Intensive Care

Avianna got the text on her cell just before 1AM, still in her jogging suit and running shoes. She had just finished a couple-mile run, but she knew calls this late were never the good kind. She pulled out her phone and saw the text was a 911 Alcom and she cursed, immediately reversing her direction.

She shouted over her shoulder to Victor aka Sinister. "It's an emergency trauma call, I've got to go!" Her phone buzzed again, and she looked down, seeing it was from Thia. She stopped in her tracks. "Oh no. Vic, it's Trei. Come on, looks like we're both going."

It didn't matter what time it was or how long they'd already been out. She took off running at top speed, really letting it all out, booking it back to her car. She jumped in and switched it on while Sinister piled into the passenger side. Peeling out, she drove like mad to the hospital, showing that a trauma surgeon could get away with a lot in a pinch.

They had to part ways once she burst through the ER doors. She hailed the desk nurse as she was swarmed by staff, getting her scrubs, clipboards, and gloves as she ran for the trauma room, vanishing inside.

Agonizing minutes passed. The trauma room door's burst open and Sinister would see Trei being wheeled on a hospital bed to one of the big elevators. Avi jogged along beside it, stopping by Trei. "We're heading to surgery. I'm going to do everything I can."

Trei's condition was terrible. The wound on his side had busted open, and secretly she was glad, for no one else in the surgery room would be able to see that the old stitches were hers. His shoulder was dislocated, probably the easiest thing on the list to fix. Ribs had to be set, gushers in his guts had to be sutured, his knee and leg both had to be reset. If she was able to save the leg at all he was going to have a new kneecap. The man would never be able to walk through a metal detector again.

Once the internal bleeding was staunched, she went to work on his pierced lung. She sighed with relief. It wasn't too bad. She trusted her ER staff to keep track of all the beeping and blinking monitors while she focused solely on the life in her hands. The hole in his lungs was repaired, painstakingly and carefully. She felt like she was being tested. This man had become a hero during the park massacre.

Hour after hour she worked. Even with the lung repaired and the internal bleeding stabilized she couldn't relax, she couldn't slow down. She forced herself to breathe evenly, her staff keeping the sweat on her face from dripping into her patient.

Alarms started going off around them. Avi cursed, beginning to search. "Where? Where is he bleeding, dammit?"

And then she found it. His left kidney was ruptured. She cursed quietly as the staff cleared the blood and handed her fresh suture tools. She began to stitch. She could save the kidney, for now. Removing it was an option if it became necessary. Plenty of people lived full, healthy lives with just one kidney. His family would need to be checked to make sure at least one of them was a match. Just in case...

Trei seemed to stabilize again so Avi allowed herself to take a brief break. She got some water and massaged her hands before going back to work. The knee. It was going to be another labor all to itself. With help from her staff, they set the leg with screws and bolts. She could do nothing for his kneecap but replace it, as she had expected.

Last but not least, his dislocated shoulder was finally set, and the cuts to his face were stitched up. The man was wrapped in bandages and looked like a combination of Mr. Glass and The Mummy.

Exhausted, Avi let the nurses take Trei to a recovery room in the ICU while she stripped out of her blood splattered scrubs. She cleaned herself up and put on a jacket, then went out to speak to the family.