"We're losing her, Dr.
Chamberlain!"
I could hear a faint beeping but could
not, for the life of me, figure out what I was supposed to do. I knew I needed
to do something, at least try to do
something. I didn't know why I was here, or even where here was for that matter. Moreover, why was there a woman telling a
doctor that they were losing someone. It couldn't be me… could it?
"Shit! Come on, Kendra. You are not
dying on my operating table," a male voice said, clearly ignoring the
woman. Obviously, the very insistent doctor, who was trying to save my life,
had no plans of letting me meet my maker anytime soon.
There wasn't any pain. It was as if I
was unconscious but could still hear the noises around me. I couldn't see
anything except darkness.
I tried to open my eyes, but it was as
if my eyelids had been sewn shut. They were so heavy, and just the thought of
prying them apart was too exhausting to consider. What the hell was going on? What
had happened to me?
The woman, apparently a nurse or another
assisting doctor, spoke again. "I can't get her to stabilize doctor; she
has too many injuries. She is bleeding from every appendage of her body, and
there is no telling how much blood she lost before the ambulance brought her
in. If we don't get the wounds closed soon, she's going to bleed out and we
will lose her."
I heard a loud noise as if a heavy
object had slammed into a wall. I jumped. Well, I'm sure my body didn't move,
but it scared the hell out of me nonetheless. The doctor spoke again in a
rather unkind tone of voice. I had a hunch he was the culprit who had thrown
the object. "Just do your damn job, Sherri! It isn't your call whether she
dies or not. It's mine!" I could just imagine him pointing at his chest
with an angry scowl on his face. "Do what you were trained to do, or get
the hell out of my O.R.!" I was guessing that it would be God who made the
decision if I died on the doctor's table, but if Dr. Chamberlain wanted to play
the part, I would let him if it meant I could open my eyes again.
"Yes, doctor," Sherri
whispered, then evidently went back to work on fixing my injuries, because she
didn't say anything after that, and he didn't tell her to leave again.
I heard soft beeps. I presumed it was
coming from the heart monitoring machine. Then the sound suddenly changed from beeps
to one continuous drone. From watching a lot of hospital movies on television,
I realized exactly what path I was heading down. And it looked as though the
determined doctor wasn't going to get a say about it.
Flatline.
I felt strangely calm at the realization
that I was dying, and that bothered me a little. I mean, shouldn't I be
panicking or something? What confused me the most was that I was still here,
still hanging out in my body. Shouldn't I be walking toward a bright, white light
right about now? There was nothing. I was stuck in complete darkness, listening
to the people around me try to save my life.
"Give me the damn defibrillator! Turn
it to one-twenty. Shoot her up with atropine. Mason, get in here and fix these
bleeders. Sherri, get the hell out of the way!" He was barking orders at
the staff, and from the sound of shuffling, they were doing exactly what he was
telling them to do.
"Adam, I was fixing--" Sherri
pleaded, but he didn't let her finish the thought, let alone get the words out
of her mouth.
"It wasn't a request! Get out of my
operating room, and if you ever address me by my first name while we are on the
clock, it will be the last time you scrub in with me. Get out!" I heard a
door open then close gently, but none of the other nurses had stopped working
on me throughout the whole shouting match. It seemed to me that there may be
something a little more personal than work going on between Sherri and the
doctor.
"Clear," another voice said,
and I heard my body jerk on the operating table. Eerie, but true, don't ask me
to explain it; I've only been dead once. It was really troubling me that I
couldn't see or feel anything. At least one of my senses had not been taken
away from me yet. I could hear just fine, but the rest of my senses were… pretty
much gone. I couldn't even smell, not that I wanted to. I hadn't ever been in
an operating room, but I was sure the room smelled sterile and of iodine, with
that faint hint of old and new blood, that metallic coppery smell that you
never seem to forget exactly what it is.
I could only imagine what I looked like.
And again the question, "What had happened to me?" I couldn't
remember what I'd been doing all day, or even last week for that matter.
I heard a single beep, and then another
before I flat lined again.
"Damn it! Shit!" I heard Adam
take in a deep breath in then let it out slowly. "Again…do it again at
one-eighty. I'm not going to lose her. Debbie, call up and get another bag of
blood, no…make that two, AB Negative, STAT! And get more fluids."
"Yes, doctor." I could tell by
the urgency in Debbie's voice that she was not about to question Dr. Adam.
"Clear…" Again I heard my body
jerk then settle back on the table with a thump.
Beep…... ... .Beep…Beep…... ... .Beep...
Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep
"You got her back, doc," Mason
said.
I could hear more shuffling around, more
metal instruments being used on my body, but the most important noise I heard
was the sigh of relief from Dr. Adam Chamberlain. I swear I could feel the
tension leaving his shoulders as I heard him pull the gloves from his hands. I
heard a faint sound of metal squeaking and assumed he was throwing his used
gloves in a hazardous material waste container.
