The laughter and smiling faces now turned to somber professionalism as all the members of the orchestrated cast assembled to their stations. For the rest of the group, it was a time of harried chaos as the roadway disaster descended down upon them while the members of the Flight Team thought of it as just another challenge to their capable talents.


Looking across the stretcher in Trauma Room # 3, Garrett felt right at home with Danni as her nurse. The surgeon’s eyes sparkled as her mouth turned up into a smile underneath the mask she wore. It pleased her to have been paired with such a nurse.


The tall woman was finding herself to be very lucky lately, and wondering what her lucky charm truly was. Standing there, waiting for her patient to arrive, Garrett began to believe that it was Danni who was making all the difference in her life. ‘I’m going to have to think about this. Could she be my pot of gold?’ The surgeon thought back to something that her mother had always told her when she was growing up. ‘When you least expect it, there your leprechaun will come. You’ll know it by the color of the gold.’ Then her mother would always wink at her then laugh as if she knew what was waiting for the daughter that she loved. Garrett smirked as she watched the fluorescent light dance over the golden blonde hair of the nurse. She stood almost mesmerized by it.


"Gar, is something wrong?" Danni grew concerned by the woman’s concentrated stare.


The chuckle sounded in her voice. "Nope, not a thing wrong at all. I was just admiring the color of you hair."


The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "Okay!" Danni giggled like a schoolgirl for a moment as she questioningly looked at the surgeon. "Hey," the nurse caught sight of the Medic wheeling in the stretcher, "trauma’s here."


The brisk steps of the Medics delivered the patient to their room with an air of efficiency. There was more work to do and little time to do it in. The blunt facts of the patient’s role in the ongoing disaster were stated and the patient transferred to the stretcher inside of the room. With their job done, the Medics retreated and readied themselves and their equipment for the next patient.


The surgeon mulled over the facts as she began her primary survey of the blood soaked patient. The darting eyes keyed the surgeon into the panic that held onto the woman while the gasps and attempts at words provided enough to say that she was exchanging air on her own. By the look of the blood that covered the patient, Garrett knew there was an arterial bleed coming from somewhere. Her eyes moved quickly over the pattern of the stained clothing, trying to discern the source. The blood splatters were all in a downward motion causing Garrett’s trained eye to move further up the patient’s body.


There, atop of the woman’s head, was a rather large bulky dressing whose telltale smatterings of coagulated blood were evidence enough of what would be found underneath it.


"Danni, set me up a tray for suturing! She’s got an active bleeder under that dressing." The surgeon positioned herself at the head of the patient as she pulled the dressing away to take a look. The spurting, bright-red stream pumped its way from under the wrap as it left marks along its path. The crimson droplets splattered as they struck the protective shield the surgeon was wearing. Blue eyes squinted in reaction to the spray. Garrett kept looking for the source and within seconds found it. "Looks like it’s the temporal artery." She grabbed the sterile gauze that Danni held out to her and pressed it on the site, trying to stop the flow of blood.


The patient was aware of her loss of blood. It wasn’t hard to see the red staining her clothing or feel the warmth of the flowing life source. "I’m gonna die." The hysteria was setting in even more now. "Do something! Chris, oh my god! Chris!"


Danni leaned in to the patient so that it was easy for her face to be seen. "You’re in good hands, ma’am. We’re not going to let you die. Just hold very still and let us do our job. Okay?"


"But Chris…I have to know how Chris is."


The patient’s eyes bore into the nurse with such intensity that it sent a chill through her body. Danni took her hand and held it. "Chris was in the car with you?"


"Yes! I need to know…it...it can’t end this way. We’ve been together too long. "


"Let me check. Maybe Chris was brought in already." Danni’s eyes conveyed her sincerity. She worked her hand loose from the patient’s grasp as she soothed her with gentle pats. Danni studied the patient’s face trying to put an age to the woman. The blood masked her features but if pressed for one, the nurse could safely say that the woman was in her fifties.


"Don’t worry, I’ll find out what happened to your husband."


