Safe In The Surgeon's Arms

“Get anesthesia in here. He has to be intubated now.”

“There was just an overhead page, Chase. They’ve been called to a code on the floor.” Liz, the charge nurse, supplied the answer, but picked up the phone on the wall. “I’ll see if there’s someone else who can help out.”

“Page any surgeon overhead. I’ll intubate, and someone else can do the IV placement. We need a central line right away.”

“Got it.” Liz made the call.

“IV set-up tray is ready, Doctor, but if you’d prefer to intubate first, I’ll get that one ready.” Though keeping her focus on the patient, Emily spoke in the direction of the doctor leading the situation. He stood with his back to her and was in the process of removing his lab coat when he froze.

Then spun.

Clearly astonished at her presence, he stared at her with his mouth open for a few seconds as he tried to force his mind to accept what his eyes were seeing.

Emily’s stomach tightened again; her heart beat as erratically as the patient’s. Chase had never looked better, and her heart was out of control. A look of stunned shock crossed his face for a second or two. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped and he jumped as if he’d been pinched. Only a few seconds of lapsed control, but she saw it, felt it in her chest. The depth of pain mixed with his surprise at seeing her would be etched in her mind forever. She’d done that to him. She’d caused the hurt he’d momentarily betrayed. Except for the shock on his face, he hadn’t changed in the three years since they’d broken up. Since she’d walked away from him.

“Emily?” He took a halting step toward her then stopped. “What are you doing here?” His blue gaze raked her from top to toe as if his brain still couldn’t comprehend what his eyes were telling him. “What happened to your hair?”

Before she could answer, what seemed like an army of people burst into the room and the focus returned to the critical patient in front of them. This was apparently the entire team of surgeons, from the senior fellow down to the first-year resident. At a teaching hospital staff seemed to move in large herds.

“Who called for a surgeon? We’re here.”

As the physician in charge, Chase forced his focus from Emily to the surgeon. “We need better IV access immediately. Can one of you put in a central line? Anesthesia’s tied up, and I’ll have to intubate.” Chase whipped off the bloody lab coat he’d worn to the crash site and threw it into a corner of the room.

The most senior member of the group emerged and nodded to Chase. “Sure thing.” He removed his lab coat and handed it to a student to hold.

“I’ll assist, Doctor.” Emily made the offer so she would be away from Chase’s penetrating glare and the waves of hostile energy flowing off him to flood the room. There was enough tension in the room already without adding more fuel to the fire she’d not been prepared for. Even though she’d known it would come, she wasn’t prepared for it on the first day. “I’ve got the tray ready.”

“Okay. Great. I thought this was going to be something difficult,” he said with a grin, and winked at Emily. Emily never knew whether to be relieved at the confidence of surgeons or shocked at their outrageous arrogance. “Hey, don’t I know you? Didn’t you work here a while back?” He, too, frowned, trying to make sense of his memory in the present situation.

“Yes, I did. Came back for more. Over here, Dr. Blaze.” Emily motioned him to the opposite side of the patient, and he moved around to where she stood. Relief overwhelmed her that he only remembered her from being an employee, not the rest. Or, if he did, he had the good graces not to say anything.

“Dr. Blaze. Ha! I haven’t been called that in years.”

“I remember with you everything was an emergency, wasn’t it? You flashed through rounds like your tail was on fire.” Emily smiled and her peripheral vision caught the glare Chase threw her way.

“Oh, those were the days.” He shook his head at the memory. “So what happened? He’s missing an arm.” He looked to Chase for answers.

“Trauma. Pinned under his truck. Had to amputate in the field.” Chase supplied the information, reinforcing one of the highest rules in trauma care: a limb for a life. Focus. That was what he needed right now—focus. Nothing mattered right now except saving this man’s life. That was why he was there.

It didn’t matter that he’d just had a bomb go off in the form of his ex-girlfriend appearing right in front of him in the middle of a trauma. He had to focus right now and ignore the kick in his pulse and the pain in his heart. He continued speaking to the surgeon, though he focused on aligning the patient’s head in the correct position for putting in the airway tube.

“Once he’s stable you can take him to OR and clean the arm up. It was pretty quick and dirty out there.” As an emergency surgeon, he was called on to perform such procedures as well as his normal shifts in the ER.

Though he would sound like he was in control to the others, Emily heard the tension in his voice, noticed the hardness in his eyes and the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. Always had been giveaways to his mood. He was brittle, and her shoulders tensed, waiting for him to snap. At her. She deserved it for not warning him she was going to be working with him again. But she’d been too chicken to call him and hear the intimacy of his voice in her ear and remember how that had used to feel. Now she could see it would have been better for her to have had someone let him know.

“Gotcha.” The chief surgeon turned to face Emily and accepted her assistance to don sterile garb.

“Liz, let’s get him intubated. Has next of kin been notified?” As the leading doctor in this case, Chase directed the care and the flow of procedures. This was his patient and his case until he turned it over to another physician.

“Family’s on the way in.” Liz expertly opened the tray and prepared it for Chase.

“Let’s get a line in this fellow, and you can get that blood into him, shall we?”

Though Emily had assisted in this procedure many times in her career as a nurse and had been a travel nurse in all manner of hospitals from small community centers to large teaching hospitals, she’d never had the added pressure of having her ex-boyfriend breathing down her neck. After a deep breath in, she let it out slowly, trying to calm her nerves, which had shot out of control. Why had she thought this was a good idea again? Facing fears and all that? What rot that was. Right now, on the edge of panic, she’d be happy to spend the rest of the shift hiding in a dark closet somewhere.

