“He’s a surgeon. If he used his fists, your guy probably earned it.” I turn toward them, my heart pounding wildly. “I want everybody out. Dr. Jones is my colleague. I’ll triage him.” No one moves. I throw my hands up. “I said everybody out!”
Landon’s eyes shut as he struggles to breathe, gasping on the inhale, moaning on the exhale. Shit. The right side of his chest is so bruised, there’s no way his ribs are all intact.
“Blood pressure is still high,” one of the nurses says as she goes. She hands me a syringe: the Nitropress.
The EMT mutters something as he leaves, but I don’t even stop him for a report. Landon’s chart will be in my tablet, sent wirelessly from the ambulance to our ER. My hands tremble wildly as I pull it up. I don’t look at him, but I can hear him panting—breathe, then moan; breathe, then strangled moan. I can tell he’s trying not to make noise, but he must be in awful pain. The thought of that is almost my undoing.
You don’t get to fall apart. You deserve this.
With my leaking eyes, I scan his chart and call for the portable CT scan. Then I move slowly over to the bed, holding my stethoscope to his bare chest while I look down at him. My throat knots up as I hear abnormal chest sounds: evidence of a problem. Tears spill down my cheeks, because I hate this so damn much. I hate myself.
With shaking fingers, I reach down and touch his hair. His gray eyes are wide, the pupils slightly dilated. He looks dazed—but when my thumb brushes his forehead, he groans softly.
“Hey there…let me—”
“Go,” he mumbles.
“What?” My heart is beating so hard that I feel faint, but Landon doesn’t need to know. I use my softest voice when I say, “I’ve gotta check you.”
“No…you don’t.” His teeth grit as his face twists. “Please go.”
“You want me to go?”
He groans again, and when his eyes squeeze shut, a tear slips down his temple.
My heart shatters.
“I can’t go yet. Just tell me what hurts. Don’t talk to me like Evie, okay? Just let me check you like a doctor. When I know for sure about you after CT, I’ll shoot you full of morphine. Okay?” I stroke his hair again, and Landon’s lips form a tight line.
“I’m going to touch your chest,” I whisper. Most of the bruising is in a certain area. I hold my breath as I run the pads of my fingers over it. Landon grunts.
I shake my head as tears obscure my vision. “I’m so sorry.”
Just as I get ready to step back and make a more urgent call for CT, he grabs me by the shoulders, pulling me down on him as he starts trembling. “Evie…”
“God.” I stroke the only clean spot I see, near his neck, and Landon’s hand squeezes my shoulders.
I wet a cloth and wipe his face around the oxygen mask. He’s pale under the blood. As I clean him off, his eyes hold mine, and he continues trembling. I’m so intent on his face, I don’t even notice his BP until the monitor starts dinging. He’s at 80 over 40.
Shit!
I rush to push some Levophed into his IV and call for ICU. Fuck it—I’m not holding out for the CT. I want the urgent team.
In the seconds between my call and their arrival, I lean over Landon, pressing my lips to his forehead as a single sob slips out. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His hand grips my shoulder. As two nurses and the ICU chief burst into the room, his eyes roll and he says, “My legs.”
This is not real life.
Lee Peterson, one of the top attendings in the ICU, is not muttering about pneumothorax as he runs the portable CT over Landon’s supine body.
The images arrange themselves on the screen, and everyone talks at once until Peterson holds up a hand and tells the group, “We’ve got a minor pneumothorax from one of these cracked ribs. Hairline fracture of the clavicle, and most significant, a fracture of L1. Not looking too stable either. I’m going to page Billards,” he says as we lean in so we can see the images.
As I take in the pictures of Landon’s lower back, I feel like I might faint.
“Is Billards here?” I hear myself ask. He’s our most experienced neurosurgeon.
“He is,” Peterson says. He looks at me. “Did you hear what happened—to Jones? How bad was the wreck?”
Tears flood my eyes as I tell him I don’t know.
I’m such a liar. This is my fault. My fault. It’s because of me that Landon’s lying here straining to breathe, unable to move. His lower body has sensation, but it seems to be a little altered. If there’s pressure on his spinal cord…I wipe my eyes as I struggle to keep from sobbing.
Billards returns Peterson’s call, and Peterson steps into the corner with his phone pressed to his ear. “I’m no neuro guy,” I hear him say, “but L1 has an obvious fracture, and it doesn’t look stable to me at all.”
Blood roars in between my ears as I look over at Landon. At the mask on his face and the probes on his chest. I want to touch him…
“No, it’s not,” Peterson is saying. “That’s a lot of pressure on the cord.”
A moment later, Eilert bursts in. “How’s he doing?”
I guess someone called her.
I step over to Landon as I try to fill her in. I stroke his arm before I realize my mistake, but no one notices as Peterson catches Eilert up and we start stabilizing Landon for the trip up to the third floor.
Every minute, more people flood into the room. Billards, a nice guy about my dad’s age, arrives eating a granola bar and quickly reviews the images. He tosses his wrapper and tells us, “OR four is open. Let’s get rolling.” He looks to Peterson, and then Eilert. “More fluids. I want to know more about reflexes, spasms, weakness if he rouses.” Then he looks to me. “You’re in his cohort group?”
I nod.
“Okay. You’re scrubbing in. Sometimes you’ll find it’s someone that you know,” he says in cryptic tones. “This is good training.”
I look down at Landon. My head’s pounding, and my stomach’s twisting.
“Take some deep breaths,” Eilert says.
“What about the pneumothorax?” Prinz asks.
“I don’t think we’ll need a chest tube,” Peterson says.
I’m swimming through time. I’m moving, helping, but I’m somewhere else. In the basement of my parents’ house. In Landon’s bedroom here in Denver. On his cool, brown sheets. Back in the Lyft. All I can think about is the look on his face after we scrubbed out together, earlier today. The way he looks as he moves over me. His eyes and his mouth in motion.
I don’t want him to have an L1 fracture! He’s a surgeon, not a patient!
I think about the fix for his back and have to grab his bed rail when I realize we’re probably going to have to take a left-sided thoracolumbar junction approach. It’s a heavy-duty surgery with an absolutely brutal recovery. I can’t even stand to think about doing such a thing to Landon. Again, I’m on the verge of breaking down.
By the time we start to scrub in, everyone is discussing point of entry. I’m swallowing back bile.
I make it into the OR and see him spread out on the table, being shepherded through early anesthesia by Pat and Wynn, the anesthesiologist/nurse anesthetist pair we scrubbed in with earlier.