I gape at her. I have no words.
None.
“Do we have a deal?” she asks.
I swallow back the lump in my throat and nod.
“I need to hear it,” she says.
Leanna Campisi Ivanov stands, switches her sleeping baby to her non-dominant shoulder, and shoves her right hand out.
We shake on it.
“We have a deal.”
26
EMMA
“BP’s dropping.Get me a stat bag of O-neg!”
“He’s crashing. Start compressions!”
I’m pressed against the gurney, trying to keep my hands steady as blood pools under my gloves. Someone yells for another syringe, the surgeon calls out an order I barely catch, and the monitors won’t stop shrieking.
Mel shouts from the head of the bed, “He’s only sixteen, Emma. Don’t let go.”
“I’m not,” I say, voice shaking. “We need to get him to OR, now.”
“His airway’s going. Bag him!”
A paramedic bumps my shoulder, nearly knocking the IV line from my hand.
“Sorry!”
“It’s fine, just hold his arm up higher, like that?—”
Time blurs.
There’s shouting, metal clanging, and blood everywhere. Everything moves too fast but seems slow at the same time.
We do everything we can, but his stabbed wounds have punctured his vital organs so badly. When the heart monitor finally goes flat, nobody says a word. The surgeon tears off his gloves and swears under his breath.
Out in the hallway, the boy’s mother screams—a sound I know I’ll never forget.
Later, I find myself crying in the break room, head in my hands, wiped out to my bones.
It’s always sobering to lose a patient, but kids are extra traumatizing.
I’man empty shell when my shift ends, feeling like a mindless zombie walking to the train with a bagel I’m not hungry for.
The city blurs past the window. I try to disappear into the rhythm of the tracks and not think about how helpless I felt, or how much I just want someone to hold me.
I haven’t heard from Liam in weeks.
Weeks.
After that incredible night together, it’s like he’s just moved on.