The procedure went as planned and as soon as the surgeon had secured the line with a few stitches she connected two pints of blood and opened the tubes full blast. The sooner she restored the depleted amount of blood the man had lost, the better his chances of survival.

The hum around her was comforting and familiar, even though some of the staff were strangers. As they moved past the trauma room she recognized people with whom she’d previously worked. Some excitedly waved to her; others waved, then a memory surfaced in their eyes and their smiles stiffened. Coming back here, she’d known it would be a risk to her privacy. Some people would only remember working with her; some would only remember what had happened to her.

Regardless, staff had jobs to do, and everyone seemed to be able to do it while talking about mundane issues like the weather or the upcoming sailboat races in the Chesapeake Bay. Now that the most emergent procedures had been carried out, they could take a breath and relax a bit.

Except for Emily. She could never relax. That word was no longer part of her vocabulary, and she didn’t anticipate it ever being again. Some days it was all she could do to focus on her work and not let the demons hiding behind every curtain or closet door terrorize her. Though three years had passed since the incident that had changed her life, there were times it felt just like yesterday.

“Liz, do you want me to call OR again?” She made the offer, hoping she could leave the room and make the call at the desk, give herself a bit of physical distance between her and Chase and draw a deep breath. Since the trauma she’d suffered three years ago, she had difficulty facing crowded rooms and tight spaces. Add stairwells and dark hallways to the list. Anxiety had been her dark shadow, and she hadn’t managed to kick it. Yet. Now, with Chase in close proximity, that dark demon had a choke hold on her and wasn’t letting go. She swallowed, trying to force down the memory of hands closing around her throat, assaulting her body. She coughed once, forcing her throat open, and clenched her hands into fists.

“No, you stay here and monitor the patient. I’m going to call them back. Their transport team should have been here by now.” She reached for the phone just as the corner of a gurney poked through the entrance to the room.

“We’re here. No worries.” One of the large men in scrubs held up his hands in surrender. He looked around the room. “Looks like you’re still at it. We’ll wait outside.”

“No, take him now. I’ll go along and give you a report on the way.” Chase spoke to the surgeon. “He was involved in a rollover crash that threw him from the wreckage, pinned his left arm beneath the vehicle.” He shrugged into his crumpled lab coat as the crew prepared the patient for transport.

“You must have gotten there pretty quick to get him here in time.” The surgeon also donned his lab coat and straightened his collar as if he were preparing to go to his office rather than about to perform a complicated emergency surgery. The man must have nerves of steel.

“I went in the chopper. That helped.” Chase took a deep breath, as if some of that memory bothered him, but she knew better. Nothing really bothered him. Not back then and probably not ever. He must be part duck, because everything just seemed to roll right off him. Not that he was cold or unfeeling; he just compartmentalized things. And she’d been shoved into a compartment that hadn’t fit her after the incident, and it was one she couldn’t remain in and survive. She’d broken out and run until she couldn’t run any longer.

Running never solved anything, but she’d had to figure that out on her own.

“Good times. Did you bring the limb with you? We might be able to reattach it. Vascular team is stellar.” Chase nodded to the heavy-duty cooler on a counter behind him and one of the transport team picked it up, put it beneath the gurney. Both men grabbed opposing ends of the stretcher and moved with the patient toward the elevators, with the entire surgical team streaming down the hall behind them. Their voices faded into the distance as Chase and the surgeon continued their dialogue.

“Emily? You okay?” Liz asked, as she began to clean the room, preparing it for the next patient. “Hey, there. You okay?”

“What?” She blinked, took a breath and realized she was staring after Chase. “Oh, yes. I’m good.” To hide her discomfiture, she shoved a handful of used gauze dressings into the hazardous waste can. Good thing it was a big one. “I can clean the room if you have other things to do.” She’d appreciate a moment alone after the shocking experience she’d just had, and she didn’t mean the patient.

“Let’s work together. That’s how we do things around here.” Liz carefully picked up the needles from the tray and disposed of them in the puncture-proof container hanging on the wall. “You might be used to getting all the crappy jobs as a traveler, but here we treat travel nurses the same as permanent staff.” She smiled at Emily. “Right off the bat you caught a tough case, so I’ll try to give you some lighter patients for the rest of the day. Not a guarantee, but I’ll try.”

“Thanks.” It gave Emily a surge of warmth in her chest to hear the unit philosophy hadn’t changed since she’d last worked there. She smiled and felt a little bit lighter as she talked, a little more at home.

Together they finished tidying the room and preparing it for the next patient. There would always be a next patient, a next trauma, a next disaster, and they had to be prepared for every kind that rolled through their doors.

“So, the next question is that you seem to have recognized Dr. Montgomery. Am I right?” Liz had the skills of a trained ER nurse and no denial was going to get past her. She’d see right through it. “And some other staff seemed to know you.”

“Yes. I used to work here with him. Three years ago.” She looked down and tried to control the beating of her heart. At one time Chase had been her heart, her life and her future, but that had all changed when she’d walked away from him. Though she hadn’t wanted to, she’d had to. “And there are other staff I know, too.” Some had saved her life in this very ER.

“There seemed to be more than just a recognition of a former coworker, though.” Compassion and curiosity hung in her words, as if she suspected what Emily was going to tell her.

“There was.” How much to tell without giving away her life story? “We dated at one time. But it was a while ago.” What seemed a lifetime ago. No need to tell Liz they had been a serious couple before she’d been brutally attacked by a serial rapist and had been forced to radically change her life. Without Chase.

That stopped Liz. “Is it going to be an issue between you? I mean, are you going to be able to work with him? He’s one of our finest doctors and if you can’t get along with him, we’ll have to reconsider your contract, maybe place you in another unit or something.”