Page 1 of Hearts on the Table
Chapter 1
Lainey
Time was standing still. Or maybe it had just slowed down dramatically, like in the movies when someone leaps over a table to fling themselves in front of a bullet, yelling a long, distorted, “NooOoooOooOooooo!”
At least, that’s what it felt like. It was hard to gauge, considering everyone around me had stopped moving, too. You could hear a pin drop in the Cardiovascular ICU. The shiny, pristine floors and mirrored windows all reflected my frozen face back at me.
Across the heads of my residents, my favorite nurse practitioner, Rija, widened her eyes at me. That, too, seemed to happen underwater.
The man before me wasn’t helping. Most days, I didn’t mind talking to Dr. Samuel Reese. His slow, methodical demeanor could be a pleasant change of pace to the hustle and bustle of the cardiac unit. Usually, interactions with him felt like pumping the brakes. Today, it was more like running into a brick wall.
“Sorry, could you repeat that?” Surely, I had misheard him.
Golden lashes lowered in the slowest blink known to humanity. The residents around us held their breath as Reese responded with: “Collaborate with Jones and come back to me with some different options.”
“What the fuck?” someone whispered from the back of the group. To my left, I could practically feel the smug satisfaction radiating off of Dr. Robert Jones, the other fellow in my year. I did my best to ignore him.
“I…” I faltered. Having never been denied an OR before, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. “The patient’s repeated episodes of angina make her a strong candidate for a bypass.”
Reese continued studying me, expressionless. I bit my tongue to stop from filling the silence with more details that Reese probably didn’t even need. I’d already reported everything on the patient, her comorbidities, and all the justifications for her surgery. Maybe he didn’t fully comprehend what I said. The man was a solid surgeon, but for all the reaction he was giving me, I might as well have been speaking to a bowl of oatmeal.
“I understand.” Reese paused here, blinking again. He tipped his head towards my colleague. “Jones recently had a similar case. He can help. Hold that OR till you consult with him.”
My turn to blink. Surely I was having some sort of end-of-shift, oatmeal-induced hallucination. In my three years as a fellow at Chicago’s Cedar Hospital, and five years as a resident here before that, no one had ever denied me an operating room. Ever. Certainly not Reese.
Dr. Whitaker may have been the hospital’s educational program director, but Reese, who was just a few years older than me, had taken on a lion’s share of voluntary resident and fellow responsibilities. Working at a teaching hospital like Cedar, everyone was expected to educate the next wave of doctors. Reese took it to a whole new level, personally shepherding the baby residents until they got their sea legs. Over the last few years, he’d taken more and more duties over from Whitaker, too.
He was basically the unofficial resident dad, at this point. I didn’t have a problem with him or his general slowness, sincehe usually signed off on my cases and approved every surgical procedure I recommended.
Until now.
One bracing breath later, I was about to calmly, and frickin’ politely, ask Reese where he got off. But the porridge wasn’t done.
“I also rescheduled you off that EVLP with Cooper next week. You’ll scrub in with Mitchell on a quad bypass, instead. Jones, you’re scrubbing in with Cooper.”
Jones sucked in a breath right as mine whooshed out. Sucker punched.
“I…I…You mean the Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion and transplant?” I asked, just in case there was another super cool and amazingly rare and complicated surgery Dr. Gabriel Cooper was performing next week, also called an EVLP…and I was just confused. “Dr. Cooper specifically asked for me on that case, sir.”
Because Dr. Cooperalwaysrequested me for his cases. Especially the cool ones. Only five years out of his own fellowship, and he’d made a name for himself by pushing the boundaries of surgical innovation. Almost daily, he dealt with complex, cutting-edge procedures, and I geeked out on them as much as he did. I was his freakingprotégé. Reese couldn’t just take me off the case.
“I’m aware. We’ll make it work next time. Jones, get with Cooper to review the patient files.” After one last expressionless look, Reese nodded, then turned to trudge down the hallway.
“Next time?” I muttered through gritted teeth. There wouldn’t be a next time for years. It was an advanced procedure, and Cooper had been putting all the pieces in place for this surgery formonths. And I was one of those pieces, darn it.
Around me, the residents scattered, as we always did after evening rounds. A few patted me on the back, or muttered apologies. Some of them looked as shocked as I felt. I could onlyimagine what was going through their heads.“Carmichael got taken off a case? Now I’ve seen everything…”
Jenkins, a first-year resident, placed a Snickers bar on my tablet. “Maybe you need this more than me,” he whispered before scuttling away. I’d slid it into his pocket not even an hour ago, after word had made it around that he’d gotten kicked out of an OR this afternoon for failing to exhaustively list the various causes of sepsis.
Residency was brutal, and we’d all had those crushingly bad days. I’d hoped the chocolate, and a little support, would give him a boost.“It’s Reese on rounds tonight.You know he’ll go easy on you,”I’d told Jenkins. More the fool, me.
“I’m assuming now would be a bad time to gloat?” Jones’ grin could have lit up the whole surgical ward.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Don’t take it so hard, Lainey. I’m sure there’s a good reason,” he cajoled as he followed me down the hall, undeterred by my stomping feet.
“Yeah. I’m sure it wasn’t personal,” I muttered, ducking into the break room. Rija leaned against the quartz countertop, waiting for her coffee to brew. Her big brown eyes widened as she pointed towards the main floor, where I’d just smacked face-first into failure.
