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Have you ever felt as if life were passing by without you? It just leaves you behind. It doesn't give two shits about you being in sync with it. And even though you can't keep up with it, you realize it still functions perfectly without you.
That's when you comprehend how minuscule and incidental we actually are.
My father always used to say that.
How tiny we are, that we are no more than souls on a passenger body visiting this world. That we shouldn't take anything for granted, because it is the cycle of life. We exist, we experience, and then we are gone. We don't really matter.
Funny thing is, I don't think he ever realized how wrong he was. He was far from incidental in my life, he was the complete opposite.
"Surgeons need all the information they can get. So we ask questions. I'm guessing you know what they are, the six most important?" Vennberg snatched me out of my daydreaming. I truly didn't know if he was doing all this because he thought I was intelligent or because I happened to be Elizabeth Knox's daughter.
I couldn't complain anyway.
"Uh," I hesitated for a bit. I did know them, I used to always hear my mom ask them when I came to work with her. "When did the pain begin? Have you experienced these symptoms before? Do you have a family history? Have you recently undergone surgery? Are there any known allergies?" I paused, frowning. "Are there really six? I can't remember the last one."
He looked at me and smirked. Was this some kind of captious question?
"The last question is one of the most important ones," He lowered his voice and looked down at me. "Are you sexually active?"
"W-hat?" I gulped.
"The question, Amalia." I swear my heart was about to beat out of my chest from my visible embarrassment of actually thinking -for just a tiny second- that the question was addressed to me.
He kept walking until the hospital gates opened. I followed him in, keeping my head down.
"Follow me. Nobody can see you wearing those clothes. I need to get you scrubs."
He leaded me through staff hallways and finally into a changing room.
"Here." He said passing me some intern clothes. "Hurry up, the surgery has already started."
He led me through an elevator. Just as the doors closed, he opened his mouth again. "As I was saying," he looked down at me. "If the patient is unwilling or unable to answer these and other questions, we are forced to rely on tests for insight. Until those test results come back there's nothing we can do but wait."
I looked up at him, meeting his blue eyes. "So what's the patient's background then? The one who's surgery you're taking me to see, I mean."
The elevator's doors opened as we stepped out of it side by side.
"I have no idea. The last thing I heard was that the patient -who presumably suffers from Alzheimer's- presented too much bleeding," by that time we had walked through a long hall, full of rooms and nurses everywhere. "Even with the scope they couldn't see a thing. So they got a CT and called the OR. That way, they could be ready the second that they knew what they were dealing with." He finally led me through some stairs, giving long strides, almost leaving me behind.
"And here we are." He motioned me to sit down on one of the many chairs displayed in the empty gallery. He copied my actions, positioning himself right next to me.
Our bodies were particularly close, but all I happened to pay attention to was the opened body exposed right behind the glass windows.
"Her aorta is like a rock." Said a woman, which by the color of her scrubs, I assumed was a resident.
"I don't know how we are going to sew this graft." The other woman said. I recognized her from the day Vennberg and I brought little Jackson in. Dr. Montgomery, maybe? I couldn't quite recall her exact name.
"Where's all this bleeding coming from?"
"I'm not sure. Hold pressure." You could see the resident holding some cloths against the patient's chest to keep her from bleeding out.
"Primary aortoduodenal fistulas... they almost never happen." Vennberg snapped me out of my trance.
"Why not?" I asked in confusion. I had never seen something like that. When I was younger, my mother would let me in the gallery to see some surgeries. But only when there were some simple procedures, like appendicitis. So I was familiarized with places like this, but I couldn't say the same thing about these kinds of operations.
"This usually would present as a kind of pulsating mass. Something like that, a patient wouldn't wait to seek treatment." He started as he leaned forward to lay his elbow on his knee, giving his full attention to the event occurring before our eyes. "The fistula would never develop, but with Alzheimer's, they don't remember if they told anyone. Someone should've been there, paying attention." He said, thoughtfully.
So this should've never happened.
I started to feel sorry for the woman at that table. How alone must she have been? For anyone to pay attention at the slightest complaint of pain. Horrible pain, that is.
"The proximal clamp fractured the atherosclerotic plaque." Said one of the doctors.
"We have to get above the bleeding."
"What are they doing now?" I could barely catch up with them. Since the vision wasn't quite as clear.
"Aneurysms like these are caused by a buildup of atherosclerotic plaque." He looked at me, as equally interested in this as I was. "Their clamp broke off a chunk of one of these plaques. And that aorta opened back up. They think they'll be able to move the clamp up higher and control the bleeding."
"But they're already up to the superior mesenteric artery. There isn't any place left for them to go." I argued with him.
"Exactly." I was disoriented.
"I don't understand, what does that mean then?" I asked, looking for answers to connect the puzzle in my head.
"It means they've just about run out of options." He asseverated. We looked at each other. Sinking in this new piece of information. Letting out a sigh, I looked down at my lap.
"I don't know what else to do."
"Wait, just wait." I couldn't quite make out which one of them said each thing. But the fact that this woman at the table was most likely hopeless, made me want to get out of here.
Just then, I felt Vennberg stand up and walk towards the side of the gallery, where a communication device was. I shot my head up to look at his actions. He pressed a button and spoke.
"Montgomery," both of the women's stares shot up to meet us. It's like they hadn't noticed that we had been here all the time. Dr. Montgomery gave me a curious look, probably trying to figure out where she had seen me before, and then focused right on the professor. "Try dividing the renal vein. That might get you above the fractured plaque." Dr. Vennberg suggested.
The woman looked unsure. "But she's exsanguinating. I don't think..."
"Just try it!" Vennberg let out in frustration. Looks like I wasn't the only one desperate to see the patient live.
Dr. Montgomery watched him for a bit, slightly affected by Vennberg's authority. "Okay. Scalpel." She said, while a nurse beside her handed the tool.
The professor went back to sit down next to me and focused mainly on the surgery. I followed his actions and we stayed like that, dead quiet, hoping for his suggestion to work.
I don't know how long we maintained like this, but soon enough he spoke up again.
"They're sewing in the graft now."
"Into the aorta?"
"Yes." He looked at me briefly, before motioning for me to look down at the OR.
"What's her BP?" Dr. Montgomery asked.
"100 over 60." A nurse spoke.
"Heart rate?"
"98."
"What's happening, sir?" I questioned anxiously.
"Ethan." He turned to me. Bright blue eyes boring into my light-brown ones.
"What?" I knew what he meant, but I just needed to hear it from his lips.
"Call me Ethan when we're not at Cooley's." Ethan. I smiled, grateful for this sudden wave of trust he was showing me. "It means that it's working." He finished, returning my smile with a half one, that made my insides melt.
"She's going to be alright, then?" I couldn't believe he had done this again. This woman was alive thanks to him. I don't know how many times I've said this, but he's a freaking genius. And I honestly couldn't wrap my head around it. I keep waiting for him to mess up or do something that would make me see him as a normal human being, but he never fails to amaze me.
"She'll be just fine."
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Too much medicine in one chapter?
I'm sorry, hehe.