What I Needed (Saving Hope) | ✔

What I Needed

Today was an intense, exciting and extremely eye-opening day. I had helped take care of a pregnant mother, helped deliver her breech baby and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my career as a doctor. And then I got the chance to save her life when there was extreme complications when it was determined that the mother's placenta was attached to the wall of the uterus.

I ended up rushing her into emergency surgery, but not before I caught Dr. Kalfas with a needle in his arm in the men's bathroom, which probably meant he was high when he delivered the baby. As mad as I was at him; blamed myself for not listening to my gut, I did the surgery and felt confident with what I had to do afterwards.

"Dr. Lin." Dawn Bell greeted as she sat busily typing on her computer. "Word has it you saved a young mother's uterus today."

"Word travels fast." I stated quietly, suddenly not feeling like I deserved the credit. I was coming down from my adrenaline rush, which had me feeling drained and all I wanted to do was go home and sleep.

"You probably also saved her life." Dawn congratulated, now leaning against her desk. "Well done. What can I do for you?"

"There's no easy way to say this." I hesitated, trying to find the right words and use complete sentences in my head. "Umm...Dr. Kalfas."

"Yes. What about him?" Dawn looked at me expectedly as she cupped her hands tightly together.

"He's abusing narcotics." I revealed, which she didn't look too surprised as she gave a long sigh and stood so she was facing me.

"This isn't just a rumor?"

"I saw him." It was my turn to twist my hands together as I was nervous and honestly it didn't feel as good as I thought it would be to walk up here, especially since Dr. Kalfas' could have further put his patients at risk. "I caught him. It's uh, not a rumor."

"It was very brave of you to tell me. Thank you. I'll take it from here."

"Okay, thank you." I felt relieved as I began to walk out of her office. The first thing I was going to do when I got home was take a hot shower. No, a hot bath. Bubble bath, perhaps?

"Maggie. Word to the wise. Next time you come in here, you might want to change your scrubs first. The blood's not such a great touch."

"I did change--" I looked down at my scrubs, feeling my stomach drop as I saw the blood soaked between my legs.

"Maggie, are you okay?" I heard Dawn ask me with growing concern as she stepped towards me. This was the last place I wanted something like this to happen, especially in front of the chief of surgery. I groaned internally, feeling a little more than rattled. Here I was thinking about going home and relaxing and then this happened.

"Yeah." I nodded, suddenly not feeling the same confidence I had come in to the office with; then cleared my throat when I couldn't put the words together. "I'm good, thanks."

"Okay, well. Let me know if there's anything I can do."

"I will. Goodnight, Dr. Bell."

"Goodnight." She said, sitting back down behind her desk and continued typing on her computer as I walked past her office towards the elevators. I called the elevator then sat down on the bench to wait--my head spinning with thoughts of what I could have done to prevent this from happening. If I was truly losing the baby, or I was just feeling like I stepped into a nightmare.

Before I knew it, Dawn was standing next to me with her phone in her hand and purse on her shoulder. "Maggie? Have you been sitting here the whole time since you left my office?" When I didn't respond, she took that as an invitation to sit beside me on the bench.