“Oh yeah. Game on.” Spence wore a confident smile. This could be fun.
FIVE MONTHS LATER
“Code silver to ER room six, code silver to ER room six.”
Dammit, Spence thought. It was the first time all afternoon he’d had a chance to sit down with a cup of coffee and a bunch of charts. He was six patients behind and needed to catch up. To make matters worse, he’d just spilled his coffee. “Oh well . . . there’s more where that came from.” Rising quickly from his chair, he began moving down the familiar halls of the hospital he loved so much.
Walking to the code, he hoped this wasn’t going to be a waste of his time—codes of this type often turned out to be nothing. Not much surprised him anymore. He’d seen it all . . . or so he thought. Turning the corner, he found a crowd was growing outside one of the ER rooms. When he pushed past the people, he discovered why.
Maureen—“Mo” as she was known in the emergency department—was a tough veteran nurse. She had a reputation for eating doctors and nurses alive, especially if they weren’t doing the right thing for her patient. She was either loved and respected or rightfully feared. Spence had heard rumors that more than one new doctor ended in near tears telling them how Mo had kicked them out of the room for being “chronically stupid.” Spence had liked her immediately from the very first shift he’d worked at Sterling Grace Medical.
This, however, was not a situation Spence was used to seeing. A “frequent flyer” psychiatric patient had Mo in a headlock while still in his hospital bed, and he was holding a knife to her rib cage with his other hand.
Looking more pissed off than scared, Mo kept him talking as calmly as she could, her voice lower than Spence had ever heard it.
“You don’t want to do this, Mr. Ashton. I’m trying to help you.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a part of them. The government sent you—I know it!” the man screamed, his shaky hand bringing the knife’s blade up to the crucial vein in Mo’s throat.
As Spence took a step closer to assess the situation, to figure out how to save Mo, he noticed all eyes were on Sage Banks. She slowly walked up to the patient, talking low and saying soothing things.
“Mr. Ashton, you need to be careful. Mo’s husband, Vec, is a paralytic and she supports him.”
Mo was eyeing Sage with a questioning look on her face as were the rest of the staffers, including Spence. When a lightbulb of understanding lit in the nurse’s eyes, Spence tried to clue in to what was happening.
All of them knew Mo was a widow. As he watched the scene unfold before him, he noticed Sage holding a small vial and syringe close to her leg. He could just make out the word vecuronium on the vial, and Spence knew instantly that Sage intended to paralyze the patient.
Sage was smart and could clearly think under pressure—this was the perfect solution to a potentially deadly situation. The paralytic drug would render the patient helpless but wouldn’t cause any long-term damage.
Sage inched closer to the patient, talking softly, without losing eye contact, then picked up his IV tubing and injected the medication without his noticing. Within seconds the patient’s arms went limp, and Mo was freed from his grip.
Spence ran forward, grabbing the nurse and pulling her from the room while the rest of the trauma team took care of Mr. Ashton.
“Are you okay, Mo? Wow that was a first,” Spence said with a smile of disbelief on his lips.
“Are you kidding me? This was the second time that’s happened to me today,” Mo said, trying to hide the fact that she’d been shaken up. She wasn’t about to show any weakness, especially in front of a mere man.
Her sarcastic remark left Spence with a grin on his face, grateful that this had ended so smoothly. “I have no doubt you were in control the entire time,” he told her.
She eyed him for a minute before grumbling something and then turning to leave. She swiveled back and looked him in the eye. “Just so you know, that girl in there is a good one. Keep an eye on her.”
Spence had no doubt she was talking about Sage. There was a long pause before his lips tilted up in a full-fledged smile. “Don’t you worry, I fully intend to.”
“If anyone wants me, I’ll be on a cigarette break. On second thought, if anyone wants me, they can just wait until I feel like coming back into this loony bin.”
With that, Mo was gone, leaving Spence to admire the woman’s courage and bluntness. Then he turned back and looked in on Sage.
He could see that shock over the events was beginning to set in, but she was still working hard to ensure that the patient would be okay. In high-stress situations, there wasn’t time to hesitate or process all of what was going on. A person just had to move and move fast.
When she turned and smiled weakly at the patient in the next bed over, Spence was impressed again by her composure. She just shook off her nerves and checked on him, too.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I seem to be doing better than you or that other guy,” the man tried to joke.
Sage gave him a big smile before responding. “You’re lucky I didn’t give that medicine to you instead—you look a little shady yourself.”
The man paused for a second before a glimmer lit his eye and he smiled at her. With one joke, all the tension in the room evaporated.
“If I was forty years younger, you could have given me anything you wanted and I would have been okay with it.” Picking up her hand, he smiled and kissed her wrist, making Sage laugh.
“Flattery will get you everywhere in this hospital,” she said before pulling up his blankets and then turning and leaving the room.