Arsenic for the Soul (11 page)

She bit off her next words as a siren
screeched through the hall. Her schemes for Milo would have to
wait.

Vivian rushed to the trauma bay, where
she heard someone shouting orders. She quickly donned sterile
gloves, a mask, and a gown.

She examined the victim on the gurney.
An oxygen mask had been applied to his mouth. The bandages on his
chest were quickly erupting into red, sodden strips as though a
geyser was bubbling up from inside. The stabbing instrument would
have easily pierced the muscular walls of his chest and compromised
the organs.

Vivian glanced at the paper
ID bracelet around the patient’s wrist.
Dominik Ambroz.

“
What’ve we got here?” said
Dr. Crenshaw, sweeping into the trauma bay behind
Vivian.

Their eyes met and the look he shot
Vivian could have mortally struck down a man. Of course he
remembered her as the silly girl ranting about
tuberculosis.

Unfortunately for her, he reigned
supreme in the trauma room and she would be subject to his every
whim. He relished the control that came with his authority and he
expected nothing less than perfection. He knew how to jerk
everyone’s leash and add to their misery if they didn’t
comply.

“
Fourteen stab wounds to
the chest,” said the trauma nurse, shattering the tension between
Vivian and Crenshaw. “A hemothorax showed up on the
X-ray.”

Hemothorax. The word twisted Vivian’s
stomach. A hemothorax occurred when blood pooled in the cavity
surrounding the lungs, mostly as a result of penetrating chest
trauma. If the victim didn’t die of severe blood loss from the
rupture in the membranes, he would face the untimely threat of
impaired lung or heart function.

“
Let’s move fast and get
him intubated.
Now!
” The nurses scattered as though Crenshaw snapped a
whip.

Vivian stood still for a moment,
unsure of herself. Crenshaw skewered her with a stare and she
scurried off to fetch more bandages—anything to appear useful or at
least get out of the way.

“
BP’s ninety over
sixty!”

“
B positive blood is on the
way!”

The trauma crew scrambled for damage
control, everything from fluid resuscitation to changing the
blood-soaked bandages. Vivian glimpsed the wounds on Dominik’s pale
chest as they peeled away the dressings. The wounds were surrounded
by bruises inflicted by the hilt of a knife.

Dr. Crenshaw whirled on the trauma
team.

“
Where the hell is the
blood? We’re losing him!”

Vivian hurried to Dominik’s side to
comfort him.

She saw the startling awareness in his
eyes and he knew his life was hanging by a thread. She tried not to
project her worst fears as blood gushed from his perforated lung.
If she projected a façade of confidence, everything would be
fine.

“
It’s going to be all
right.” Dominik’s bottom lip trembled in what she decided was the
faintest of smiles.

Vivian took comfort in the up’s and
down’s on the EKG monitor. At least his heart was still clinging to
life, no matter how discouraging the odds.

A trauma anesthetist prepared an
injection of propofol. The medication would induce a partial
paralysis to allow them to proceed with the endotracheal. Finally,
the man’s eyes slid shut and the team swept into action.

“
Ready to
intubate!”

A nurse slid the laryngoscope blade
into Dominik’s throat and inserted an endotracheal tube. The
ventilator would pump air into his lungs while the anesthesiologist
listened through a stethoscope to monitor the position of the
tube.

“
We need to evacuate the
hemothorax!”

“
I can’t stop the
bleeding!”

“
Prep him for an emergency
thoracotomy!”

“
Take over for her,”
Crenshaw said, nodding at the nurse compressing his chest. Vivian
rushed over and began to apply chest compressions.
One-two, one-two. Come on, hang in
there!

His flesh felt cold and slimy as she
pumped. Vivian tried to focus on the mechanical tasks around her.
She saw Milo setting up an IV line for a blood
transfusion.

Vivian watched as a nurse yanked out a
tray with scalpels, rubber spreaders, and tissue forceps. There was
no time to prepare the patient’s skin or apply surgical
drapes.

