Chapter 6: Post-Operative Nutrition

Six cars on the harbor bridge meant nine patients in forty minutes.

Trauma Bay Two was already full when I came through the doors.

I tied my gown with one hand and called for the chart with the other.

A boy of about nineteen had a pelvis that moved when it shouldn't, and a woman beside him had a belly the color of a plum.

"Two to the OR," I said. "Page anesthesia. Get me the second table open."

A hospital security guard stepped into my path.

"Dr. Vaughan, I'm sorry, there's a man at the observation window who says he has to speak to you."

"Tell him I'm busy."

"He says he's the owner."

I looked up.

Declan Maddox stood behind the glass in a dark coat, with his hands in his pockets, exactly where Desmond had stood three years ago.

I had to stop myself from flinching.

"He can watch," I said. "He can't come in."

I took the woman first, because her pressure was dropping.

The surgery took two hours.

I found a torn mesentery and tied off the vessel bleeding behind it.

Then I did the boy's pelvis.

Then I found a second bleed that nobody had warned me about.

When I looked up from the final table, the window was still occupied.

He had not moved in four hours.

I stripped off my gloves and went out to the corridor, and he was already there with two paper cups.

"Your patients are in ICU," he said. "Both stable. Neither one is dead."

"I know. I put them there."

"You didn't look up the whole time."

"Looking up isn't in the contract."

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