Bloody Beginnings

Blood sprays from the man’s chest like a macabre fountain. He had taken it upon himself to remove the large chunk of jagged metal shrapnel from his right side, just under his pectoral muscle which had revealed that the metal had punctured his lung. Now, every breath out sprayed blood onto whoever was standing close enough to him.

“Get me some packing!” A female doctor in blue scrubs with brunette hair pulled back into a messy bun, shouts across the resuscitation room. A nurse grabs packets of gauze from the supply shelf and rips them open as she jogs back to the hospital bed with the writhing man on it. Doctor Laura Grey nods to the nurse, a quick thanks as she snatches the packing gauze from her hands. She stuffs 3 wads of the white material into the wound. It was enough to stop the fountain, but it would not last long. He needed surgery; and he needed it now. He yelled out in agony, begging them to stop, even though they were helping him.

Another doctor was working on the man’s leg that had a nasty compound fracture, the bone poking out in a near right angle to the direction of his foot. The man was not making things easy either. He would need to be intubated before surgery, but his violent wriggling was making even simple actions to help him extremely difficult and trying to talk to him loud enough to be heard over all the other screams of agony and grief, yells and machines beeping was nearly impossible. Doctor Laura Grey leaned down close to the man’s head so as he could hear her over the din.

“Mr Weathers, we are going to be putting you off to sleep for a bit. But you need to try and stay still while we give you the medicine to do that. You are completely safe with us, we will take over everything for you,” Laura says in a calm, even and clear voice, speaking over the noise of machines and shouts from other doctors and nurses working on people from the same catastrophic train derailment. The man looks up at Laura with wild panicked eyes but the softness of her own seemed to instil the peace they needed to put the oxygen mask back over his mout-h and nose while the solution to put him over to sleep was pushed into his cannula.

After a moment or two his body slowed then came to a stop which gave them the chance to take over his breathing and pull his foot into a more natural position.

“Right get him off to surgery as soon as poss–” Laura starts to instruct but is interrupted by new voices coming from the ambulance bay entrance.

“Move, move! We have a male, approximately 15 to 18 years of age. Involved in a street brawl with around two dozen others. He’s been stabbed multiple times with a bladed article of unknown length. We’ve counted, at least, 15 penetrative wounds, mostly to his stomach, left side and upper left thigh. The upper thigh is what’s given us the most trouble on the way over. We suspect that his femoral has been hit because of the sheer amount of blood pouring from it. We had to pack it, tourniquet it and dress it. He has a current GCS of 7, was an 11 when we got to him,” a paramedic reels off as they wheel the teenager into the A&E department of the Royal Victoria Hospital in the middle of Belfast. Three nurses and two doctors walk alongside the trolley as it is manoeuvred past medical staff running from bay to bay on a very chaotic Tuesday night.

“Get him in resus 10!” Laura shouts as she yanks back the curtain. There was already blood on her scrubs from the man in bay 7 but there wasn’t enough time or doctors to go and get a fresh pair of scrub bottoms. She had had just enough time to rip off the thin-plastic protective apron and grab a fresh pair of gloves when she had heard the buzzer, to indicate that another ambulance had just parked up outside. “Get him blood matched please, and I want an accurate count for the number of wounds,” she moves around the busy scene with ease, taking her small torch from her breast pocket. “Do we have any ID?” Laura asks as she lifts each of the teenager’s eyelids and briefly shines the light in both eyes to check for pupil dilation. There was a slight change in pupil size, but it was a good sign that he was hanging in there.

“Provisional. Name is James O’Brien, DOB is May 14th, 2007,” a nurse manages to read the rigid plastic card after wiping it clean of blood.

“Not how I imagine he would’ve wanted his birthday would go,” Laura mutters to herself. “Thank you… do we have a blood match yet?” She calls out. A nurse comes running to the bay, breathless with sweat beading on her forehead.

“Laura, he’s AB+,” she takes a deep breath. “We have none in stock,”

“Then get him some O neg,” Laura doesn’t look away from the monitors that are quickly being hooked up to the teen. When the response is silence, Laura glances towards the nurse who, ironically, is as white as a sheet, the blood having drained from her face. “What?” Laura asks and the nurse edges her way around the bed and medical staff working on the teenager, to her side.

