On Call | Grey's Anatomy // Book 3 // COMPLETED

48 | Something From Nothing

"I sent the biopsies, the scans to three other guys." Nathan joined Jackson, Ben, and I as we stood outside Kamal's room, watching April talk to him inside.

I looked at him. "Any luck?"

"No."

"Well, I'd like to have been wrong." Jackson told him, "Hey, look, I'm sorry you got pulled into this, man. April can be-"

Nathan shook his head. "No, look, I know. She's The Machine."

"She's the What?" Jackson cocked a brow.

"Oh, that's what we call her over there." Nathan answered, "'The Machine.' It never slows down, never lets it get to her. Just makes everyone else want to work harder. When she decides on something, nothing's gonna stop her. You can't call that one off."

Jackson chuckled. "No, that's true."

"Thing is, she's usually right," Nathan said.

Jackson was silent for a moment before he turned to Ben. "Go find out what Callie Torres is doing right now."

Nodding, Ben took off to find Callie. I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I thought that we were gonna give this a try. Jackson explained to us how he was going to discuss amputation with Kamal so he wouldn't get his hopes up, but he was going to try his hardest to get rid of the tumor.

"So they will just be gone?" Kamal asked, "Both of them?"

"We would have to amputate them right...right about here, at the wrist." Jackson explained, "You see? Both sides."

Kamal looked down at his hands. "Will I still carry things?"

"Well, let's talk about that, buddy."

About half an hour later and we were taking Kamal up to the O.R. "You'll be here when I'm done?" Kamal looked to April.

"Yes. I promise." April comforted him.

"You sure about this?" Ben asked Jackson.

Jackson took a deep breath. "Nope. Not even a little bit."

"We'll have a soda waiting for you, okay?" Nathan told Kamal.

April gave Kamal a kiss on the forehead before the nurses took his the rest of the way in. "All right, guys, how are we doing this?" Callie joined us.

"Doing what?" April asked.

"I figure we'll just debulk the tumor from the dorsal surface, and you can show me what, if any, usable bone we can find," Jackson answered.

I looked to April. "There's been a change of plans."

"Yeah, judging by the scans...I'm not sure there's anything at all." Callie sighed.

"I know." Jackson agreed, "It just might end up being the world's slowest amputation, but can't hurt to try."

Once we were ready, Ben, Jackson, Callie, and I headed into the scrub room. They were letting me join the surgery, which I was very happy about since I had kind of developed a liking for Kamal. He was just so young and cute.

Upon starting the surgery, things weren't looking good. "I've got about sixty percent of bone structure over here." Jackson announced as he and I worked on one hand while Callie and Ben worked on the other, "How's it going over there?"

"I only see free-floating distal phalanges, and some of them are eroded by tumor." Callie answered.

"We're approaching the carpals...or what's left of them," Ben said.

Jackson nodded, "I'm looking for metacarpals over here."

"Do you see any viable bone at all?" Ben asked.

"Well, uh...damn it." Callie huffed, "Jackson, I'm s...I'm sorry. I'm just...there's nothing here. I-"

Jackson moved over to her side. "No, no, no. Wait. Just wait one second."

"Well, no." Callie told him, "There's no bone to work with. I mean, lookit. Look right here. There's fingers, and then there's nothing. I don't-"

"Come on. Come on." Jackson took a look for himself.

"Jackson, I think...I think that you were right."

"I don't want to be right, though. I just Let's keep going, please, okay?"

"Yeah, of course." Callie agreed as a nurse started up the bone saw.

Jackson looked to her with an angry expression on his face. "Put that down! We are working here! We're gonna keep going until we are sure that there is nothing left. Now, do not pick that up again unless I tell you to."

"Jackson, look right here." Callie's voice sounded hopeful, so I moved over to them, "Look. I found something. I found lunate bone. This is good lunate bone. The hamate bone's intact. There's the trapezoid...and There's the scaphoid."

I smiled. "That makes four good carpal bones."

"Which is not much." Callie reminded us, "And almost no metacarpal. But we'd have a base for a proximal phalanx, so that might regenerate. He is young, so-"

"Maybe we could sculpt the bone and graft the gap in between?" Jackson suggested, "We could wire them with rib grafts. I mean, then I could actually make something out of that."

Callie gasped out of nowhere. "Yes! Look! Look! That's a fifth metacarpal head! Look! Right there!"

"That's a hand," Jackson smirked under his mask.

"That is what we needed." Callie sighed in relief, "Under there, that's that is a hand!"

"We got a hand, people!" Jackson exclaimed as the room burst into applause. April and Nathan, who were sitting in the gallery, jumped from their seats.

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Once the surgery was over and Kamal had woken up, he was beyond excited when he saw his new hands. His smile was contagious and soon enough everyone in the room was smiling.

It had been a really stressful day, with almost everything that could go wrong happening, but we managed to push through and now this little boy was going to have a much better life.

It was the reason people become surgeons. Not only to save lives...but to change them as well.