stepped towards the gurney. “You can’t place that chest tube here, Dr. Brice. Take him to a trauma bay or an OR, stat!”
“Dr. Potter, there are no rooms free and I don’t have time to mince words. As you can see, this man has sustained crush injuries and has pneumothorax from a motor vehicle accident. He could die unless I do this right here, right now.”
“I really think—”
Gavin didn’t even look at her as he cut an incision in the man’s chest and inserted the chest tube. “Come on, damn you!”
Virginia watched the patient’s vitals on the monitor. It didn’t take long before the man’s blood pressure and systolic regulated and for the fluid to start to drain through the silicone tube.
“Great. Now we need to clear an OR, stat.” Gavin shot her a look. One of annoyance. He shook his head in disgust as the trauma team began to wheel the man off towards the operating rooms, his hand still in the patient’s chest.
All that was left in his wake was a spattering of blood on the floor from where he’d made the incision to insert the tube.
Virginia rubbed her temples and turned to the board and the investors. “Well, that’s our ER. How about we end this tour here and head back to the boardroom?”
It was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever said, but she didn’t know how to recover from this situation. In her two years as Chief of Surgery this had never happened to her before. She’d never had an emergency play out in front of the board in the middle of a tour.
Investors had never had to watch a chest tube be inserted in front of them before.
The stunned members nodded and headed out of the department, except for Mr. Edwin Schultz—the tight-lipped head of the board. Another thorn in her side. It was no secret that he thought the hospital was bad from a business perspective. He was the one holding Bayview Grace back, because as far as Virginia was concerned, Edwin Schultz wanted to drop the axe on her hospital.
“Dr. Potter, I’d like to speak with you about Dr. Brice in private.”
“Of course,” Virginia said, rolling her eyes when his back was turned. She opened a door to a dark exam room, flicked on the lights and ushered Mr. Schultz inside. When she had closed the door, she crossed her arms and braced for a verbal onslaught of tsunami proportions.
“What was that?” Mr. Schultz asked.
“A pneumothorax. The chest tube insertion probably saved the man’s life.”
“Can you be certain?”
“If Dr. Brice hadn’t have performed that procedure, the patient would’ve certainly died.”
Mr. Schultz frowned. “But in the middle of the ER? In front of the investors and other patients?”
“It wasn’t planned, if that’s what you’re implying.” Virginia counted to ten in her head. Her whole body clenched as she fought back the urge to knock some common sense into Edwin Schultz’s addled brains.
“I didn’t say it was, Dr. Potter.” He snorted, pulling out a handkerchief to dab at his sweaty bald head. He folded it up again and placed it in his breast pocket. “I’m suggesting that maybe you should have a talk with him about the proper place to perform a medical procedure.”
She wanted to tell Schultz that sometimes there was no time to find a proper room or an OR in trauma surgery when a life was at stake, only that wasn’t the diplomatic way and she’d worked so hard to become one of the youngest chiefs at Bayview Grace, heck, one of the youngest in San Francisco at the age of thirty. She wasn’t about to give that up. Job stability was all that mattered.
Her career was all that mattered.
“I’ll have a talk with Dr. Brice when he’s out of surgery.”
Mr. Schultz nodded. “Please do. Now, let’s go take care of the investors because if they don’t invest the money we need, the emergency department will have to be cut.”
“Cut?” Virginia’s world spun around, her body clenching again. “What do you mean, cut?”
“I was going to speak to you later about this, but the hospital is losing money. Many members of the board feel that Bayview Grace could make a lot more money as a private clinic. The emergency department is the biggest detriment to the hospital’s budget.”
“We’re a level-one trauma center.” And they had just got that distinction because of two years of her blood, sweat and tears.
Mr. Schultz sighed. “I know, but unless we get the investors we need, we have no choice.”
Virginia cursed under her breath. “And how do you feel, Mr. Schultz?”
“I think we should close the emergency department.” The head of the board said no more and pushed past her.
Virginia scrubbed her hand over her face.
What am I doing?
As a surgeon, she wanted to tell Mr. Schultz what she thought about shutting down Bayview Grace’s ER, but she didn’t. She held her tongue, like she always did, and her father’s words echoed in her ear.
“Don’t tick off the boss man, darling. Job security is financial security.”
And financial security meant food, home and all the necessities.
Virginia wanted to hold onto her job, like anyone did. She wouldn’t wish a life of poverty like she’d endured as a child on her worst enemy.
So she was going to hold her head up high and make sure those investors didn’t walk away. She was going to make sure Bayview’s ER didn’t close its doors so the people who worked in trauma didn’t lose their jobs.
Though she respected Dr. Brice and his abilities, she knew she had to rein him in to keep control of her hospital.
She just didn’t know how she was going to do that, or that she really wanted to.
“Where’s the family?” Gavin asked the nearest nurse he could wrangle.
“Whose family?” the nurse asked, without looking up from the computer monitor.
Gavin bit back his frustration. He knew he had to be nicer to the nurses. At least here he had them.
“Mr. Jones, the man with the crush injuries who had the pneumothorax.”
The nurse’s eyes widened. “In the waiting room. Mrs. Jones and her three teenage sons. They’re hard to miss.”
“Uh, thank you…”
The nurse rolled her eyes. “Sadie.”
“Right. Thanks.” Gavin cursed inwardly as he ripped off his scrub cap and jammed it into a nearby receptacle. He should really know her name since he’d been working with her for six weeks, but Gavin couldn’t keep anyone’s name straight.
Except
