Nursing The Doctor (5 page)

Strapped to a stretcher, an analytical, interested voice, his own but not his own, told him. He realized with total clarity that a rescue team must be lifting him out of the ravine.

Light dazzled him and everything whirled. He gagged and felt bile rise in his throat. There was intense blueness as the sky came closer. Hands steadied the stretcher and a number of figures bent over him.

“Respiration’s thirty-six, shallow. BP eighty over forty. Pulse 130, color ashen. Let’s get oxygen started, twelve liters a minute...”

The rapid-fire assessment reassured Greg. Someone knew what they were doing. But as the non-re-breather oxygen mask settled on his face, he could hear someone making a noise he recognized from the ER, the wild animal sound of a person in extreme distress.

Over the noise a strange voice was speaking to him, and Greg wondered where Ben was.

“My name’s Ron, I’m with air rescue. We’re taking good care of you, we’ll have you at St. Joe’s in no time. I know you’re in pain, Greg, I’m just establishing an IV site so we can get some fluids into you. You’ve had a shot of morphine, so if you start feeling disoriented and fuzzy, that’s what’s doing it, but it’ll help you manage the pain. We’re going to load you into the ’copter now. Let’s just check this cardiac monitor before we go. Your friend did a great job on these emergency splints, but we’re putting our own on. All done there, Mac? Good. Let’s move him.”

Didn’t they know he was a doctor? Greg tried to answer, to give exact instructions as to what should be done, but once again the intensity of the pain didn’t allow for speech. With utter amazement, he realized that the sound he’d heard was coming from his own throat, that familiar primeval moaning howl he’d heard so many times before. Even as it escaped him, some detached medical part of his brain again celebrated the fact that he could feel his body.

Feeling is better than not feeling. Feeling means my spinal cord is probably intact. Please, God, let my spinal cord be intact....

They’d fitted him with a hard collar. At least they were taking all the necessary precautions.

In spite of the morphine, the torment grew unbearable, and again he relinquished consciousness.

CHAPTER FOUR

At three-thirty on Sunday afternoon, Lily was in the downstairs bathroom helping Zoe off the toilet when the phone rang. She grumbled under her breath and hollered, “Can you get that, Gram?”

Fortunately Hannah was having a fairly good day, and Lily heard her pick up the receiver and say a hello.

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not interested in any blood,” Hannah said next in an aggrieved tone. “I really don’t think you people should be making obscene phone calls like this.” Then, sounding puzzled, she added, “Now why did I call you, anyway?”

“Yoicks.” Lily hastily swiped Zoe’s tiny bottom and pulled up her training panties. “Auntie has to go to the phone. You flush and then wash your hands, okay, missy?”

“Yoicks,” Zoe parroted. “Flush, wash, flush, wash,” she sing-songed, turning the cold tap on full and sending spray cascading up the wall.

Well, the walls needed washing anyway, Lily told herself as she sprinted across the kitchen, taking the receiver an instant before Hannah banged it down.

“Lily Sullivan here.”

“Ms. Sullivan, sorry to disturb you, especially on a Sunday. It’s the blood bank calling. I have you on our emergency donor list, and I wondered if there’s any possibility you might be able to come down immediately and donate blood? We’ve had an urgent request for AB negative and we don’t have enough in stock.”

Lily glanced at the clock. Kaleb would be home in a few minutes and she’d planned to go out for a run after a hectic day spent caring for her two charges.

Donating blood was the last thing she felt like doing, but she also knew that if she refused, images of some poor soul bleeding out because of her selfishness would haunt her. Twice before she’d been called in when the blood bank supplies ran low on her rare type.

“Sure, I guess I can come down.” She sighed, trying to figure out how best to juggle her schedule. “I’ll be there within an hour.”

“Thank you so much, Ms. Sullivan. We’ll be expecting you.” There was palpable relief in the woman’s voice.

Shortly afterward, Lily lay on a cot at the blood bank center, feeling the familiar deep ache in her arm from the needle the nurse had just inserted in the brachial vein at the bend of her elbow. The agitator rocked back and forth, and the small plastic container slowly filled with dark liquid.

Apart from a dizzy, slightly nauseated feeling, giving blood didn’t really affect her. It wasn’t the physical act of giving blood that took time, it was the barrage of questions a donor was required to answer beforehand that ate up the better part of an hour. She was good at it by now; she practically knew the questions off by heart.

Have you ever had hepatitis? Epilepsy? Heart or blood-pressure problems? Cancer? Diabetes?

Have you had multiple sexual partners? Accepted money or drugs in exchange for sex? Shared needles? Had sex, even once, with someone who might have engaged in high-risk sexual activities?

Have you received blood?

Have you had any operations?

And on and on. The comprehensive form seemed to cover everything except her great grandmother’s sex life. And in all probability, Great-grandma had more to report about her sex life than she did.

Lily had been celibate since Richard, and that was almost a year now. Sex wasn’t a casual pastime to her, and although she desperately missed the physical joy of lovemaking, she wasn’t about to go to bed with someone she didn’t love and respect and know very well.

And, she reminded herself firmly, love and mutual respect were vastly different from lust, which was what she experienced each time she was around Greg Brulotte, for instance. He definitely made the back of her knees sweat, and it had nothing to do with love. It was lust, pure and simple.

Idly watching the last few drops of blood flow into the container, she wondered how his weekend had gone. He was so damned good-looking, it just wasn’t fair. Not for the first time, she wondered what his kisses felt like, how his hands would feel on her moist, bare skin.

