Deliver Me

by Farrah Rochon

The blaring police sirens were giving her a headache.

Monica slumped her head against the steering wheel and tried not to scream.

In the true fashion of her unbelievably bad luck, she would get in a fender bender this morning, making her late her first day on the job. It didn’t help that the granny she rear-ended appeared to be a pro at traffic accidents. The woman had the police on speed dial. Of course, the call to her lawyer had taken precedence over the authorities.

Great. Monica’s insurance would go through the roof.

She really, really wanted to scream.

The officer, who had apparently graduated from the police academy ten minutes before responding to the accident, strolled up to her window.

“Are we done here?” Monica asked, not giving him a chance to speak.

“You’re free to go, Miss Gardner, but you’ll need to make yourself available. I have a feeling you’ll be hearing

from Mrs. Gauthier’s lawyer sometime today.”

Wonderful.

“You people do realize this is a minor accident, right? Her car doesn’t have a scratch on it.”

“She says she’s having chest pains from the sudden jolt she received when you rear-ended her.”

“Chest pains, my ass,” Monica muttered under her breath. She didn’t have time for this. “Look, I need to get to work. Tell her lawyer to call away.”

She put her car in drive and took off down Jefferson Davis Parkway. A flutter of excitement lifted Monica’s stomach as the deep brown bricks of Methodist Memorial Hospital came into view.

Moving to New Orleans was the smartest thing she’d done in a long time. She’d already fallen in love with the city. Despite the trauma the city had sustained from last year’s storm, evidence of its rich, colorful history poured out of every crevice, from the antebellum mansion she’d visited over the weekend, when she’d gone exploring up the Mississippi River, to Jackson Square, only a few blocks from her French Quarter apartment.

Monica had learned that the Quarter, as the locals referred to it, was one of the city’s highest points, so the flooding that had devastated most of New Orleans hadn’t reached it. Monica was grateful it had been spared. She adored the neighborhood’s quaintness; she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in the city.

For the past two nights, the sweet music wafting from the funky little jazz club across the street had lulled her to sleep, leaving her with dreams of a tall, dark trumpet player ready to light her world on fire.

That was about the only place men showed up these days—in her dreams.

Not that Monica was complaining. Lord knows the one man she’d allowed herself to get close to had ripped her heart out and stomped on it like an Indian rain dance.

If she wanted to be honest, Monica could admit that Patrick’s departure hadn’t come totally out of left field. Al-though they were together for six years, they had never shared the all-consuming, heart-stopping love Monica had witnessed between other couples. But Patrick had been a good social match. The son of a prominent businessman, he had the breeding and pedigree that made her mother’s boat float. The fact that he didn’t provide Monica with the happiness she wanted didn’t really matter.

Despite their unfulfilling relationship, Monica still missed him.

Stop that, she chided herself. She did not miss him.

Patrick Dangerfield was a thousand miles away, living with his perfect new wife and perfect new baby in a perfect house in St. Louis. She had not left Missouri to bring thoughts of him to Louisiana.

Monica pulled into her parking space. The rectangular sign still read RESERVED FOR DR. MILLGRAM, the ER attending she had replaced. According to Dr. Slessinger, Charles Millgramhad evacuated with his family to Houston, and like a lot of other people who left during Katrina, had decided to stay. Dr. Millgram’s choice to remain in Texas had been Monica’s saving grace. When her best friend, Nia, told her about an opening she’d found on an Internet job board for an emergency room doctor at a New Or-leans hospital, Monica couldn’t get to the phone fast enough.

Monica set the car alarm and started across the covered parking lot. She stepped out of the rows of cars and had to jump back when a black Range Rover turned the curve, going at least ten times faster than it should in a place where there was constant foot traffic.

If there was one thing about New Orleans that didn’t impress her, it was the driving. Everybody on the road should have had their licenses revoked a long time ago.

The ER’s glass doors opened, and Monica headed to-ward the large square station in the middle of the emergency room.

“Good morning, Dr. Gardner,” the nurse Dr. Slessinger had introduced as Patty on their tour of the hospital greeted her.

“Good morning, Patty. Sorry I’m late. I had a small fender bender on the way in.”

“Are you okay?”

Monica waved off the nurse’s concern. “It was hardly anything. But don’t tell that to the sweet little grandmother I hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if she came rolling through those doors, claiming I gave her a heart attack.”

Patty grimaced. “One of those, huh?”

Monica nodded. She turned to the large dry-erase board hanging above the nurses’ station. “I’ll take the laceration in room three.”

By midday, Monica had seen half a dozen patients. It was a good thing she’d been prepared for a full workload. Unfortunately nothing could have prepared her for the eight-year-old with stomach flu—thus the spanking-new pair of peach scrubs the charge nurse had so graciously loaned her. Someone had run upstairs to get a pair of green scrubs—the color delineated for doctors—but Monica didn’t have time to wait. She could hear the wailing of the ambulance signaling the arrival of yet another patient.

Monica left the room she’d ducked into to change clothes and met the EMS team at the ambulance bay.

“What do we have?” she asked the driver as he came around the side of the rig. The other paramedic pulled the double doors open, and they lifted a gurney and placed it on the ground. A very pregnant woman lay upon the flat surface.