"Did you find all the bleeders,
Mason?" the doctor asked.
"Sure did, doc." I could hear
the smile in his voice from where I was laid out on the table.
"Get her sewed up nice and pretty
for me. Put her on I.V. antibiotics. Give her the blood and fluids, and have a
nurse, not an aide, a nurse, sit in the room with her. If they have to piss,
they better have a relief. She's not to be left alone for even a minute. Do you
understand?"
I didn't hear an answer from Mason, so I
guess he nodded in agreement with the doctor, because I didn't hear any yelling
either.
"Keep her on the ventilator until I
say otherwise. I'll check on her in a bit." I heard the door softly open
then close. Adam was gone, and for some reason I felt lonely.
I was happy I had survived, I guess, but
something still didn't feel right. I still couldn't feel anything, or smell, or
open my eyes. I'm sure they had given me some powerful shit to anesthetize me
to keep me knocked out, but I was awake... sort of.
The speed of the beeping began to
rapidly increase, and I could hear something that sounded like flapping, or
loud thumping.
"Shit, she's seizing. Get Dr.
Chamberlain back in here. STAT!" I heard the door open then a woman
shouted down the hall. I couldn't see or feel what Mason was doing to me, but I
knew he was close to my face. I could hear his frantic breathing and whispered
curses.
What was so ironic was that I hadn't
prayed yet. I guessed I needed to, but I wasn't worried for some reason. I
didn't know if I was in shock or if my sanity had flown the coop. Maybe it was
because I was somehow sure that Dr. Adam Chamberlain would keep me alive. Or
would he? I was almost positive the words seizure and stabilized shouldn't be
written side-by-side on my chart. Something was definitely wrong again.
I heard the door quickly open and then
fresh gloves being snapped into place on wrists. "What have we got?"
the doctor said. His voice was so close that I knew I would be able to smell
his aftershave or cologne if my sense of smell hadn't left me completely. I had
the strongest urge to inhale the scent of him, but after trying, I realized it
wasn't possible.
One thing was for sure, I didn't feel
alone with him so near.
"I don't get it…" Mason said,
with confusion in his voice. "Five seconds after you walked out, her
vitals went crazy, and she started seizing. Then you come back in and speak,
and everything goes back to normal, as if nothing ever happened. Hell, her
vitals are better than mine right now. You're a god, man."
"You're joking, right? Mason, I
have nine hours left of my shift, and I haven't slept in over twenty-two hours.
I really don't think God would put himself in my shoes. Besides, he's only a
figment of everyone's imagination, something someone made up to explain why we
are all here. No one really knows why we're here. And no, I don't think she
started seizing because I walked out, then stopped when I came back in and
spoke aloud to you." I was a little disappointed to learn this tidbit of
information about my doctor, but I wouldn't be the one to judge him come
judgment day, so he wasn't my problem. I only needed him to patch me up.
"I swear, Adam…" He lowered
his voice a little. "She was seizing when you walked through the door, and
she stopped the second you spoke."
Adam sighed. "Does she have a
history of epilepsy or seizers?"
"No. She gets annual check-ups, and
she is hardly ever sick, sick enough to see a doctor, anyway. She may not have
gone to a doctor for the stomach bug or snotty nose, but there's nothing in her
medical record about epilepsy or any other conditions."
I was nodding to myself, and to obviously
no one else, about everything Mason was saying about my medical history. I was
actually getting a little bored with their small talk about me. I'm not
epileptic; move on to the next thing. There was no way my body reacted that way
just because he had walked out of the room. Mason was crazy to even think that.
I am a very independent woman with a strong career and extreme hobbies. I have
a friend with benefits but never really let myself get too attached to men. I
don't have time for a person in my life with issues, and all men seem to have
issues.
"Fine," Adam sighed. "Has
anyone been able to locate a friend or relative of hers? I can go down and let
them know that she is stable for now and that we will have someone with her the
whole time she is in S.I.C.U." It sounded as if he blew air out through
puffed out cheeks. "I can't believe she fell to the bottom of Dead Man's
Cliff, and is alive with no fractures. I know she was wearing the little helmet
that almost no one uses while rappelling, but I never dreamed they would be so
effective from such a serious height."
So, that's what I'd been doing. The
events of the day slammed into my frontal lobe, but I was still lacking the
memory of the accident.
"A few guys and another girl were asking
about her earlier. They were covered in blood and looked to be dressed like our
famous daredevil here. It hasn't been that long ago, they may still be
here."
The door opened again, then something
that sounded like a gurney, or a bed on wheels, was placed to the right side of
my body. A short moment later I heard Mason, "On three. One…Two…Three"
"You got it this time, Mase?" Adam
said with amusement in his voice. He had such a good laugh. I hated that he was
leaving me here with the nurses, but if I really had the episode a few minutes
earlier because he had left me, then I had to try extra hard to keep my
emotions in check.
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