Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Doctor/Nurse (11/02/06)
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TITLE: Cut and Shoot Angel | Previous Challenge Entry
By Janice Cartwright
11/08/06 -
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My upper lip felt quivery and under a scratchy collar the skin on the back of my neck was feverish. My limbs felt cold and detached. Somehow I kept walking.
I hadn’t a clue where I was going, only that I must not stop. Blind fear drove me forward. I knew something was after me, something innately so evil as to be the personification of all evil. I could feel my feet encased in unforgiving, hard leather and only knew they were making contact with the floor by the tap-tapping sound ringing in my ears.
And then a wide orb of white with a black ring around it appeared, encircled my head, then progressively grew smaller until it almost squeezed my brain in half. First I felt oddly relieved and safe, but then trapped and full of fear. And then blackness.
Someone was shaking me. “Dr. Boothe. David! Wake up! We need you on first floor ER. Bad Cut-and-Shoot case.”
“What?” I shook my head to clear it, vaguely remembering the nightmare, but enough of it to know that the name of the evil that pursued me was Work. It had been three nights and about that many hours of sleep since I first came on duty earlier in the week. . .
Just as it trundled through the OR double doors I caught up with the stretcher to see the basics had already been accomplished. The patient had her wounds cleansed and partially bandaged, and she was draped for surgery.
She was conscious, young, and Latino like me. A faint smile played around her lips. “I see she got the cocktail,” I threw over my shoulder heading toward the scrub area.
“No, not yet, Mark is on his way, though. Should be here any second now.” Betty’s voice carried through her mask as she drew on a new set of sterile gloves.
“That couldn’t be right,” I thought as I began to lather upper, then forearms, and wrists, rubbing my hands together methodically in the washing ritual. “What would someone in that kid’s miserable condition have to smile about?"
As if in answer to my thought question Betty spoke aloud in familiar, brassy tones, “Kinda' unusual kid. Bleedin’ like a stuck pig and she smiles this sweet smile at me while I’m trying to put a stopper in it.
Has a sense of humor too. Don’t get many like that in here, especially not when they’re sliced up like her. First thing she asked me was did I believe in P.B.S.?
“What the heck is P.B.S.?” I wanted to know as I grabbed another towel.
While I was scrubbing out the wound, she moaned a little then wiggled her eyebrows at me, “You mean you call yourself an ER nurse and you don’t know what P.B.S is?
“No,” I said, “I guess I don’t.”
“It’s Prayer Before Surgery, silly,” she managed to groan, making another face at me.
“Oh, well, I told her. If that’s what you meant, then the answer is, “Sure, Honey, I believe in P.B.S., I surely do. Trouble is, sometimes I forget. Not too many around here to remind me, either.”
She told me not to worry then, that she had already done P.B.S. and if I wanted to I could just do it in my head. “God hears prayers, even if we don't have courage to say them out loud.”
“Just for that,” I said, I think I’ll do P.B.S. as loud as I can. If somebody here don’t like it, that’s just tough! Then I threw my head back and let her rip. That was just before you waltzed in.”
“No wonder she was smiling,” I muttered before I made a quiet P.B.S. of my own. Betty had a voice that could raise not only the anesthetized -but the stone dead.
That Maria pulled through with flying colors I don’t think I have to tell you - and that I never had another nightmare with evil Work pursuing. Since Maria came into my life, work has a new joy, hard to explain.
I also doubt it’s necessary to mention from that day forward I never went to surgery without a good dose of PBS. PBS for the patient, the nurses - and for me.
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One word of caution: The over use of hyphens, they were distracting and hindered the writing instead of helping it. You write well. Keep it up!