We found out later he’d taken a payoff from the Taliban to steer a high value convoy into the kill zone. Graves’s face twisted in a snal. Emmes. I remember the name. Intelligence oversight denied everything. They said he was a ghost employee. He vanished two days after the bombing. He didn’t vanish, Sarah said, her voice shaking with suppressed rage.
He’s downstairs. He’s wearing a three-piece suit. And he was shaking hands with Dr. Sterling. Why is he here? I asked the desk clerk, Sarah said. Robert Emmes is the CEO of Eegis Medical Solutions. They’re the new vendor supplying the hospital with prosthetics and surgical equipment. Graves laughed a dry, bitter bark.
Of course, the man who blew our legs off is now getting paid millions to sell us the replacements. It’s perfect. He looked at Sarah. We handle him later. Right now, I have a war to fight in that operating room. You get me through this surgery stitch, then we go hunting. The operating room was a landscape of gleaming steel and blue drapes.
The air was frigid. Dr. Evans, the young resident assigned to perform the fasciottomy, looked like he was about to vomit. His hands were shaking as he scrubbed in. Up in the viewing gallery behind the thick glass, Dr. Sterling stood with his arms crossed, watching like a vulture, waiting for a carcass.
Sarah stood by the instrument tray. She wasn’t just observing. She was scrubbing in as a surgical tech. Dr. Evans, Sarah said, her voice low and steady. Look at me. The young doctor looked up. His eyes were wide with panic. I can’t do this. Sterling is watching. If I mess up, my residency is over. The infection is too deep. Maybe Sterling is right.
Maybe we should just amputate. Stop, Sarah ordered. It wasn’t a request. You aren’t fighting, Sterling. You are fighting the enemy. The enemy is the bacteria. The territory is the leg. You are the commander here. She handed him the scalpel. In the field, we don’t think about careers. We think about the next 10 seconds.
Make the first incision. I’m right here. Evans took a breath. He nodded. He lowered the blade. The surgery began. For the first hour, it was routine. Evans opened the compartments of the thigh, releasing the pressure. The smell was horrific, the rot of the infection. But Sarah didn’t flinch. She anticipated every move, slapping instruments into Evans’s hand before he even asked for them. Then the monitor screamed.
“Bleeder!” the anesthesiologist shouted. “Bp is dropping 80 over 50.” Evans froze. A jet of dark blood was pulsing from the wound, obscuring the field. I I nicked something. I can’t see the source. Suction. I need suction. The suction wasn’t fast enough. The blood was filling the cavity. It’s the femoral branch.
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