“Call came through about twelve minutes ago. Thirty-two weeks. Complains of severe abdominal pain. She has a good bit of swelling in her lower extremities.”

Monica helped guide the gurney into the first available examination room, while the EMT listed the woman’s vitals.

“Any meds?”

“Only your normal prenatals.”

“Good job,” Monica said with a nod, releasing the medics of their duty. “Get a monitor on the heart going and dip her urine,” she called out. Monica quickly scrubbed at the large basin. A nurse slipped gloves over her hands, then Monica went around to the panting woman’s side.

“I know it hurts,” she crooned softly. “What’s your name?”

“Sharon. Please, help my baby,” the woman pleaded.

“Don’t worry, Sharon,” Monica reassured her. “Do you know the sex of the baby?” Monica asked, trying to gear the frightened woman’s mind to more pleasant thoughts.

She nodded. “A boy. We’re naming . . . him Andrew . . . Andrew Michael.”

“Oh, I like that.” Monica smiled as she checked the patient’s vitals. She’d turned to check the black and green screen on the fetal monitor when a series of beeps sounded throughout the room.

“Doctor, her BP just shot up to 220 over 118.”

“Sharon?” Monica positioned the stethoscope earpieces in her ears and made quick work of pressing the flat end to the woman’s chest and stomach.

“Rapid heartbeat,” Monica said. “Sharon, can you hear me?” She performed a deep-pain test by rubbing her knuckles at a point on the woman’s sternum. Sharon responded with a jerk. “Sharon, is there ringing in your ears, or do you feel nauseated at all?”

The woman gave a weak nod.

“Any dizziness?”

Another nod.

“It’s preeclampsia. Get OB down here. We need an emergency section.” Sharon shook her head, tried to moan a protest. “I’m sorry, but you have a very serious condition,” Monica explained. “We need to get the baby out as quickly as possible.”

“He’s...not ready,” Sharon said in a meek whisper. “It’s too early.”

“Thirty-two weeks is more than enough time,” Monica assured her. “Don’t worry, Sharon, he’ll be fine.”

The woman’s head fell back onto the table.

“Sharon?” Monica tried the pain test again. This time the patient didn’t respond. “Okay, this baby needs to come out now. Prepare for a section.”

The three nurses stopped. They all stared at her for a second before one asked, “Shouldn’t we wait for OB?”

“Not unless you want a dead mother and baby on your hands. OB can take over when they get here.”

A second nurse pushed over an instrument tray. Monica tore away the drape, unveiling an array of shiny chrome surgical tools. She had just made the five-inch horizontal slit across the underside of the woman’s protruding belly when the room’s double doors burst open.

“What do we have?”

Monica didn’t raise her head. “Thirty-two weeks with preeclampsia. I’m performing an emergency C-section.”

“Who the hell are you?”

This time she did look up, the hostility in the voice surprising her. “I’m—”

The man in green scrubs didn’t give her a chance to finish. Instead, to Monica’s growing astonishment, he pushed her out of the way. She stood still for a moment, suspended in shocked outrage.

He—whoever he was—barked out orders the nurses followed with unfailing precision. Monica couldn’t help but feel a twinge of admiration at how quickly the doctor had taken control of the situation. She tore the bloodstained gauze gown from her shoulders and turned so the nurse could drape another over her, but when she took a step forward with the intention of assisting, the doctor shouted, “Stay back!”

Just who did he think he was talking to?

Monica watched as the masked doctor quickly but gently pulled the bluish infant from the mother’s belly. He applied two clamps to the umbilical cord and snipped.

The baby was so small. The tiny ones always pulled at her heart.

A nurse took the infant and placed him in a plastic incubator that had been wheeled down from Maternity.

“Get her to the OR,” the obnoxious doctor barked. He whirled around, facing Monica. His deep chocolate-colored eyes were blazing. “Are you out of your mind? What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“I was—”

He cut her off. “Do you think we allow nurses to per-form surgical procedures?”

“Nurse?”

“Clean out your locker and get the hell out of this hospital. I’ll make sure you never work at another medical facility in the entire country.”

Monica tore the mask from her face, preparing for full combat. Her adversary took a visible step back.

“Dr. Holmes,” Patty said, “meet Dr. Monica Gardner, the new attending in emergency medicine. Dr. Gardner, this is Dr. Elijah Holmes, OB attending.”

He stood there staring at her. After a long moment, he stretched out his hand. “Dr. Gardner.”

Monica refused to take it. Instead she crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. “Exactly where do you get off coming into this emergency room with that kind of attitude?”

“Excuse me?”

“Asking me what I think I’m doing? Telling me to clean out my locker?”

“I thought you were a nurse.”

“I’ve only been here one day, and even I know the nurses at Methodist Memorial wouldn’t put a patient’s life in jeopardy that way.”

“I saw someone in nurses’ scrubs performing a Cesarean. What was I supposed to think?”

“I would assume, as a doctor, you’d have enough common sense not to automatically conclude that it was a nurse performing the procedure.”

“How could I—”

The doors burst open, interrupting his comeback.

“We need this room. We have a MI in full arrest.”

Monica forgot about the pigheaded doctor with gorgeous brown eyes and focused her attention on her next emergency.

Dr. Holmes would hear from her later.

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