All Fun and Games Until... (Ben Solo/Kylo Ren)

Chapter 17: Point Where Parallels Intersect

smut ahead

trigger warning: d//eath of a patient

Double doors of the Emergency Room were pushed open as the two made their way in. Both Ben and Diana's pager went off at the same time and ordered them to respond to the incoming trauma. The entire room is in a whirlwind. Nurses and stretchers are coming in from different directions, both of them professionally dodging each one without batting an eye. Already used to the dynamics of the room.

The two immediately saw Kanata following a stretcher. A medic is presenting the condition of the unconscious man. "Unidentified John Doe, mid-thirties pedestrian, hit by a motorist swerving to avoid a bike, GSC 3, pupils fixed and dilated. Atropine given for pulse in the forties, BP 183 over 112."

 

Diana held on to the rails of the stretcher as they follow the patient. "Push a gram of Phenytonin, please."

"Is he corked?" Kanata threw the question as she check the vital signs of the John Doe.

Ben grunted as they transferred the patient to a bed. "It looks like it doctor."

Diana waited for their resident's order to book an OR, but nothing came. "Uh, excuse me. Dr. Kanata, he's not going to the OR?"

"No. You and Dr. Solo do an EEG and confirmatory tests. If he didn't respond with in six hours. Declare him." With that, resident left her two interns to look out for the patient whose name is still unknown.

Diana knows what Kanata already means by the word, "declare". But she needed to hear it. "Declare him?"

The resident is already far away to tend another trauma, so Ben answered her not-so rhetorical question. "Brain dead."

After doing the tests Kanata ordered, they want back to the patient to check his condition. Ben pulled the eyelid of their still-John Doe, flashing a light to his eye to look for any movement in response to the light. "I told you, there's no corneal reflexes."

The time crunch stressed Diana out. "It's only been 35 minutes. If he doesn't respond to these tests in the next five hours, what? We're supposed to just stand here and watch him die?"

Ben, on the other hand, isn't even bothered anymore. Cases like this is very regular to the hospital. This time in their internship, Diana should feel the same either. "If he doesn't respond to these tests, it's because he's already dead."

"Technically. Legally." Diana countered. Pulling a word play to find a loop hole to indicate that they can still resuscitate the man within five hours.

"Actually, Diana." Ben maintained the context of his answer, passing her a glance to tell her that he knows what she's trying to do. "Actually dead."

She raised her hand to the heart monitor to show him the sign of life coming from the man. "He's breathing on his own. No machines. He has a heartbeat." Diana enforced her point.

Her being unable to see or accept the reality made him frustrated. "Diana," He pushed back the strand of his hair that fell on his forehead. "Look at his EEG. There's no higher brain function. He'll never talk, move or think again. There's no one in there. But I'm sure you already know all of that because you've been under Holdo longer than I am."

She knows all of that ever since the first wave of results come in. But it's all early to call it in that he's a lost cause. "He could wake up. You know that hope is your mother's whole concept, right? She literally wrote book about medical miracles. She won a Harper Avery because of that."