A Blissful Nothing (The Blissful Series Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2020 M.S. Brannon. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission from the author. The exception would be in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or pages where permission is specifically granted by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and the events surrounding this book are fictitious. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons live or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Photo Credit: ShutterStock & IndieVention Designs

  Copy Editing: C&D Editing

  Proofreading: Cynthia Andersen and Georgette Geras

  Cover Design & Formatting: IndieVention Designs

  eISBN: 1230003691687

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  1

  Present

  “Doctor.” Jamie, the RN on duty, shakes my shoulder, awakening me from my catnap in the doctor’s room while my pager simultaneously sounds in my ear.

  I click it off and look down at the script, alerting me to the level one trauma arriving in a few, short minutes.

  “We have a multi-vehicle accident coming in. All four patients are potentially critical; one with possible head and neck trauma, and another struggling to maintain a pulse.”

  I rub my eyes as I sit up, feeling my adrenaline skyrocket and yank me out of bed. My exhaustion from my twenty-hour shift evaporates as my mind goes into doctor mode. I’m here to do one job and one job only. I am here to save lives.

  “What’s the ETA?” I query as I pull the door open and head down the hallway toward the trauma bays in the ER.

  “Six minutes, Doctor.”

  I jog down the halls, winding my way through the maze of long corridors until I’m outside the staff entrance of the emergency department. Then I push the doors open into the ER.

  To my right and in the middle of the space is the hub of the entire emergency department—the desk. Behind it, several nurses, admissions staff, and a few residents are found working on the computers or taking a quick breather. I slam my hand on the desk, getting their attention, and all eyes are suddenly on me. As attending trauma physician and surgeon, it is my job to organize the chaos that’s about to ensue.

  “We have four coming; two are highly critical. Come on; we need to get the rooms prepped,” I demand, already walking toward the trauma rooms located down the hall and left of the desk.

  The three residents on duty and nurses follow my command and are on my heels as we walk toward the sterile trauma rooms. There, the nurses scatter about, getting the instruments ready, as the residents spout out what they will potentially need to help the incoming patients.

  I walk from room to room, making sure everything is ready to go. And, before any time goes by, the paramedics are plowing into the ER.

  “Jamie,” I shout outside the room, getting her attention. “We will put the patient with the severest injury here.” I point at trauma bay one then say, “So on.” I move my finger down, pointing to the remaining trauma rooms.

  She nods in understanding.

  From an outsider’s perspective, it’s hard to determine what is the most critical. They all have immediate needs, yet there is always one who is in more dire condition than the other, and it’s my job to make that judgment call. It’s never an easy call to make, and I made this mistake once over the years. It will never happen again.

  I step into the other room, making sure the staff is getting ready for the soon-to-be busy morning.

  The automatic doors whoosh open, bringing in the frigid morning air with it, as the paramedics rush through the door.

  The first man in is lifeless on the gurney. A small, stout paramedic is thrusting her hand up and down on his chest, trying to keep his heart pumping. The other is holding an IV bag up as other hospital staff come to their sides, helping push the gurney deeper into the building.

  “Trauma bay one,” I shout, following behind the moving bed.

  My residents are amped up. Their adrenaline is pumping through their veins as they get set to save this man’s life. Two of them are only second year and, though they’ve learned a lot, there is still so much they need to understand when it comes to trauma and emergency medicine.

  The man is quickly shifted off the gurney as my staff get to work assessing the situation. Mike, one of the paramedics, is shouting out the potential injury as we get everything going.

  A resident takes over the chest compressions when I walk up to the body and start my visual assessment. I don’t normally interfere with the residents, as it is crucial to their learning to be hands-on. However, it will possibly have to be done with this patient. He has several, large contusions on his chest and belly, plus swelling in his abdomen—a potential sign of internal bleeding. There’s a large hematoma on his forehead, which is another indicator of his very serious, closed head injury and potential trauma to his brain. But, if we don’t get his heart working, then the other injuries really don’t matter.

  “What’s his blood pressure?” I shout to the RN on my right.

  “Eighty-seven over thirty-two,” she replies quickly.

  There’s no doubt that this man is dying. He’s had the medications he needs to support his blood pressure, yet it’s still dangerously low. Regardless, we need to get his heart going before we can do anything else to help him.

  “Hold CPR,” I shout, and the resident stops.

  We all watch the monitor. The sound is dull. It’s a gut-wrenching sign as the flatline sounds throughout the trauma room. No signs of life. We have very few seconds to react, to try to get his heart pumping again.

  “Resume compressions,” I tell them, and the resident restarts pumping.

  “Get the defibrillator.” My voice is calm yet commanding as I step up to the patient. I grab the paddles from a nurse then hold them up while she squeezes gel on the electrical panel. “Step back …” I quickly rub them together then place them on the man’s chest. “Stand clear for charging … two hundred!” I shout.

