Flatline ~ Jackson Avery

THREE

  "Alright Evan, my name is June Kylie Shepherd, which is funny, because there's another doctor at this Hospital named April, and my name's June." I smiled, hoping to keep at least a little bit of his attention away from the cutting of the arm. He kept screaming and crying, but he seemed a little less scared.

  "Did you find my dad?" He asked. I looked at Robbins.

  "You know what? I'm going to ask someone to check again if they found your dad." She called a nurse to check up to see if his dad was here.

  "It's okay, Evan, you're going to be fine. Just don't focus on the pain." I suggested. After the escharotomy, Robbins told me to go out and help the other burn victims. I left promptly. Right when I left the room, I saw Avery and Lexie talking to each other over the patient with the kid. Where's the kid? I looked around and spotted the kid.

  "Hey, come with me. We're going to get someone to wait for you for your daddy to come over, okay?" I asked a social worker to look after the little boy, who was around five.

  "Okay, what are you guys doing?" I interrupted Lexie's conversation with Avery. "Hurry up and insert the chest tube!" I exclaimed. Lexie was distracted by the little kid who was crying. Didn't I just get a social worker to look after him? "Okay, Lexie, just go get the kid. I'll take care of this!" I shoved her out of the way.

  "No, I can do this!" She argued.

  "Do that, or go to the kid in trauma two!" I ignored her for the rest of the time. Once I inserted the chest tube, I made sure the tube was stable, and that no blood was coming though it.

  "Avery, look after her. I'm going to the other traumas."

  "Wait, no!" He protested, "Hey, can you watch her?" He told a nurse who was standing around. The nurse agreed. I shook my head and turned around to look for other patients. Avery was following me.

  "Don't just follow me, get your own patient!" I shouted.

  "Does it look like there are other patients to get to? The other doctors have them." He said. "Actually, there are some kids there." Avery pointed them out, and without waiting for him, I ran off to tend to the kids.

  "Hi! I'm Dr. Shepherd, call me Kylie. I'm going to give you some stitches, okay? Just sit yourself here." I patted the ground and he sat.

  "Here." Avery gave me a tray of unused supplies and went to his own kid. "Alright, I'm going to be stitching your arm there. That will make it feel a little better, 'kay?"

  1....2....3...4....5....6... I counted the number of stitches I had done. I couldn't help but feel a little useless. Everyone was performing surgery on a patient, and I was here stitching a seven year old's arm.

  "You done?" Avery sat next to me. "Ohhh, looks like you got quite a few to go." He left me to stitch up the little boy, while he was called over by Alex to wheel the gurney of the mother into trauma room one.

  "Am I going to be okay?" The boy asked me. "My mama is going to be sad if I die." He cried out tearfully.

  "No, no. You're going to be just fine!" I gave him the best smile I could manage. "Your mama should be here any second now, just stay put." I finished the last stitch and ordered him to sit at the side so he wouldn't get in the way.

  "Kylie!" I heard a voice yell. I looked up to see Cristina, who was near the trauma rooms. "Get over here, I think they need help!" She pointed to trauma room one. Yes! Finally something good to do!

  I entered the room. "What the hell did you do?!" She looked like she was swelling, and judging by how there were no tubes in her, I assumed her arteries were all too swollen. "You guys are pushing everything into her! She's going to reject everything!" I checked her pulse, and right then, she went into v-fib. Cristina came in, and the place was packed with people trying to save her.

  "She's in v-fib." Alex stated, and Cristina said,

  "Okay, starting manual ventilation."

  "Charging to two-hundred." Avery called out, and handed the paddles to me.

  "Clear." I shocked her, and we all looked at the heart monitor, hoping something good would come up.

  "Uhm, three-hundred!" Avery told me, and I shocked her again, which did nothing. Defibrillation wasn't working against her coding. I was about to ready the paddles again, but Adamson spoke up.

  "There's blood, wait!" I took the paddles away from the body of the patient. "There's blood in her crike!"

  By now, she was bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, and crike.

  "She's bleeding out!" I yelled. "Give her two more units of packed red blood cells right now, and get her some F.F.P.s!" We all tried to stop the bleeding in the crike.

  "What about calcium? Has anyone tried calcium?" Reed Adamson asked us.

  "Yes we have! Push one of epi!" Avery replied. Everyone was talking over each other, and I couldn't even figure out who was doing what at this point. I knew she was out of our reach to bring her back, but I couldn't accept the fact that she had a kid, and now she was dying, or better known as dead.

  Charles Percy looked under her gurney and said, "Where's all this blood coming from?" I took the time to look under too, because Cristina was freaking out and trying to stop the bleeding, just like I was.

  "Oh, no...She's D.I.C. and bleeding out. Her organs are shutting down!" I yelled.

  "She's D.I.C. Her organs are shutting down on her!" Alex repeated what I said, but only he didn't know he was repeating.

  "She's bleeding out, we have to stop the bleeding!" Cristina shouted, commanding us to listen to her, and so I did, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but our efforts were futile. Soon her heartbeat was not present anymore, and we were all still yelling over each other. I barely noticed Derek walking into the room.

  "Stop!" He yelled. I wanted to listen to him, but I kept thinking about the possible solutions to the problem, but nothing in my four years of being a doctor ever prepared me for this. "Just, stop." Nobody listened. "Okay, Everyone! Stop what you're doing!" He yelled at us, and we all slowly quieted down. "You've lost her. Somebody call it." He took out his pen to write, but nobody would call it. Everyone was looking at each other. "Well, whose patient is she?" He asked again. I looked around. Avery caught my eye. He was looking straight at me. She's not mine, I didn't even see her when she first came in. Don't look at me. I returned his stare with a stare of my own.

  "Well, Kepner had her first." Alex accused April. Typical Alex. I averted my gaze to look at a horrified April.

  "No! She was never mine, I was just told-" April began, but she was cut off by my angry big brother.

  "Everyone, just get out of here!" He yelled at us, and we all scuffed out of the place. Cristina began the conversation by saying,

  "She wasn't mine, just saying." and everyone started yelling. The Trauma wing was basically empty, with all of the patients transported to an O.R. or admitted into a room. 

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Word count - 1901