“Thank you, Dr. Pierce,” I said, feeling a deep sense of peace.
But that peace was shattered exactly thirty-two minutes later.
I was sitting in the resident lounge, swallowing a lukewarm mouthful of black coffee, when the double doors of the surgical floor burst open.
The sound of frantic running filled the hallway, followed by the high-pitched page over the intercom: “Trauma team to the ER. Red blanket arrival. Pediatric automobile casualty incoming. Surgical team standby.”
My pager buzzed violently against my hip. I slammed my coffee cup down and ran into the hallway, joining the flock of nurses and residents rushing toward the trauma elevators. My mentor was already there, her face set in stone, pulling on a pair of sterile gloves as the elevator doors opened.
“What do we have?” she demanded of the incoming paramedic via the emergency radio.
“Massive multi-car pileup on the coastal highway,” the paramedic’s voice crackled through the receiver, sounding breathless and frantic. “A luxury SUV was clipped by a semi-truck. Multiple casualties. We have a pediatric patient in critical condition, severe internal bleeding, crushing chest injuries. But Chief—we also have a secondary transport arriving right behind them from the coast guard. A medical evacuation from a cruise liner just off the port.”
My heart stopped. A cold dread, completely different from the usual adrenaline of a trauma call, began to creep up my spine.
“A cruise liner?” my mentor asked, her brow furrowing as we stepped into the bright, chaotic lights of the Emergency Room.
“Yes, ma’am,” the radio relayed. “Apparently, two passengers from the same family involved in the highway crash were returning early from a Caribbean trip. They were fetched via helicopter due to an onboard medical emergency that occurred right after they received news of the highway accident. The stress caused a massive cardiovascular event in the mother, and the father is in severe shock.”
The automatic glass doors of the ambulance bay flew open. The first gurney came rolling in, surrounded by a swarm of paramedics performing active chest compressions on a young girl.
Right behind that gurney, a second team rushed through the doors, pushing a transport stretcher.
I stood frozen in the center of the trauma bay as the blankets were pulled back.
Lying on the stretcher, her skin a terrifying shade of gray, hooked up to a portable heart monitor that was flatlining in a continuous, agonizing beep, was my mother.
And standing right behind her, his clothes disheveled, covered in sweat and sea salt, his face twisted in a mixture of horror and desperation, was my father.
He looked up through the chaos of the ER, his eyes scanning the room for help, until his gaze landed squarely on me standing there in my surgical scrubs.
He didn’t look at me with anger anymore. He looked at me with a terrifying, wild panic. He lunged forward, grabbing the front of my white lab coat with both hands, his fingers trembling violently.
“Clara!” he screamed, his voice cracking over the sound of the emergency alarms. “You have to save her! Your mother’s heart stopped on the transport! The doctors on the ship couldn’t do anything! They said only the top surgical team here can repair the tear!”
Before I could even process the sight of my dying mother, the paramedic pushing the first gurney—the little girl from the highway crash—yelled out to my mentor.
“Chief! We’re losing the pediatric patient! Internal hemorrhaging in the thoracic cavity! We need an immediate emergency thoracotomy right here in the bay, or she won’t make it to the OR!”
My mentor looked at the little girl, then looked at my mother, whose monitor was still screaming a flatline. In a split second, she analyzed the room, her eyes darting between the two critical patients.
She turned to me, her voice cutting through the noise like a razor blade.
“Dr. Evans,” she commanded, using my last name with a gravity that made the room go completely still. “The pediatric patient requires my full, undivided attention. I cannot split myself in two. Your mother’s aortic wall is failing. There is only one other person in this room certified and capable of opening that chest to clamp the bleed right now.”
She pointed a finger directly at me, then at the dying woman who had told me I wasn’t a real doctor just two weeks ago.
“You’re up,” my mentor said. “Take the scalpel. Save your mother, or watch her die.”
My father looked at me, his eyes wide with a sudden, horrifying realization of what he had done, what they had said, and whose hands his wife’s life now rested in. My hands hovered over the sterile tray, the silver blade of the scalpel catching the harsh fluorescent light.
My mother’s monitor let out one long, unbroken, final tone.