  “Charging two hundred,” another doctor replies. When I look up, it’s another attending physician and my counterpart, Dr. Leigh Daniels.

  “Stand clear. Shocking!” I shout, and the staff steps away from the body.

  I activate the paddles and trigger the electric shock. The man’s chest heaves off the bed then thumps back to the mattress. The room is dead silent. We all watch the monitor to see if we get a pulse. I study it, waiting for the beep from the machine, the sound that will tell me if his heart is beating again.

  Nothing.

  “Again!” I shout.

  The staff steps away.

  “Stand clear. Shocking.”

  He heaves again, but there is no response. The flatline still sounds from the heart monitor.

  “Last time … Charging three-sixty,” I command the machine to be increased. It’s our last-ditch effort to
get his heart started. He’s already been down for some time now.

  “Charging three-sixty,” Dr. Daniels shouts.

  “Stand clear. Charging!” I shout, looking down at this dying man.

  One final time, I place the paddles on his chest and trigger the shock. The man heaves for the third and final time. Then one of residents resumes compressions as I step back and assess the grave situation. There’s nothing, and when I look at the clock, I see he’s been down for thirteen minutes. Compressions were administered every second he’s been in here and while he was en route to the hospital.

  “Doctor Mezelle, MVA number two is pulling up now.”

  I nod, swallowing down my disappointment with this man. There is nothing more we can do for him. He’s dead.

  I look up at the time again and make the judgment call. It’s not what a doctor wants to do, and it’s hard, but he was too far gone before he arrived. There’s only so much we can do to help, and some people just can’t be saved.

  “Hold compressions,” I say to the resident. “Call it.”

  He nods and replies, “Time of death, three forty-six a.m.”

  “You need to locate the family and tell them he’s gone.” My tone is robotic and can be misconstrued by someone who doesn’t work in medicine. However, I have to keep myself alert and prepare to help the next patient.

  I shake off the dead, packing the pain of losing another person deep down in my gut where I hold all my pain, and walk away from trauma bay one. Once I pass over the threshold into bay two, I no longer feel the disappointment of not saving the first man and put all my focus on the next person.

  I quickly rip off my protective gown and gloves, to eliminate the transfer of fluids from patient to patient, and replace them with new ones. I then slip on a pair of clear safety goggles and a protective mask over my mouth and nose.

  When I walk up to the gurney, I see the man’s head is in a collar. He has a large gash across his forehead and down his cheek. His is fighting consciousness, going in and out of a state of delirium. The nurses are cutting his clothing off, exposing his torso and showing us the cuts across his chest and down his abdomen. I quickly note there is an old scar in the center of his chest from a surgery done several years ago. With the injury he’s suffered, he will more than likely go into surgery again, so we need to make sure his vitals are where they should before we can move forward.

  Not wasting a moment, I command, “I want a CBC, HBC, tox screen, and ECG, stat!” I clear my head of the previous case and feel the rush of adrenaline as I work on this man. “What happened to him?” I ask the paramedic who is hanging back as we work on him.

  “He went through the windshield and was found half on the hood of his car.”

  My stomach drops when I imagine the sight of seeing him like that.

  “He’s a lucky bastard to still be breathing,” the paramedic adds.

  “Brenda,” I shout to another nurse. “Call upstairs and tell them we are bringing up a critical patient needing a CT scan.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Brenda scurries to the phone located on the wall and dials radiology.

  I walk closer to the man, my heart pumping a million miles an hour as I get a better look at him lying on the bed, making sure my plastic eyewear is in place. I have a horrible feeling that I know this man, and if it is who I think it is, I might faint from the shock of it.

  I move closer, pleading with my gut to be wrong for once in my life. I need to know this is not who I think it is.

  I can feel the panic rise up in my chest, all the dark, deep-seeded pain starting to uncap when I see the telltale sign of this man’s true identity, like the old surgery scar in the middle of his chest, the one he never told me about. Then my side starts to tingle when I look at the tattooed script written down his side, where the laceration is oozing blood. My own skin starts to tingle as the memory of that tattoo starts to resurface. It plunges me back to the summer my life forever changed.

  I can’t stop myself, it’s like my hands are not controlled by the sensible part of my brain, the part that would shut down this disturbing curiosity and go back into doctor/robot mode. However, I can’t. They are fueled by my want to know if it’s him and fueled by my aching heart that wants to finally get closer after all this time.

  I lift my fingers and trace them over the script that we share, the script that was put there at a time when everything was new and exciting. We were on the cusp of a major life transition. A transition that made me hold on desperately to those final hours from being a free kid to a responsible adult. A time when all I had was him, and all he had was me.

