Blood Ties

Chapter 4

NEXT ON BLOOD TIES:

I walked through the hospital doors the next morning recomposed and rejuvenated from the drunken stupor I had slipped into last night. My headache had been calmed with a couple of aspirins and I felt as ready as I could be to tackle today's work. That was until I was met by a grim-faced Ruby who had been tasked with informing me of my former patient's state.

  "Regina. It's the Jane Doe from yesterday, her vitals have dropped, we don't think she's going to make it. We need you to make the call."

  "Emma. Her name's Emma."

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It took me very little time to scrub in, a ritual in which I had become concerningly familiar. I spoke to no one, for I feared what might leave my lips if I tried to. Besides Emma needed my attention, she required me to be fully present. 

Looping the surgical mask over my ears I shoved through the metal doors and entered into the operating room where Emma was positioned in the middle of the theater. Stepping into place amongst the other doctors I let out a calculated sigh as my gloved hands hovered over the woman's body. She was splayed out on the table, eyes still beneath their lids as her hands lay in a corpse like stiffness at her sides. This was a state that I was familiar with, one that I knew rationally I would be able to handle. The woman had succumbed to a comatose-like state and coupled with the deflation of her lung had reached critical condition. Considering the woman's age, weight, and the extent of her injuries, if we didn't intervene now she wouldn't leave the OR in anything but a body bag. But for once I was immobile, trapped in stillness as I stared down at her, my hands dropping as they began to tremble at my sides.

After a few seconds of this stupor I  heard a throat clear, and upon looking up at the five others surrounding me, I found several sets of eyes trained carefully upon my rigid figure. They were inquisitive, probing, wondering why the hell Regina Mills was so flustered over the routine procedure laid out before them. But they didn't understand, could not possibly... 

Of course, I was acting irrationally. For a woman founded implicitly on this virtue I knew how impractical, and dangerous my lack of objectivity was. 

The room seemed to settle then into an unpenetrable silence, the voices of the others blurring into unintelligible babble as the subtle beep of her heart monitor began to slow.

  "Dr.Mills!" 

The voice broke out through the stillness, the urgency of the tone demanding my immediate attention as I pried my eyes away from the young woman's face. 

Emma had flatlined, there no longer stirred a heartbeat within her chest.

The ringing resonated in my ears as I remained unmoving, undisrupted by the movement of the bodies around me as someone rushed to retrieve the defibrillation cart.

  "You have to make the call, Dr.Mills." 

He repeated urgently, his voice laced with undertones of annoyance. Regina was the most decorated nurse at St.Katherine's hospital, but this meant nothing to the head of OR. If she could not remain impartial, she did not belong here. 

  "Make the call Regina, or leave my operating room." He demanded.

Swiping my tongue across my lips beneath the mask, I felt my emotions began to fade as if carried away upon my breath. There was nothing to gain from letting myself become invested in the affairs of some stranger. She was nothing to me. But that did not mean I would not do everything in my power to revive this woman, to ensure she would see the birth of her son. I, after all, had a reputation to maintain.