“I’m sorry about my mistake. We’re spread so thin here,” Perkins said. “And trust me, I understand.”
“I’ll collect every medical student I can spare, and I’ll come down myself. If I can lend a hand, I will.”
“Awesome. Come to the trauma pod.”
It only took a quick page to collect her medical students, excluding Doug, who was needed, and lead them down the stairs. The staff elevators might have been closer, as one set opened up right by the junction of the cafeteria and ER. However, if the ER was overflowing, they needed the elevators more than Lillian did.
Dr. Perkins had not been joking—there was an entire nursing home being housed in the ER. Based on the scent of smoke and burned skin, it wasn’t rocket science to guess there had been a fire.
Barely through the doors, they almost collided with the plastic surgery team, led by a sullen-faced Dr. Daniel Steadman. They had a burned elderly man on a gurney, likely en route to the OR.
Lillian controlled her instinctive desire to hide. Daniel Steadman was a beautiful African American man. As attractive as he was, he could also be angry, unforgiving, and relentless, especially if you crossed him—like Lillian had.
He must have had bigger fish to fry because he stomped by without acknowledging her.
The peds team was practically wading through a pool of techs, nurses, and firefighters, trying to find the charge nurse in the trauma pod. The charge nurse came from the front trauma bays in time for Lillian to drop off the medical students.
“Where can I find Dr. Perkins?” Lillian asked.
Nurse Mariana said, “She’s the blonde by Room 24 in the huge scrubs.”
Her description was apt because as Lillian got closer to the suggested area, she saw Dr. Perkins was practically drowning in her scrubs.
“Are you Dr. Perkins?”
If she didn’t know better, Lillian would have thought this blue-eyed short woman was twenty-two, but that couldn’t have been possible.
“Yes, and you are?” Dr. Perkins peeked from behind a pile of charts taller than her head to take in Lillian’s much better fitting scrubs.
“Hernandez, pediatrics. I dropped off my remaining four medical students.”
“Thank you. I know it’s stripping your service even further to the bone.”
“We discharged a lot yesterday, and I got some residents from Doctor Row. No one from family med.”
“It was a fun walk this morning. We're the only ones crazy enough to do this. I heard the roads might be getting plowed, so help should be on its way.” Her speech was stilted slightly because she kept clicking on her computer, signing orders.
“How many admissions do you have?” Lillian felt bad for her.
“Infinity.”
“There’s only a hundred beds in the ER.”
“But they added fifty hallway beds. In addition to the nursing home fire, there were several car accidents, including a crashed firetruck. No kids, though."
"Federal holiday," Lillian said.“If it hadn’t been one, it would have been a snow day. Do you have a hundred admissions?”
Angela checked her list. “Only thirty-five.”
“Thirty-five. And you’re the cards fellow, not internal medicine?”
“Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis,” the cardiology fellow sighed.
“It is best to endure what cannot be changed?”Lillian translated to Perkins’s surprise. “I’m Puerto Rican, Spanish is Latin based.”
“Should have read more Spanish books and less classics,” Perkins said.
“Is there anyone I could help you with?”
