Peter Clement - The Inquisitor

The young resident lifted his eyebrows in a show of disapproval but kept silent as the ambulance roared into the hospital driveway, its siren dying to a deep-throated growl.

Jane lay shivering on the stretcher while faces bobbed above her like windblown balloons.

"Femorals in!"

"Type and cross six units- no, ten!"

"Two units, type O, up and running."

The voices came at her from the other end of a long tunnel. They sounded frantic. Always did, when one of their own came in, she thought.

"Still pouring blood."

"Systolic's down to eighty."

"Where's OB?"

Cold flowed through her.

The IV lines they'd jabbed into her arms, legs, and neck stung.

The catheter someone had rammed up her bladder filled her with a phantom urge to pee that she couldn't relieve.

And the pain in her belly pummeled her with the brute force of fists.

Not even Popovitch and Deloram had a moment to comfort her as they yelled orders and spoke excitedly to one another. That really made her afraid.

It also pissed her off. How dare they reduce her to a slew of pressure readings, blood counts, and chemistry parameters? And why should Deloram be here anyway? "Looking for a few words from the near-dead, Stewart?" she murmured, feeling strangely uninhibited and defiant enough to use his first name.

He started, his dark brows curling in amazement.

"Just kidding," she said. "At least now you noticed me."

"You sure you want me working on you?"

"Damn right, but don't you be thinking of your own problems. And quit staring at me as if I were already a ghost."

A muffled chuckle came from behind his mask. "You're something, Jane."

"How bad?"

"Hey, don't worry. I'm not about to let one of the few people around here who's still talking to me slip away."

Michael Popovitch appeared above her, a lab report in his hand. "You sure you don't take aspirin or blood thinners?" he asked.

"No." Her reply sounded like a moan.

"Bleeding problems?"

"None."

The pain returned. All at once she wanted Dr. G.

And Thomas. He continued to dart here and there, anxiety blazing out of his eyes. "Hang on, Jane," he whispered each time he came close enough to say anything. She thought of how they'd made love only hours earlier, and suddenly she'd never felt more naked.

Talk to me, damn it! Leave the numbers, tests, and needles to the others. Just hold my hand.

She started to spiral downward, her head lurching in a nauseating, off-center spin.

Oh, God, I'm going.

"Beta subunit's positive," a female voice called out, echoing through the room as if on a loudspeaker.

She didn't recognize it.

"Definitely got herself pregnant."

Bitch! Jane wanted to scream.

"Why's she still bleeding so much?" one of the residents asked.

"Retained placenta," Thomas said with the forced coolness he used when trying to sound calm and professorial. "We have to do a D and C, clean out her womb…"

Another flash of anger slowed her plunge into darkness, even buoyed her up. She wanted to grab him by what got her pregnant in the first place, and twist. Then she heard a woman's voice from out in the hallway that sounded as welcome as a distant bugle cry heralding the cavalry riding to the rescue.

"Okay, what have you got for me on my last night of call- my God, J.S."

Dr. Graceton came into view above her and leaned in close, grabbing her hand with a reassuring squeeze. "Okay, I need straight talk here," she whispered. "How long since the start of your last cycle?"

"Nearly two months." Her mouth felt full of cotton and didn't let her enunciate properly.

"Are you on any meds?"

"No."

Dr. Graceton leaned closer

"Did you try and abort yourself? Take something like RU-486 from Europe?"

"No, nothing-" She broke off with a cry as her uterus seized into another contraction.

Dr. Graceton frowned. "Sorry, J.S., but I have to ask."

"No, we decided to keep the baby."

"Oh, I see." Her frown deepened. "Then did you take anything by accident?"

"I don't think so."

"Do you use anti-inflammatories?n

"Sometimes, but-"

"Arthrotec or Cytotec?"

She shook her head, recognizing the names of drugs containing misoprostol, an analog of prostaglandin intended to block the ulcer-producing effect of arthritis medication. It also caused the cervix to open. She'd seen a number of women in ER who'd miscarried because they'd made the mistake of taking the pills Janet had just referred to. "No, nothing like that."

Dr. Graceton glanced over at Popovitch. "Any other lab results back?"

He'd just cranked up the bottom of the bed to auto-transfuse her with blood from her legs. The strain around his eyes drained the skin of color and made it seem as if he should lie down and do the same for himself. "Hey, Dr. Popovitch, lighten the mood," Jane told him with as much firmness as she could muster. "You're scaring me."

He looked down at her and must have tried to smile, because the lines at the corners of his eyes shifted slightly. "Sorry, Jane. Hey, I guess I always rely on you for that." He glanced back over to Dr. Graceton. "Biochem's okay. But even without the rest of the results, I can tell you right now her coagulation's off. She's hardly forming any clots."

"Then let's give her fresh frozen plasma," Janet said with an impatient flip of the hand, implying a no-brainer. She referred to blood that had not been separated yet into its individual components and would boost clotting factor as well as red cells.

He fired J.S. a wink. "Already thawing in the microwave, my dear."

His W. C. Fields imitation made her smile. It had always gotten a few chuckles and relaxed everyone as they worked. "That's better," she told him.

Stewart raced up to the table with a printout in his hand. "I got the other results," he said.

They huddled around it as if sharing a newspaper, and threw out the alphabet soup of acronyms used to describe bleeding disorders.

"DIC?" Thomas said.

Oh, God! Jane recognized that one. DIC was a dreaded complication in hemorrhagic shock- the acronym stood for disseminated intravascular coagulopathy and meant that she'd used up all her clotting factors with excessive coagulation throughout her blood vessels, even where she didn't need it. Bottom line, her chance of survival would be fifty-fifty. Plus the treatment had always struck her as desperately insane. They'd give her heparin to slow her clotting even more, in the hope this would spare the few factors she had left and allow them to work at the site of the hemorrhage. Not many of her patients with the same problem had survived. "I'm going to die," she murmured, or had she just thought it?

No one seemed to hear.

Dr. Graceton grabbed the report. "What are you talking about, Thomas? Of course it's not DIC. Only her INR is elevated. Platelets and PTT are fine."

More alphabet soup.

"Yeah, watch what you're saying," Michael added. "You'll frighten our J.S. to death."

"I taught you better than that, Thomas," Stewart piped in, his frizzy eyebrows lifting in indignation.

Thomas acted stunned. "Oh, right," he said. "Stupid call."

They're lying to protect me.

The bing of the microwave sounded, and in seconds the nurses added more maroon IV bags to the ones flowing into her, except these felt warm in her veins from the recent thawing. The rest of her remained cold to the core. She started to slip away again. "I'm going," she cried.

"No, you're not," Janet told her in a firm voice.

But she plummeted into free fall, and her womb seized in another contraction.

The other three moved out of earshot, where they continued to chatter and gesticulate.

"Pressure's down to sixty-five," someone yelled.

Thomas appeared at her side and grabbed her hand. "Hang on, Jane. I love you," he whispered in her ear.