, Miss Carter’s chart,” Rose, one of my favourite nurses told me as she handed me the patient’s chart. Sophia Carter, aged 28 came in due to complaints of a severe headache and was discovered to have a brain tumour who, Doctor Clarke, the head of neurosurgery, took out. I knew for a fact that he did it as I had scrubbed in on that surgery and it was amazing to witness.

The way Doctor Clarke had removed the tumour was flawless. It came out exactly how it was planned the surgery went exactly how it was planned, step-by-step. However brain surgery was always more difficult than any other kind of surgery. Patients reacted differently to brain surgery because no two brains were exactly the same.

Miss Carter had been in a semi-coma for three days since the surgery until she coded on us just now. We’d managed to stabilize her but I was worried about how long it would last.

            “Check on her every half-hour if anything changes page me,” I told Rose and she nodded as I listed off the medications she should be kept on. I checked my watch and realised I was going to be late for April. “Actually my shift for today is finished so if anything changes page Doctor Delaney, who is my intern for the day and only page me if it’s life or death.”

            “Will do,” Rose smiled as we started walking, “Tell Oly everyone in the nurses station wishes her luck.”

            “Will do,” I told her smiling, “But I gotta go because April is going to kill me.”

            “Don’t be ridiculous Doctor Hart would never kill you.”

            “I’m late for a shopping trip.”

            “Run for your freaking life,” Rose told me and I saluted before bolting for the residency locker room. “And top up that red lipstick! It’s looking a little faded!” she called out after me and I laughed but I followed her advice nonetheless. My number one rule for myself was always wear red lipstick. I changed quickly into some stockings, a skirt and a coat before racing out the hospital whilst I wrapped a scarf around my throat.

            “I knew you’d be late,” April said, as I approached her in the lobby. I couldn’t help but notice that she looked dressed for the snow wearing a parker, a scarf and a beanie and I was strongly assuming that she was wearing stockings under her skinny jeans. She held out her gloved hand, which had coffee in it.

            “Hospital or take out?” I asked.

            “Hospital but it was from the machine you like.”

            “You went all the way up to the sixth floor just to get me a coffee?” I asked raising my eyebrows.

            “You were really late,” was all she said and I threw my head back and laughed.

            “Well thank you anyways.”

April was legally and mentally my sister but not biologically. April Hart was the kind of person who spent her intern year in Africa to help sick kids but she was also the kind of person to spend over five hundred dollars on a shopping trip. April and I loved to shop together, it was our thing since we were about eleven maybe ten. If one of us had a problem we needed to talk about, for instance when April had to tell our dad she wanted to spend her intern year as a surgeon in Africa helping sick kids, we spent about seven hundred dollars each whilst talking about how it was best to crack the news to him.