  The black, scrolled words read, “Losing all control inside our unconsciousness of this blissful existence.”

  “Sir,” Dr. Daniels shouts at the patient, the patient I have confirmed is him. “Sir, what’s your name? Sir …” she continues to shout. “Does anyone know his name?”

  His name is on the tip of my tongue, and if I open my mouth, I will spill out my secret. I will show the residents and my co-workers my weakness, my humanity for this man. And, without another thought, I whisper aloud, “Dex Taylor.”

  “Dex Taylor!” shouts the paramedic simultaneously.

  My heart stops. He’s confirmed my words. The man dying before me is the man I was ready to give everything up for. The one person whom I was ready to abandon what was expected of me to have a blissful future within the unknown. But, as soon as the thought crossed my mind, he vanished, only to show up in my trauma room twenty years later.

  2

  Present

  My feet are frozen, my eyes locked on that tattoo inked into his side. It’s Dex.

  I haven’t seen him in over twenty years. Since the summer before I started college. Since the time I was ready to give it all up for him. Since the time he broke my heart, leaving me shattered in the middle of the street.

  My brain finally snaps out of its minor paralysis, and I once again return to the present.

  I jerk my head up and look at the monitors. His heartbeat is strong—eight-two beats a minute. I look down at his abdomen and see the large cuts. With one look, I know we need to get him into surgery to make sure he doesn’t have internal lacerations.

  I leave his side and walk to his head. The hematoma on his forehead will lead to a significant brain injury if left untreated. My heart thuds loudly in my ears at knowing how critical he is, yet I keep my feelings out of my way of getting him taken care of.

  “Dex,” I say, trying to get him to open his eyes and see me. “Dex, can you open your eyes?”

  He weakly does so, the blue in his irises darker than I remember, but just as captivating.

  “Look at me, Dex. You’re going to be okay. We have to take you to x-ray, to scan your body for internal injuries.”

  He moves his chin up then back down. Then he’s trying to speak.

  My mind is blown, because there is no way he should be awake right now, let alone talking. This gives me a glimmer of hope that his brain injury isn’t as bad as it should be for going through a windshield.

  His eyes, the one part of his body that give every thought of his away, dimly spark. The look he gives me is the same that he gave me when we first met—intrigue and curiosity. He recognizes me, which is starting to unravel me. I can’t let him destroy me again. I am not weak, not anymore.

  I harden my glare and clear the lump lodged in my throat.

  The slightest, lowest sound comes from his mouth as he tries to speak to me again.

  I lift the oxygen mask from around his mouth and lean in to hear his words.

  His tone is faint as he says, “Eva?”

  I look up over to my colleague, Dr. Daniels, who tilts her head slightly to the right, her curiosity masked across her brow.

  Then Dex murmurs, “I’m sorry,” and my eyes snap down to his.

  My throat swells as another bubble of emotion comes rising up. I swallow deeply, needing to keep my shit together. As attending physician, you can’t lose
your emotions in front of anyone. Not the patient, not the residences, not the other staff. No one.

  I lean down, putting my lips next to his ear, keeping my words private and only for him. “Yes, Dex, it’s me, Eva. Hang tight. We are going to take care of you.” Then I pop up and transition back into who I’ve been for the past twenty years—the determined, headstrong woman and the doctor I know I can be to save his life.

  I confirm all his vitals and shout to the staff, “Tell CT we’re coming.”

  I push the bed forward, and then we all rush from the trauma bay.

  ***

  The tests have been taken, with an outcome that is the best case for Dex.

  He has minor swelling surrounding his brain, but it’s not serious enough to have surgery. So, I focus my attention to the rest of the results as I scrub in before entering the operating room.

  I look through the window and wash my hands vigorously as Dex is being prepped for his exploratory surgery. I can’t believe it’s him. Why is he in Detroit? And what happened to cause him to get in an accident at three o’clock in the morning? And where the hell has he been over the past twenty years?

  I hold my hands up in front of me as I back through the swinging door and into the sterile operating room. The nurse drapes a gown over my body and ties it in the back while another nurse holds the gloves open for me to slip my hands into.

  When I walk up to Dex, I take a deep breath and clear my mind. I can’t see him as Dex right now. Otherwise, I will be overwhelmed and shaky. And a shaky surgeon is an unemployed surgeon.

  I don’t look at his face, keeping my gaze on his abdomen and chest. Then I destroy the ink he didn’t have before when I make the first incision to repair him from the inside out.

  ***

  Dex came through the surgery as best as he could. He had a laceration to his large intestine and a ruptured spleen, which was causing the swelling in his stomach and had to be removed. For the severity of his accident, he is still critical but stable. This is the best news we can offer at this time.