Working steadily for the next two hours, Josie concentrated on plating and screwing the broken bones back together. She felt she was gaining on the injury, when she heard the awful sound of the monitors going off, alerting them to a problem.
Josie didn’t look up, knowing that was what her support staff was for. She kept on doggedly.
“He’s arresting,” the anesthesiologist said.
Oh, Lord, help her. It was Josie’s worst nightmare coming true. This man, whose name she didn’t even know, was having a cardiac arrest right there on the operating table, with her hand still in his leg.
Houston was already moving to assist the nurse. Josie spared a glance up. “Let’s defribillate him!”
The SA held the paddles in front of the patient. Houstonbacked up to get out of the way. “I can’t do it with only one hand. You’ve got to.”
“I know.” She swiped her hands on her gown to give herself better leverage and grabbed the paddles.
Placing one below the outer half of the right clavicle and the other over the apex of the heart, Josie took an urgent breath. “200 J, let’s go.”
“Clear.” They shocked the man’s heart, with no result.
The monitor read flat line and the eerie bell rang loudly in the cool room as they hovered over him. The surgical assistant administered CPR for one minute before Josie nudged him.
“Again.” She couldn’t let this man die like this. It was a severe injury, with a large amount of bleeding, but it shouldn’t be a fatal injury. She would never be able to forgive herself if he died in front of her, in a room filled with strangers, without ever getting the chance to say good-bye to his loved ones.
The result was the same, and the staff all worked in unison to attend to the various tasks that needed to be done. The patient was given epinephrine and lidocaine in his IV. The positioning of the electrodes was checked, and CPR was conducted while the anesthesiologist checked for a rhythm on the monitor.
“Again,” Josie said, desperation creeping into her voice.
The nurse looked to Dr. Hayes for confirmation.
He nodded. “Do it.”
“360 J,” Josie said. “Clear.”
This time there was a response. The heart began a sinus rhythm, faint but steady. Josie’s knees went weak with relief.
“We’ve got a pulse,” the nurse announced.
The anesthesiologist sank back onto her chair; wiping her forehead. “Whew, that was close.”
With a nod, Josie went back to the fracture she had abandoned. She didn’t trust herself to speak, afraid she would start crying, and she wanted this procedure done right now. She couldn’tafford to lose it just yet.
“I’li lend you a hand,” Houston said, his calm voice nearly shattering the last of her control.
How the hell he could act so unshakable, collected, so unconcerned when a man had almost died, she couldn’t understand. She just gave him a nod, afraid if she locked eyes with him, spoke, that Houston would hear and see all her inadequacies, all her failings as a surgeon.
Houston began to work on turning the last screw in place with his left hand and Josie couldn’t help but notice that he only needed one hand to accomplish in the same amount of time what she needed two hands for.
Granted it wasn’t complex work, and he stepped back to allow her space when she needed to restore the muscles around the femur; but it felt like another blazing football field size sign that she wasn’t cut out for the OR.
Twenty minutes later she had the last suture in place and they were wheeling the man to ICU to be monitored closely for signs of distress or cardiac arrest. Josie watched the gurney go and took deep breaths.
Her hand was shaking. She wondered if it had been shaking when she had been suturing. The poor guy would have an odd-looking scar if her hand had been trembling with the needle in it.
It was the absurdity of that last thought that had her peeling off her gloves with frantic energy and heading for the locker room.
“Josie.”
Ignoring Houston, she left the OR behind and barely managed to keep herself from sprinting down the hall, her breath shallow and face burning. When she reached the locker room, she did break into a jog, and didn’t stop until she was hidden behind the last row of lockers. Sinking down on the bench, she buried her head in her hands and let them come.
The tears of relief. Tears of panic. Tears of horror that a man could have died today while under her knife.