He ended his little speech by connecting their lips, kissing her gently, and wiping away the last of her defenses. One night wouldn’t do any harm. One night—that was all he was asking for.
“I can’t seem to think around you . . . breathe around you.”
“Good. Don’t think; don’t breathe. I’ll provide the oxygen for both of us,” he said, his hand wrapped around her, pulling her tightly against him. “All you need to do is say yes.”
But he didn’t give her time to say yes. He just devoured her mouth and claimed her body with his hands. Just when she was ready to give him her full surrender, her pager went off, making her jump as the blood continued rushing straight to her core.
“I need to check this,” she whispered, barely able to get a word out.
“You’re off the clock.”
“We’re never off the clock, Spence, and I can’t believe you of all people would say such a thing.” It was quite amusing, really, that her boss was the one trying to talk her out of work.
He pulled back, the glaze over his eyes starting to clear up when he noticed that his own pager was going off. “Crap! I need to check on this.”
Overhead, they heard “Trauma alert, ER” come over the hospital speakers. Both of them headed straight there.
“Dr. Whitman, we have a six-year-old female, auto versus pedestrian. ETA, one minute.”
Sage tensed instantly. She hated cases involving children. She knew it was a reality of her job, but she hated it. All traces of passion were long gone as she stood side by side with Spence and waited for the huge bay doors to open. It would be any second. The sirens had been blaring and now were silent.
“Let’s go,” Spence called as the doors opened and the paramedics rushed in with a small girl on the gurney. Sage moved to one side, listening as they shouted out important information. Spence was on the other side of the gurney, doing his own assessment of the child as the paramedics spoke.
“Female, age six, run over by mom’s half-ton pickup. Found unresponsive and apneic, with unstable pelvis. Abdomen tight and distended. Placed two eighteen-gauge IVs to bilateral ACs with IV fluid wide-open, but girl’s blood pressure keeps dropping. Has been intubated, and we needle decompressed her left lung. In full C-spine precautions. Vital signs are BP sixty over thirty, HR one forties, no spontaneous respirations, oxygen saturation eighty-two percent.”
“We can save her,” Sage said beneath her breath, determination shining in her eyes.
“My daughter!” a woman screamed as she rushed into the room. Sage took only a second to glance up at the hyperventilating woman. The poor mother was held upright by her husband; her face was red, and her body looking almost lifeless in her despair. “Please! My baby girl!”
The woman suddenly started writhing in her agony, and when her husband lost hold of her, two nurses had to grab her before she fell to the floor. Sage tuned everything out as they moved the child to the trauma bay, everyone doing their job like well-choreographed dancers. The nurses cut the rest of the child’s clothes away and began looking for the damage while Sage began her exam at the head of the table.
She assessed neuro status, pupils, airways, calling out orders to the trauma nurse, making sure it was all getting documented. “Pupils are fixed and dilated.” The girl had severe head trauma. But Sage wouldn’t lose this child—she couldn’t!
No. She had to keep her cool, had to do a full assessment. She couldn’t think about losing the child; she just needed to look at each individual piece that had to be fixed. “I don’t hear any lung sounds on the left side, and her ventilator pressures are high. We need a chest tube set up, stat.”
As Spence placed the chest tube, Sage continued her assessment of the girl, and it wasn’t looking hopeful, but she wouldn’t think this way.
“She has a flail chest to her left side with multiple rib fractures bilaterally, distant heart tones indicating possible cardiac tamponade,” Sage reported.
“Left side hemothorax,” Spence called after inserting the left-side chest tube.
“I need two units of O negative. PRBC’s, stat. Abdomen is distended with ecchymosis noted to bilateral flanks. Pelvis unstable; place a pelvic binder now to reduce internal bleeding. No obvious deformity to her lower extremities. Get me the fast scan so I can take a look at internal bleeding.”
People continued moving and Sage wanted to shake, wanted to weep, but she wouldn’t. There was a job to do and they would do it. There was no time for weakness.
Sage was on autopilot, calling out commands and working furiously with Spence to save the child. Then the room seemed to slow down as she looked up, his eyes connecting with hers. When it seemed there was nothing else she could do from her end, he spoke.
“What do you do next, Sage?”
What? What did he want her to say? She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t a training moment. He needed to save the child. “We need to get her to surgery now, save her,” she said.
“How, Sage? How do we save her? Take over,” he commanded.
The force in his voice shifted something inside her. Not knowing how it was happening, she moved, shouting out orders, doing everything she could to heal this child’s broken body.
The scan showed significant internal bleeding. “I can’t see the source of this bleeding. It could be her spleen or liver. We need to get her to the OR, stat!” Sage commanded.
“They are ready for us, Dr. Banks,” the ER nurse Mo said, the look in her eyes making her opinion obvious. She didn’t think the girl would make it.