After the second defibrillation, Jay knew what had to do done. Something she’d only done once. The patient had died then.
“She needs an emergency thoracotomy.”
It was Jay’s heart that stopped this time. And wouldn’t start again.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Not here. Not him. Malek.
She swung around, breathless, mindless, found him a foot behind her, his eyes flaring amber even in the ER’s fluorescent light.
Malek. Her soul made flesh, made man, the man who’d once been hers, the soul she’d resigned herself to existing without.
His hand took her arm and she almost wailed with the wrench of longing.
“Let’s do this,” he whispered as he snapped on gloves, turned to the nurses who were gaping at him, knowing they were in the presence of a higher medical authority. “We’ll need a scalpel with a 10 blade, curved scissors, rib spreader, Gigli saw. And a full hemostatic set.”
Everyone turned to Jay, asking her permission to follow this unknown person’s orders. Jay only nodded, not knowing what she was nodding for, and stared up at him. Malek, Malek, Malek, here, here, here were the only things she heard, saw, knew. He pressed her arm again and it was only her paralysis that stopped her from launching herself into his arms.
“I’m really here, so make use of me, hmm?” He gave her a strange smile, tight and unnatural then turned to the nurses. “Prep the field.” He looked down at her. “Shall I do it?”
She nodded again, and he immediately made an incision from the sternum to the mid-axillary line then murmured, “Rib spreader.” She automatically handed it to him. He inserted it between the ribs, opened them. “Gigli saw.” She handed it to him too. He divided the sternum, moved the rib spreader to the midline. He made a small incision in the pericardium then tore it open with a finger, evacuating blood and clots.
The sight of the cardiac wounds oozing blood brought her out of her stupor. She jumped forward, provided hemorrhage control to the largest one with direct finger pressure while he sutured lesser wounds. In under two minutes he’d performed a meticulous repair of two wounds in the ascending aorta and one in the left atrium. And the woman arrested again.
“You do internal cardiac massage,” he murmured. “Your hands are the perfect size for it.”
She nodded, did a two-handed technique for a better cardiac output and to avoid the risk of cardiac perforation. The heart restarted, and this time didn’t stop again.
It was a blur as they concluded the procedure.
As orderlies took their patient to IC, all she wanted to do was collapse. To weep her heart out at the shock and disbelief of his sudden reappearance.
Malek, here in Seattle, after six months of self-imposed exile in the hell of a life without him, working with her like they’d done before, more needed than her hands and eyes, saving the patient she would have lost on her own or with lesser help.
She staggered to the doctors’ room, not looking back, praying he was a figment of her tortured imagination. Once inside, hands grabbed her shoulders. They were his.
He turned her, and she almost doubled over at the sight of the silver that had invaded his temples, at the reflection of her own unremitting longing on his haggard face.
She’d give anything to always see him whole and happy, not with the signs of aging anguish robbing his hair of its raven vividness, his eyes and face of their indomitable vitality.
Those signs said he was real. Real. And he was there to plunge himself into more torment, unable to let her go, as she hadn’t been able to let him go.
But nothing had changed, as he’d once told her before she’d done him the ultimate injury and dragged him deeper into their addiction. Yet no one but her paid the price of hers. A whole country paid for his. She didn’t matter. He did.
And she had to help him let go.
Mustering the last of her will, she stepped out of his almost-embrace, feigned lightness as she said, “This is one hell of a surprise, Malek. And one hell of a favor. I would have lost Mrs. Dobbs without your help.”
He only nodded, his eyes darkening, wary, watching her every breath, as if he was trying to read her thoughts and feelings.
She went to the dressing room, put on her summer coat. Her personal thermostat had been shot to hell of late. She was freezing now.
She came out, found him standing in the same spot where she’d left him, a stoop to his wide shoulders, and her heart almost knocked her off her feet. She’d seen him exhausted, agitated, uncertain, but seeing him defeated, lost.
Oh, Malek, my love, not on my account, I beg you.
Determined more than ever to end this, to send him back to his life, and out of hers, forever this time, she forced a brittle smile. “So how did you find me?”
“You’re asking because you hoped I wouldn’t, right?” This was said with such pain she almost fell to her knees to beg his forgiveness. “You hid well. It took my intelligence machine, aided by the American one, all this time to find you.”
She attempted a smile. “Hope the CIA and FBI didn’t think you wanted me for some crime committed on Damhoorian soil.”
His only answer was a grimace before he bent his head, examined his feet in utter bleakness for a moment.
Then he straightened, like someone bracing himself for a fatal blow. “I guess as you didn’t want me to find you, you’re not exactly happy I’m here.” He stopped, a vulnerability she’d never seen entering his eyes, his posture, as if he was begging her to contradict him. She managed not to at the price of years off her life. He went on, his jaw muscles working, the rest of his face barely under control, “Happy or not, I don’t think it’s too much to ask to talk. If you’ll, please, come with me, where we can be alone.”
Alone. Didn’t he know she’d always remain so without him? He should never know. But to be alone with him again.
The decision overtook her, left her lips. “OK.”
His tension deflated as if with a gut punch. Then he strode towards her, his intention to take her in his arms explicit in every ravenous line and move. She pretended to spin around to fetch her bag. She straightened to find him two steps away, bewilderment and hurt coming off of him in waves.
And she made a second mistake. “Would you like to come to my place?”
He staggered a step backward, confusion twisting his beloved face. Then determination hardened it and he took her arm, gripped it harder than necessary as he guided her out of the hospital, as if afraid she’d dissolve if he loosened his hold.