Chapter One
I heard the code called over the intercom, and I rushed down the hallway toward the exam room that had been called. I left my coffee, abandoned by the machine. I was fighting exhaustion; every muscle in my body was screaming for sleep. It was my second week as a resident in the Emergency Room at Linda Vista Hospital. Upon entering the room, I beheld the patient, a young male in his late twenties, who was convulsing on the table.
“Starting CPR,” I yelled as I placed my hands above the patient’s sternum, beginning to pump, forcing his heart to continue to move blood through his body. My arms strained as I began to coax his heart to continue pumping. This was maybe the fifth round of frantic CPR that I had done this shift, and my arm muscles were aching from the buildup of lactic acid. One of the nurses rushed in, a clipboard in her hands. She was a blonde woman in her late forties, frown lines evident on her face, as though she had seen too many bad things in her life.
“Doctor,” she said, looking at me. It still hadn’t sunk in that that was now me. “Blood testing on this patient has come back from the lab.” She was frowning, making the lines on her face deeper and more pronounced.
“And?” I asked, my breathing labored as I continued to pump. A strand of my own hair had become stuck to my forehead, but I couldn’t risk stopping the CPR to push it away.
“It reports a low red blood cell count.”
“Anemia,” I commented in disbelief. “We’re going to have to transfuse, ASAP. Get me some O-neg.” She nodded, rushing off to get it from the Emergency Room’s supply. I frowned, continuing CPR, and looking at another nurse.
“We’ll need to defib to get his heart back on line.” She nodded, and went to get the defibrillator unit. This was the third case in the past week where the patient suffered from pronounced anemia that had nothing to do with the accident that had brought the patient into the ER, initially. I looked down at the patient. His skin was pale, bluish in the overhead lighting. His eyes were slightly open, showing only the whites. He had come in after falling while skateboarding; he had a concussion but no open or bleeding wounds on his head. I looked around his body as I worked; there were no signs of any major bleeding. His clothing was completely clean of any bloodstains; if he was suffering from massive blood loss, he should be covered in it. It just didn’t make any sense.
The first nurse ran in carrying several dark red bags of O-negative blood. She immediately hooked one up to an IV, sticking the needle carefully into the patient’s arm. She placed a small rectangle of tape over the needle to hold it in place. Then, she hung the bag on the hooked pole beside the ER bed, watching as blood began to transfuse into the patient’s arm.
The other nurse wheeled the cart with a defibrillator machine into the room. We needed to shock his heart back into acting on its own so that I could stop forcing it to pump with my flagging arms. She put gel on the paddles, and I knocked them together, gathering the shock.
“Ready,” I said, placing them on the patient’s chest. A shock went through the paddles, and the patient’s body arched on the table. We all waited in silence, listening and watching the heart monitor as it beeped. It was faint. Too faint.
“One more time,” I said, placing the paddles together before then placing them on the patient’s chest. “Go.” The patient convulsed with the shock, and I looked at the heart monitor, seeing that the heart was beginning to come back online, tiny green mountains on the background of black, the numbers starting to climb as his blood pressure rose to a normal rate. I sighed in relief.
Handing the paddles to a nurse, I stood back, wiping sweat from my forehead and watching the patient’s vitals on the screen. As the blood entered his system, they began to further normalize.
As soon as the alarm was beeping slowly and normally, I watched the patient’s heart worked on its own for a little while. I looked around at the other nurses and residents who had crowded into the room. In the Emergency Room, whenever a code is called, anyone who is free in the area is required to answer. You never know how many hands you will need in order to get the heart started again, put the guts back in, or stop the bleeding.
“Good job, everyone,” I said. We all began to disperse, some people checking patients, some going to the break room to get some shut eye, and others to get some type of nourishment. So far, residency had been one long attempt to keep myself functional, or so it seemed. This was when he walked up to me.
“Excellent technique, doctor,” he said. He was dangerously good-looking: perfectly shaped facial features, deep blue eyes, and a smile that lit up his entire face. If I knew my body structures, what was hidden beneath the scrubs was an even better sight—a definite gym body, for sure. I needed to stay far away because this one was trouble, and he knew it. You could almost smell the confidence brimming from him. It smelled like expensive cologne—the good stuff that makes you want to devour the man.
“Thank you,” I said, pleased to have been noticed. I removed my latex gloves, tossing them into the trash.
“Mark Johnson,” he said, holding out his hand, which I made sure to shake firmly. My father had taught me at a young age that in order to impress people, you had to shake their hands firmly and confidently.
“Samantha Hunter,” I replied, keeping my tone polite but distant. I did not want to give him the impression that I wanted or craved this attention. I had, only recently, gotten out of yet another in a string of catastrophically bad relationships. I couldn’t tell if it was my tendency towards social awkwardness that made my choice in romantic partners so poor, or if I was cursed with some damn awful luck.
“I’m visiting from St. Elizabeth’s,” he said, mentioning a hospital that was located out in the suburbs.
“Ah, welcome,” I replied coolly, heading to retrieve my abandoned coffee from the machine. He walked along beside me, his hands in his pockets, and his stride easily matching my own. I arrived to find my Styrofoam cup still on the counter beside the coffee machine. I picked it up and took a sip of the espresso. Cringing, I realized that it had grown cold while I had been gone.
“Ugh. Awful stuff in this machine,” I cautioned him, raising my eyebrows.
“It is pretty standard fare for Emergency Rooms,” he said. “So, what was wrong with the patient?”
“It’s been the third case of severe anemia that I have seen in the past week,” I went on, since he seemed like he wasn’t going anywhere. “It seems…uncommon. Especially since the patient seemed to lack any sign of major bleeding. I mean, he was here to be treated for a concussion.”
“No bleeding anywhere?”
“Some minor cuts, but that’s about it.” He nodded, crossing his arms and rubbing his clean-shaven chin with one of his large, masculine hands. His nails, I saw, were trimmed immaculately; typical for a doctor.
“Anemia itself is fairly common,” he replied, cocking his head to the side as though he were studying me. “It’s related, often, to diet, and environmental factors. Sometimes, even genetic. It can seem like these things can come in waves…it doesn’t mean that it is, statistically speaking, significant.”
“You think so?” He nodded.
“The important thing is that you saved a patient’s life. It’s a good thing that Linda Vista has plenty of blood on hand to transfuse with.” I nodded and took another sip of my cold coffee as he spoke. I gagged—the coffee in the ER machine is bad enough when hot.
“Might I take you out for some at least decent coffee sometime?” he smiled. I laughed and nodded.
“That would be great.”
“Let me give you my number so that we can find a time when we are free,” he said, taking out his sleek iPhone in the fake marble case that looked a little too perfect. He handed it to me, and I added my number to his contacts. He nodded, placing the phone back into his pocket. “It’s been lovely meeting you, Samantha.”
“And you, Mark,” I replied, watching him walk away. As I gazed at his back, I wondered at what moment I had gone from wanted to remain single to agreeing to a coffee date that was without a doubt just that—a date. I shook my head, groaning.