Zedler, M.D. // Daryl Dixon

Chapter Forty-Seven: Missing Finger

•forty-seven•

Beatrix

•one month later•

"Paging Doctor Zedler to Trauma Bay Seven," the monotone voice says over the intercom. That makes the third time in the past ten minutes.

"Why the hell aren't they paging my pager?" I yell, nearly throwing the retractor in my hand at the wall.

"They have been, Doctor Zedler. You told me to ignore them," one of the scrub nurses informs me.

"Claire, can you please go see what's going on?" I look up to the intern beside of me. She's my favorite.

"I'll be back," she replies, walking out of the OR as I look back down at the beating heart in front of me.

I'm in the middle of a CABG, and this is not what I need right now. Whatever it is can wait. I go back to what I was doing: cutting one of the coronary arteries off of this man's heart. I toss it into the waste basin beside of me, where my nurses pick it up and put it in a specimen tube, ready to be sent to pathology. Claire doesn't come back until I'm almost done suturing the first new artery in.

"Doctor Zedler," she clears her throat, standing in the OR holding a mask over her face.

"Claire, what are you doing?" I ask, holding my hands up in a "what the hell?" motion. "Get scrubbed in and get back over here, now."

"Doctor Lanning is coming to take over for you," she replies, looking as if she's almost afraid of what I'm going to say in response. "They have an emergency in Trauma Bay Seven, and they need you. You're the only trauma surgeon in the hospital, and you're the only one on call."

"Oh, my god," I mutter to myself, shaking my head as I finish up suturing in the first artery. Once I finish, I had the scrub nurses my instruments and step down, ripping my gown and gloves off.

"How far along have you gotten?" Doctor Lanning asks me as he walks in with his hands up, ready to be gloved.

"First bypass is done," I inform the cardiothoracic surgeon. "I didn't start on the second."

"Got it," he nods to me as my nurses gown and glove him. I leave before I see him step up beside of the patient.

While I follow Claire to Trauma Bay Seven, all I can think about is how pissed off I am that I had to leave an open heart surgery, at two o'clock in the morning, to go look at a Trauma Bay. Did they really need a surgeon? Could the ER docs not take care of it?

"Oh, fuck," I mutter as I walk up to the bay. Behind the glass I see a man in restraints, sweating profusely. As I walk in the door I can see that he has a ginormous bite mark on his right shoulder, right above the clavicle.

"Doctor Zelder," one of the ER docs, Doctor Roberts, says as I make my way up to the side of the bed. "We've been waiting on you. I don't think this is something I can handle."

"You're probably right," I mutter, looking down at it in curiosity. "Do you know how this happened?"

"Not a clue, we found him passed out in the ambulance bay and brought him in," Doctor Roberts replies. "He keeps slipping in and out of consciousness. We can't get a story on it."

"Well," I mutter, grabbing a pair of gloves before pulling all of the gauze off to get a better look at it. I feel around it with my fingers, which only leads to more curiosity. "This was from another human. You should call the police. I'll go in and see what I can do to fix it, but the muscle seems to be shredded. He's not going to have much function of this arm after this."