Chapter 39 WHEN TIME STARTED RUNNING OUT
Chapter 39 WHEN TIME STARTED RUNNING OUT
The next day at the office, Xavier walked through the corridors wearing his lab coat and stethoscope around his neck. He waved at the nurses who came to him.
“You look good,” someone said as he turned to the nurse who was admiring his coat. “And having your name printed on your chest, how does it feel?”
He looked at it and then smiled while looking at her.
“It feels good. It feels like I finally have a place in this hospital to call a home, if I can call it that.”
“Of course you can call it that,” she smiled. “Is it because of Aris Thorne? He doesn’t really matter in this environment. You are what matters.”
Xavier nodded as another nurse rushed over to them.
“Dr. Alexander, there’s someone looking for you down in the lobby and they say it’s an emergency transfer from Ms. Isabella.”
In that moment, his brows raised as he handed the charts in his hand to the nurse, then walked towards the elevators immediately.
The elevator took him to the ground floor lobby as he got out to hear the chaotic sounds of the hospital washing over him. He looked at the entrance to see Isabella standing close to a motorized stretcher with her mom on it. Two paramedics from the transport ambulance were adjusting the oxygen lines connected to the woman. Xavier hurried over to her.
“Isabella,” he smiled as she nodded, looking at him.
“We are here,” she said, pointing to her mother. “The ride was rough and from what they said, her vitals held up.”
Xavier looked down at the woman to see that her skin was translucent with her breathing shallow. He could feel the oppressive weight of her failing system, even without his instruments.
“Follow me,” he told the paramedics. “Room 412 has been cleared for her. Let’s move quickly.”
They wheeled her to the elevator as they got up to the floor, then walked into the room. The moment they got in, Dr. Craig entered holding a thick stack of medical files from her previous hospital. Craig then walked up to the bed, checking Isabella’s mother’s pupils and feeling the pulse in her wrist. He then let out a weak sigh as he looked at Xavier and then at Isabella.
“Well,” Craig said with his voice being grave, “the best thing is for us to start looking for a treatment for her. I have to be very honest to both of you,” he said, opening the file and pointing at the series of ultrasound scans. “If these are correct from the hospital that they’re coming from, she needs surgery ASAP. The blockage is massive. The tissue damage around the valve is expanding. No wonder people are refusing to work on her.”
Isabella leaned against the wall as her hands trembled.
“Can you do it?”
Craig shook his head slowly.
“The chances of her surviving an open-heart procedure in this state is incredibly low. And that’s minus the research that needs to be done on what kind of problem she’s having. We don’t understand if it’s a tumor, if it’s cancerous, if it’s not cancerous, if it’s just a growth. We don’t understand anything, but… from everything I’ve read, if we touch whatever is going on with her, it causes her blood pressure to spike and it also causes a few organ failures.
“This condition does not behave like anything I’ve ever seen before. But we have many doctors at the hospital and we haven’t tried doing anything yet. Although her body is just too weak to heal the incisions we might cause, I just want to put that out there that it’s a very dangerous procedure and there’s a very high chance your mother might not come out of this alive.”
“I am still working on the cure in the lab,” Xavier broke in with a calm and steady voice. “The cellular regeneration serum isn’t fully stabilized, but I think I can come up with a localized solution during the procedure to keep the tissue viable for the woman.”
Isabella breathed easily. She didn’t know who to believe, whether it was Dr. Craig or Xavier, but either way, she was willing to put her mother’s hands into the two doctors who were not rejecting the woman.
Suddenly, a loud alarm started blaring from the monitor as Isabella cried out, walking towards the bed.
“What’s going on?”
Xavier jumped forward, pulling out the blanket to show the patient’s stomach and legs. His eyes got narrower as he saw the swelling under her skin.
“She’s getting very sick. There’s a swelling in her lower body.”
Craig grabbed a syringe and pierced it down into the woman’s legs. As the monitor’s numbers kept going down, he then pushed some medicine from the syringe into the woman’s legs as he looked at Xavier.
“The pressure is stopping the artery. If we don’t do surgery now, she will die here. I’m sure the transportation had something to do with this, but we have no other choice. We need to prep her for surgery immediately.”
Xavier looked at Craig with very focused eyes.
“Get the main operating room ready. Call the team. We’re going in now.”
“This is a bad idea without the special medicine you’re cooking up,” Craig warned, yelling out the door for the trauma team to help them.
“It’s her only chance,” Xavier said before turning to Isabella, his hand holding her shoulder tightly. “You should stay here. We’ll do everything we can, and we will make sure we come out with the best news possible.”
“Can’t I go with you?” she asked as he shook his head.
“No.”
“She can stay in the waiting room,” Craig said as they started to roll her mother out of the room.
Isabella could only nod with her face white as the nurses got ready for the surgical room.
The clock on the waiting room wall became Isabella’s enemy as one hour turned into five and five hours turned into ten.
Inside the theater room, the world was bright with the sound of the ventilator and the reality of an exposed heart before Xavier. He stood over the table, his hands moving with a scary speed, leaving Craig and the assistant speechless.
“Slow down,” Craig said with his voice muffled under the mask. “You’re moving like you’ve done this before.”
“Suction,” Xavier said quietly, ignoring Craig. “The swelling is pressing on the left part of the heart, and we need to fix it before we can touch the valve.”
His movements were so precise that even the veteran nurses in the room stopped breathing for a moment.
“Her pressure is going down again, Dr. Alexander,” an assistant warned, her forehead wet with sweat. “We’re losing her.”
\[SURGICAL FAILURE PROBABILITY RISING\]
\[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE TISSUE STABILIZATION REQUIRED\]