Crenshaw’s scalpel cleanly sliced
through the muscle above the fifth rib. Vivian was struck by the
brutality of the operation as the flesh easily parted. She almost
pulled her hand away as the skin turned inside out to viscera. She
felt detached, almost not physically there in the room with the
dying young man. She was just a pair of hands trying desperately to
massage his heart. The opening in the chest widened as a nurse’s
scissors snapped through fat and muscle.

“
That’s the wrong way, turn
it around!” Crenshaw snapped as a nurse applied the rib spreaders,
a garish-looking device composed of two retractable blades. “Open
it all the way up, let’s go!”

Crenshaw grasped the Gigli saw and
began to cut through the sternum. The buzzing instrument filled the
air with bone dust. When the sternum split, Vivian saw the massive
hemothorax surrounding the lungs.

She gaped in wonder at the huge mass
floating in his rib cage. They inserted the chest tube and a
sucking noise erupted inside.

The blood draining through the chest
tube shot out in bright scarlet. The sight struck Vivian as
appalling, obscene even—like liquidated viscera. It didn’t resemble
the blood that should be circulating through Dominik’s
veins.

“
It’s arterial
bleeding!”

“
Soak up the blood!”
Suddenly a sterile towel was thrust into Vivian’s hands. On
impulse, she tried to stem the tide of red burbling forth. The
warmth washed over her hands, sending a jolt through her flesh. It
was the most horrifying kind of warmth because it contained the
very life and essence of another human being. She felt the vitality
carried in the blood like tiny, electric ripples.

By this point, the hysteria in the
trauma bay reached its breaking point. Nurses were shouting, the
cardiac monitor was screaming, and crash cart supplies littered the
floor. Worst of all, blood was everywhere.

“
Where is all the goddamn
blood coming from?!”

“
I think I see it!”
Crenshaw said, maneuvering the chest tube. Silence fell over him.
“Fuck! It’s the aorta!”

Vivian could only imagine the damage
caused by a blade nicking the aorta. Time would be of the essence
to stabilize Dominik and prevent hemorrhagic shock from setting
in.

Still, Vivian didn’t know how Crenshaw
would let her get close enough to assist. Worse, she didn’t even
know how to save the man dying before her eyes.

“
Quick, give me the
pericardial pledgets!” Crenshaw barked.

Vivian raced to the crash cart and
frantically sorted through the instruments, trying to look like she
knew what she was searching for. Suturing needles and clamps
spilled through her fingers but, for the life of her, she couldn’t
figure out what pericardial pledgets looked like.

“
BP is seventy over
sixty!”

Crenshaw’s voice thundered across the
trauma bay.

“
Pericardial pledgets
now!
”

“
Here!” Vivian held out
what she assumed were the pledgets, and to her surprise, Crenshaw
accepted them.

With a grunt, he quickly sutured the
damage in Dominik’s aorta.

“
He’s waking up!” Sure
enough, Dominik was stirring from his propofol-induced trance. “Who
administered the anesthesia? There was nowhere near
enough—”

Crenshaw’s eyes widened when he saw
the stitches tear in the aorta. Distended veins throbbed on
Dominik’s neck and his breath rushed out in a piercing
scream.

Scarlet blood arced across the ceiling
in arterial spray. Vivian screamed as it struck her in the face
like a wet punch. Blinded by the crimson deluge, she tried
pitifully to apply a towel to the source. She couldn’t see Dominik
under the sea of blood but she felt him flailing with deranged
motion. She shrieked as the cardiac monitor pealed.

Vivian only felt sickening warmth
where he once lay. She was drowning in its oily grasp as it drew
her deeper in.

Dominik’s jaw slackened and his eyes
became glass-like as death reaped its prize. Vivian gazed at the
pool of crimson gathered on the floor and choked back her
vomit.

