Page 54 of Anchor
“Get me two more units in now,” Pete Walter barked, his forearms streaked red as he pressed QuikClot gauze into the wound. “Wide open, push it!”
Casey Reynolds leaned in, suction humming as he cleared the pooling blood. “Trevor, this isn’t muscle. It’s deeper.”
“I know,” Foley muttered, voice steady, almost too steady. He slid his hand inside the cavity, blind. When warmth surged against his palm, his jaw clenched. “She’s hit in a branch off the inferior vena cava. Blood’s pouring out.”
“Christ,” Pete hissed. “That’s why she’s tanking.”
“Pressure’s thirty systolic,” the anesthesiologist cut in. “She’s got nothing left. She’s coding if we don’t stop this bleed.”
Foley pressed deeper, fingertips searching, blood slick up to his wrist. His breath was harsh through the mask. “I’ve got the proximal end. It’s still flowing fast.”
“Clamp,” Pete snapped.
Casey shoved the tool into his hand, and Foley bit it down onto the vessel. The clamp seized, the flood slowing but not stopping. Blood still surged darkly around his hand.
“She’s still open distally. Find it, Pete,” Foley said.
Pete’s hands moved quickly, probing with ruthless precision, his gloves nearly lost in the red sea. He found the flapping edge, slick and jagged. “I’ve got it.” The second clamp snapped into place.
The monitor screamed again. “Pressure twenty-eight. You’re out of time.”
“Another unit in. Push it hard!” Pete barked.
“Running.”
Foley and Pete didn’t look up. Needle, thread, suture passed hand to hand. They worked, bent over the wound like men repairing a severed rope in a storm, stitch by stitch, pulling the torn vein together.
Casey suctioned constantly, giving them light. “She’s white as a sheet. Come on. Come on.”
“Pressure climbing… forty-two… forty-eight,” the anesthesiologist said, voice still taut.
“Hold it.” Foley’s fingers moved sure, his knots exact. He tugged the suture snug. Blood welled, but the flow had slowed. “Again.”
Pete tied the second line, his hands trembling but precise. The clamps held. The leak sealed.
“Pressure fifty-five. Moving in the right direction.”
Foley finally leaned back, exhaling once through his nose. “She almost bled out, but we’ve got her.”
Casey glanced at her face, drained of all color under the drape. He touched her arm through the sheet. “Hang on, Claire. We’re not letting go.”
“Hang another unit,” Pete said. “After we close, straight to ICU. Locked access.”
The alarms had quieted, replaced by the steady beep of climbing blood pressure. Sixty-five. Seventy. Stable enough to live through the transfer.
The room smelled like iron and antiseptic. Warmth clung to every breath behind their masks.
Foley stepped back first, the sutures holding, the clamps released. His gloved hands were soaked to the wrists. He peeled them away from Claire’s side and held still, as if making sure his own touch wouldn’t unravel what he’d just done. For a long moment, he watched her chest rise and fall with the ventilator.
Pete irrigated the wound carefully, slower now, no rush in his movements. He had the look of a man landing a plane that should never have been airborne. “You don’t patch an inferior vena cava,” he muttered quietly. “You sew a miracle and hope it holds.” He closed the incision.
Casey had gone silent at the head of the table, eyes fixed on the monitor. When the pressure line crept to seventy-five, he finally let out a low exhale. “Goddamn, Claire,” he whispered under his breath, “you almost left us.” He and one of the nurses bandaged the site.
No one moved for a minute. The anesthesiologist leaned back against his stool, hands tight on his knees. The fight had slowed, but the shock still sat heavy.
Foley pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the bin with more force than he meant to. His hands were still trembling, the tremor small but unmistakable. He pressed them flat against the stainless table, forcing the shake out of the abused muscles.
Pete’s eyes flicked up and met his. Both men had been here before, hands inside a body as the clock tried to run out on them. Both had pulled people back from the line, and both knew sometimes it didn’t go this way.