“There is none…” the nurse whispers.

“What?” Laura repeats, blinking slowly.

“Because of the train accident and how many needed blood… we’ve got no stock left,” she admits quickly and quietly. It takes extra time to process the words coming from the nurse’s mouth.

“We… have no blood?” Laura asks and the nurse nods. “Have we contacted The Mater and The City?”

“Yes, but it’s going to be around twenty minutes before they get any to us,”

Their conversation had piqued the interest of a few of the near-by medical staff, who looked at each other in brief flashes of horror.

“That’s time this lad doesn’t have,” Laura’s mind races, as options spin around her brain like a hurricane. Then her eyes land on the cannula in James’ arm and the blood soaking through his dressings. “Someone get me a blood bag, and transfusion kit!” No one questions her orders and two nurses rush off to the stock room.

Laura removes her bloody gloves in a much practiced move and tosses them into a medical waste bin then grabs a fresh pair and a tourniquet. She ties it around the upper part of her left arm and begins to open and close her hand. A vein immediately makes itself known, and she waits for the nurses to come sprinting back. Laura opens the packaging of the new cannula and takes a steadying breath before inserting the needle into her arm. She had done that action so many times on patients that she got the needle in the right place the first time.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her colleague, Doctor Ryan Burnside, hisses across the teenager.

“He’s going to die if he doesn’t get some blood into him. I’m a universal donor,” Laura says as if she were listing dinner options.

“There’s normally a few steps in between…”

“Do you want him to die?” Laura looks him dead in the eyes, raising a questioning eyebrow. He breathes out and gives a small eye roll. Laura nods, knowing she had won the argument. She continues to set up the transfusion kit with the help of one of the nurses who had brought it to her.

Blood begins to flow from Laura up into the empty blood bag where it gathers for a minute or two before moving down a separate tube into the arm of the teenager, James. This meant that Laura was hooked up to him and unable to do much other than instruct and, even though she should be sat still, she couldn’t help cleaning away blood and stitching the smaller stab wounds but what she had done would be enough to save the young man’s life… at least until the backup blood arrived and he headed off to surgery where he would, briefly, be out of her hands and in the hands of the surgeons.

It had just gone 9a.m. by the time Laura plonked herself down in the driver’s seat of her car after one of the worst night shifts that she’d ever had and one that Belfast would be feeling for a long time, having never experienced such a train related catastrophe. Nights like that made her seriously question why she had become a doctor but those thoughts were always fleeting and work was the last thing she wanted to think about before the miserable drive home. The bonus was her bed was waiting for her to drift into a dreamless sleep.

Just as she was about to put her car into reverse a melodic shrill sounded from Laura’s bag. Sighing heavily, she put the handbrake back on and reached into her bag. She grabbed her phone just in time to see that the screen said private number. She often got private number calls, it came with the territory of being a doctor but if it was important they would ring back. So, she shrugged and dropped her phone onto her passenger seat thinking they might just leave a voicemail.

Barely a minute later and the phone started ringing again. Laura let out a groan in frustration, slammed on the brakes and grabbed her phone.

“Hello?” She asks, trying to keep the anger from her voice but didn’t quite succeed as the person on the other end hesitated.

“Miss Grey?” A nervous sounding man asked.

“Doctor Grey… but yes?”

“Good Morning. My name is Carl Patterson, I’m a family solicitor at Tennant and Patterson’s and… I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But your Great Aunt, Martha Kerns, has passed away. I’ve been left in charge of her estate and your name features,” he paused. “Are you available on the 2nd of June at 9a.m. to attend the Will reading?”

Laura sat in stunned silence, her weary eyes staring off into the distance.

“Look Mr. Patterson. I’m not in the mood for whatever scam you’re pulling,”

“I can assure you that this is no scam. You are listed as a recipient of this Will,” Carl sounded rather aggravated at being questioned.

“Sorry. So, say again… I’m in someone’s Will?” Laura asked while squeezing the bridge of her nose.

“Yes, your Great Aunt, Martha Kerns,”

“I’ve never heard of Martha Kerns. Are you sure you have the right Laura Grey?”

Laura could hear the solicitor inhale deeply. “Yes. I’m absolutely positive that I have the right person. So, are you able to attend?”