“
He’s gone,” Crenshaw said,
staring at the half-dissected corpse. He looked up at the sound of
gagging and saw Vivian trying to choke back her sickness. If looks
could kill, she would have succumbed a thousand times to his
disgust.

Vivian didn’t remember leaving the
trauma bay. Suddenly, she was standing in the bathroom, staring at
her ashen face in the mirror. Dried blood mottled her hair and
added a rosy complexion to her face. She looked down at her hands
crusted in Dominik’s blood. It was a familiar sensation, given her
notorious start to her career as the Red Widow. How many times had
she drawn blood at the request of perverse clients?

After all, she was so accustomed to
inflicting pain for payment. Vivian hoped she would change that
course during her tenure at the hospital. Even now, her efforts
seemed to result in more harm than healing.

She crumpled to the bathroom floor as
defeat pressed down on her chest.

“
No…
” she said, her voice cold with defiance. “I’m helping people.
I was doing the best I could back there. I’m not the Red Widow
anymore.”

She refused to label herself a bad
person anymore. She shed any negative labels that once clung to her
when she crawled out of the Prague alleys and reunited with her
family. That part of her past held no sway over her
life.

She was a good person with a caring
heart, not the lost and bitter youth she was a year ago.

Furiously wiping her eyes, she took
one last look in the mirror. She thrust her head in the sink and
scrubbed the blood out of her raven hair. She didn’t give a damn
that her blurred eyeliner betrayed her tears. She launched across
the bathroom at a brisk pace and shoved through the
door.

She immediately collided with someone
standing outside. Still keeping her eyes fixed to the floor, she
muttered a half-hearted “sorry” and sped away. She put the exit in
her sights and marched ahead at full speed.

She just wanted to rush home and
collapse on her bed. Nothing sounded sweeter than shutting her eyes
and drowning in sleep, where death and pain couldn’t haunt
her.

Vivian couldn’t take another second of
being in the hospital today—perhaps not for the rest of the
week.

As the exit loomed over her, she heard
her name being called several times.

Leave me the fuck
alone.
She turned around to confront
whoever she accidentally ran into.

She was stunned by a pair of ice blue
eyes.

“
Milo!” The young man
disarmed her with a smile, which unsettled her more than a little.
No man had ever slipped through her defenses so easily. She felt as
transparent as a puddle of water before him. She swallowed several
times and tried to force the words out of her throat, but only
silence followed.

“
Vivian! What’s the
matter?”

Dominik’s corpse loomed in her mind,
that ghostly vision of his life cut short.

“
I…I couldn’t do anything
to save him,” she sputtered. The cloying scent of blood made her
reel toward a janitor bucket. She felt Milo’s hands on her
shoulders, someone to anchor her steadfast to reality. She smiled
in gratitude, but the spark didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“
I was there, too, Vivian.
I was trying to set up the blood transfusions. We were all doing
our best to keep him alive. You did everything you could. I’m sure
everyone could see that.”

A violent sob rose in Vivian’s
throat.

“
Here, let me tell you a
story about my time in Budapest. Just stay here with me and calm
down.”

Vivian leaned against his shoulder as
his words painted a picture of the nightlife capital. She didn’t
even realize she was rocking back and forth in his arms.

He described a beautiful chapel to her
until she stopped shaking.

“
Maybe the next time I go,
you can join me,” he said. His story at an end, he put her at arm’s
length.

“
Come on, why don’t I take
you to dinner sometime and I’ll tell you everything about my
travels? Better yet, if you aren’t too busy, I know a place with a
splendid view at dusk.”

Vivian managed to smile between the
tears welling in her eyes.

“
That sounds lovely, Milo.
Thank you.”

“
Don’t mention
it.”

Vivian almost laughed at the tender
moment unfolding between them. This was hardly how she imagined
their romance blossoming—crying in Milo’s arms after a
gut-wrenching disaster in the ER. She still smelled like
antiseptics and death. Perhaps it is true what they say about
miracles happening in the most unexpected ways, not to mention
ridiculous.