“That’s it, Ms. Sullivan, we’re all done. Here’s your juice. Sit up slowly now, won’t you?” The nurse expertly slid the needle out, plastered on a bandage, attached an identifying bar code to the filled container and unhooked the apparatus.

Lily swung her feet to the floor.

“Thanks.” She sipped the juice and told herself that she devoted far too much idle time to thinking about Greg Brulotte. And she obviously needed to get a life when donating blood inspired sexual fantasies, for heaven’s sake.

The slight dizziness passed quickly, and she got to her feet. It was almost five. The downtown stores were open on Sunday, but they were probably about to close. Would she be able to make it to the boutique on Robson in time to try on the blue skirt she’d seen in the window?

She had to drive past St. Joe’s to reach the boutique, and fleetingly she wondered how it was going this afternoon in the ER. Probably quiet, a cold Sunday afternoon, not too many crazies out in the winter weather.

She sent warm, affectionate thoughts to her coworkers and then forgot all about the hospital as she pulled into a conveniently empty parking space just outside the door of the boutique.

The store was about to close, but the clerk let her in. The skirt was still in the window, a long, fluid sweep of soft indigo wool that clung to her hips and flared into a tulip shape around her legs. She’d wear it next Thursday when she met Frannie for dinner.

“Gcs 2-2-5. BP fifty over thirty. Pulse 130...”

From a far and foggy distance, Greg recognized the voices as those of his co-workers in Emerg at St. Joe’s.

He heard the familiar staccato recitation of the vitals, and he knew from the numbers that whoever the patient was, he was critical.

It was ABC time—airways, breathing, circulation. Familiar terms penetrated the strange dream he was having, and now the icy cold had disappeared, giving way to a flush of terrible heat that made his body sweat and shake.

“...contusion, decreased air entry right side, mid and lower lobes, circumoral cyanosis. Chest X ray, c-spine X ray. Set up for insertion of chest tube...”

“...pneumorthorax, haemorthorax, blood in the left lung.”

“...need a bigger IV site here...”

“...abdominal tap indicates ruptured
spleen...”

“...hemorrhaging... “

“...blood cross-matched, AB negative...”
“...phone the OR, tell Bellamy he’s on his way up.”

Greg floated in and out, mildly interested. Whoever the patient was, he had the same rare blood type as Greg himself did.

Once again he gave up the enormous effort it required to remain conscious. He welcomed the darkness now, and the release from time.

“Dr. Brulotte, you’re in recovery. Can you hear me? Can you wake up? Can you answer me, Dr. Brulotte? Dr. Brulotte, it’s time for you to wake up now, your operation’s over and you’re in recovery.”

His mouth was dry and there was an immense weight sitting on his chest. He tried to move, couldn’t manage it and began to panic.

He forced his eyes open, staring at the male nurse whose image wavered in and out of focus. He was propped up, and he looked past the nurse, down the length of the bed. There was a huge white thing hanging from pulleys that he realized after a while was his own leg. His right arm was encased in plaster, and a sense of panic rose as he realized he couldn’t seem to move his body.

“What...operation?” His voice was barely audible.

The nurse was checking the IV, touching his hands and toes. “You had an accident, Doctor. Do you remember?”

Greg grunted. He remembered.

“Where’s... Ben?” Speech took enormous effort.

“Dr. Halsey’s right here.”

The nurse’s face faded and Ben’s familiar features, haggard and unshaven, took its place.

“You’re doing great, Greg. Everything went fine in the OR. Bellamy’s around somewhere, I’ll have him come in and talk to you about the operation. Just stay calm, you’re doin’ great.”

Ben faded.

Drugged sleep again.

Another voice calling his name from a distance.

“Greg? Dr. Brulotte, can you wake up?”

Layers of cotton wool. Bellamy’s storklike figure shimmering beside the bed.

“Greg, do you know who I am?”

Irritation filled in the spaces the cotton wool left blank. Of course he knew who the hell Bellamy was. He talked with him almost daily, for God’s sake. What the hell was wrong with John, thinking he didn’t recognize him?

“John. How’s...the golf game...going?” His voice was a croak, and he tried to clear his throat, but he remembered quickly that the pain was there in his chest like a sleeping tiger, waiting to pounce. He couldn’t waste an instant, because when that pain came, he’d have to leave again.

“What...did you...operate...on...me for?” Bellamy was bending and swaying, and Greg felt his stomach rebel. He wondered how long he could hold the nausea at bay.

“Do you remember what happened to you, Greg? The accident?”

Greg was losing patience. Why was everyone treating him like an imbecile?

“Skiing. With Ben. Fell,” he managed to reply. Acid bit at the back of his throat and he gagged.

The nurse held a kidney basin under his chin, but he couldn’t spit. His chest hurt too much. Spittle trickled out of his mouth in a long stream. The nurse wiped it away.

“Good, good. Well, you managed to do a fair bit of damage, nothing we couldn’t repair, of course. You’ll be back working in the ER in a couple months, I’d wager.”

Months. Months? That had to be wrong. John meant weeks, surely?

The surgeon lapsed into the terminology Greg needed to hear. “They did a four-quadrant tap down in the ER, all four quadrants had blood, so we did a laparotomy, removed your spleen.”

It was shocking, having Bellamy casually tell Greg they’d removed one of his organs. He tried to steel himself for what else was coming.