The patient’s eyes widened at the statement. Her eyes then darted around the room as though she was fighting some inner battle with herself. "There were four of us in the car, Chris, Bobbie, Charlie and me."


"I’ll get the Social Worker to see if they’re here. Let’s get you taken care of first, shall we." Danni’s reassuring smile put the patient at ease.


The nurse stepped into the hallway outside of the Trauma Room. It was a frenzied scene from some hyperactive movie. The scurrying feet of Medics could be seen coming and going as they delivered their patients into the care of nurses and physicians. The hither to and fro maneuvers of the Technologists from the Radiology Department added to the chaotic scene as they moved from room to room with their cassettes waiting to be developed showing the various vital body parts of the trauma patients. The fact that there were not collisions of the parties involved was a miracle in itself.


Danni scanned the area only to find the Social Worker nowhere insight.


‘Alex, where are you?’ The petite nurse turned back into the room, grabbing a suture tray and Mayo stand, she readied the instruments for the surgeon to use.


"Ma’am, you’ve got an artery that needs to be sewn to stop the bleeding." Garrett spoke softly to the patient. "It’s going to hurt just a bit but I promise you when it’s time to suture up the cut we’ll be giving you some numbing medicine."


The scared faint voice of the patient answered her. "Okay."


"Danni, be ready with some 4x4 gauze, will you. I’m going to need you to blot the blood away after I put the first suture in."


The nurse responded and stood ready for her part in the procedure as she waited for the signal from Garrett to take the absorbent gauze pad off of the site. The delft maneuvering of the skilled hands of the surgeon went through the motions that she had practiced thousands of times in her career. With the hemostat held tightly in her right hand, she picked up the curved needle with the 2-0 Silk threaded through it. The sharp needle pierced the skin in a tethering act to tie off the pumping artery. Her right wrist rolled with a motion that worked the needle and thread upon itself in a knotting effect, the fingers of her left hand helping as they held the loose end of the silk thread. Each set of motions being paused only momentarily as the nurse blotted away any escaping material.


After a minute or two, the relaxed sigh could be heard coming from the surgeon. "There," she let Danni blot it one last time, "I think we got it stopped now." Garrett tilted her head from side to side, looking for any possible oozing of blood from the site.


Danni read off the data that was being displayed across the monitor. "BP 146 over 82, Heart Rate 102, and Oxygen Saturation at 96."


"Danni, give her a 500cc bolus of fluids. That will help to bring her heart rate down."


"Okay, Doc. We’ve got Lactated Ringers running wide open for that bolus." The nurse opened up the drip rate on the intravenous fluids, taking note as to how much was left in the bag. "You should be feeling a little better in just a little while. The fluid will help compensate for the blood that you lost."


"Thank you." The patient was feeling a little more at ease in the situation now. Her mind was still heavy with the weight of her loved one’s safety. "Could you please see if my Chris is here. I’m really scar…worried."


The surgeon looked over at Danni. "Go, see if you can find Chris for her. I’ll finish out the secondary survey and see if we can’t get her out of this room."


The nurse nodded, then looked down at the patient. "Be right back." She winked and went in search of Chris.


"I hope Chris is alright. I don’t know what I’d do without h…" the patient stopped before she could finish the word. "That nurse is so nice. You two work well together. Have you been doing that long?"


Garrett smiled underneath her mask, "It seems like forever sometimes but no, I just arrived in Pittsburgh eight months ago."


"Oh, I thought…maybe…"


"Let me finish your exam and by that time Danni should be back with word on the rest of the people in your car."


The surgeon went about doing her job as the patient wondered how she could have been so wrong about the relationship between the nurse and the woman examining her. She had seen the way they worked together, the silent communication. It was so much like her and Chris.


The expertise of the surgeon coupled by the quickly procured radiographs of the patient’s cervical spine, chest and abdomen soon brought Garrett to the conclusion that the head wound was the patient’s only real injury. Aside from a CT Scan of her head, there was nothing left but to clean her up and suture the laceration on the side of her face.