“Nick,” I croak out, my throat like sandpaper.
“Okay, Nick, can you tell me how this happened?”
“Fucker stabbed me in the gut.”
He nods as he shines a light in my eyes. “I’m Dr. Evans. We’re going to take care of you.”
“Alright people,” the doc shouts to the others in the room. “Let’s move. Looks like a stab wound in the upper quadrant. Pressure dressing applied, but there’s still bleeding. Vitals?”
“BP 90/50,” a voice says from behind me.
“Nick, where is the pain?”
“Left side . . . all the way up to my shoulder.” I grimace, then lick my lips. “So thirsty.”
He probes around, then presses my stomach, and I scream out as my back arches off the table.
“Just try to relax. We’re going to give you something for the pain.”
“BP dropping, 80/50.”
A nurse wraps a tourniquet around my biceps, then the prick of a needle. “IV in. Starting fluids wide open.”
“Ultrasound scanning.” Someone else on my other side holds a wand over my stomach.
"Perihepatic space clear... Pericardium... clear. Wait, here it is. Perisplenic space... massive fluid. Looks like a splenic laceration. Large amount of fluid in abdominal cavity.”
He pushes on my stomach again, and I groan. “Looks like a splenic injury.”
“Vitals please.”
“Heart rate 140, BP dropping 75/40. We’re losing him, Doctor.”
“Spleen is bleeding out. Push one gram of TXA. No time to type-match. Call the blood bank. We need uncross matched O-negative on standby. Trauma protocol.”
Their words and phrases float over me as my eyes dart from side to side.
The doc leans over me. “Nick, stay with us.”
I blink, struggling to keep my eyes open.
“We’re taking you to surgery to repair the damage.”
Movement, then lights pass overhead at a dizzying speed. I squeeze my eyes shut and envision Cheryl and Portia,begging with any strength I have left to see them one more time. We bang through another set of doors, and they angle me into a smaller, tiled, freezing-cold room.
“We’ve got a thirty-two-year-old male with a ruptured spleen from a stab wound. He’s hypotensive and tachycardic.”
Another team surrounds me as they shout orders and spit out more words and phrases I don’t understand.
A woman in surgical gear rests her hand on my shoulder. “Sir, you’re going to be fine, but we have to transfer you to the operating table.” Then she looks at the nurses on my other side. “On my count. One, two, three.”
They lift me onto a hard surface so narrow, my arms fall to the side.
Another masked face hovers over me. “I’m Dr. Chen, your anesthesiologist.” He examines the tangle of tubes coming out of the IV in my arm. “You’re in good hands. Just close your eyes and relax.”
I stare into his face, and Sal’s ghostly premonition of me dying alone shivers through me, then nothing.
CHERYL
