CHAPTER TWO

LILLIAN'S POV

(A/N) Acacia is lilly's fake name

"Morning Acacia" ingrid the ever cheery barista greets me. 

"Morning Ingrid, how are you?" I ask

"I'm good," she says, handing me my coffee. This is the only place I buy coffee and I order the same thing everyday so they know what to get me.

"See you around, have a good day" I wave as I leave the shop.

I opened the door of my 2015 kia sportage and put my coffee in the cup holder then got in and drove off to The Adam's memorial hospital where i worked. I park in the employees parking lot grabbing my stuff and head inside the building.

I walk through the glass doors and into the building greeting the receptionist at the front desk in the waiting room as I head towards the elevator. I press the button for the 3rd floor tapping my feet impatiently as the door closes and the elevator ascends. I quietly sip my coffee and rest my bag at my feet.

The elevator stops and the doors open to the surgical ward where I work and I'm greeted with the smile of my best friend Tami who is a nurse here.

"Morning Tami" i say stepping out the elevator

"Morning Acacia, don't bother leaving the elevator we're going down" she says pushing me back inside

"Why?"

"You're needed in the ER"

"I can't be in the ER i have surgeries scheduled today"

"That's what i said too but the orders came from up stairs like way upstairs. There was a massive car crash this morning so there's a ton of patients, four of them came in with severe injuries, three are already in surgery but we're one surgeon short"

"What about the on call surgeon for the ER" I ask

"They can't reach him"

I let out a sigh as I leaned back in the elevator. So much for having an easy day today, no wonder I hate mondays.

"Who are the other surgeons working" i ask

"Dr Clarke, Jefferson, Daley and you" she answers

"Oh great the dumbass squad" i complain

"Don't worry everyone in this building knows you're the best surgeon here" 

"Thanks Tami," I told her with a genuine smile.

The elevator stops at the first floor and Tami and I step out to find the ER in chaos. Nurses and doctors rushing about, the waiting area is filled with patients, just what the heck happened this morning.

"Dr Simpson thank God you're here there's something wrong with one of the patients, she's having difficulty breathing" a nurse rushed up to me.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked as we hurried into the patient's room.

"I have no idea, she was fine the last i checked on her then all of a sudden she just started gasping for air and saying she couldn't breathe"

We rush into the room to see a pregnant woman on the bed gasping for breath. I quickly grabbed a pair of gloves and my stethoscope before rushing over to the patient assessing her. I noticed the rate of her heartbeat was higher than normal so I asked her if she was feeling any chest pains. When she barely nodded before throwing up on the floor, I immediately picked up on what was happening.

"Please lay back, miss," I told her.

"Tami grab me a 16 gauge syringe" 

"Do you know what's wrong with her doctor?" The panicking nurse asks

"Her larynx has shifted and she is suffering from tension pneumothorax" I tell her.

"Holy shit she's not breathing" Tami yells handing me the needle

"That's because her lungs has collapsed and and her heart is being pushed into her chest cavities"

I quickly Uncapped the needle and inserted it into the second intercostal space in the midclavicular line of her chest at a ninety degree angle. I slowly pull up the syringe draining the fluid from the patient's lungs, she immediately gasps for air as she begins breathing again.

"Whoa that was incredible" tami says in awe watching the lady starting to breathe on her own.

"It was nothing, any doctor could have done it" i shrugged

"She is able to breathe now so she should be fine but keep an eye on her in case anything else arises in fact just to be safe give her a full body examination and run a few tests".

The nurse nodded before grabbing the patient's file and heading to the exam room to do what I asked. 

"Ok, where's my patient?" I ask Tami, pulling off the gloves and disposing of them.

She led me further down the hall where the porters were pushing a man into the operating room. Doctor Daley looked up and saw me coming towards them, he stopped as we caught up to him. 

"Where the hell were you, Simpson? We've been waiting for you to start this man's surgery for half an hour!" he shouts.

"Excuse me? I'd advise you to watch your tone doctor Daley"

"If memory serves right which it does, I am scheduled for two heart surgeries one at 12 and the other at 4pm. My shift starts at 10:30am and I got here at 10:00am which is when I was made aware of this surgery so don't you dare act like you want to come at me. I may be the youngest surgeon here and you may have worked here longer than i have but incase you forgot your not my boss so if you'll excuse me i need to go scrub in for surgery" i say pushing past him with Tami beside me

I quickly and carefully washed my hands before putting on my PPE'S before heading into the operating room to begin the surgery

Two hours later I was able to walk out of the OR, my surgery had gone well and thankfully the patient is no longer in a critical condition. After cleaning up I went back to check on the pregnant patient from earlier. I found her resting peacefully so I decided to take a look at her file. I saw that she was one of the patients from the ten pile car crash this morning. It seems my assumption was right since she suffered from a tension pneumothorax.

A tension pneumothorax develops when air progressively accumulates under pressure within the pleural cavity. If the pressure becomes too great, the larynx shifts to the opposite hemithorax and this causes compression of the contralateral lung and great vessels. When the syringe valve is released air is gushed out but since the lady vomited fluids ending up in her lungs which caused her to stop breathing. 

Tension pneumothorax can be caused by poisoning, injuries or underlying lung conditions. She didn't show any signs of being poisoned and I didn't have the time to check her file for any underlying illnesses so I assumed it was caused by the injuries sustained in the car crash which is why I came back to check.

"How's she doing?" Tami asks from the doorway.

"Better now, i just came back to check on something" i reply putting the file back in place.

"You wanna go grab some lunch" 

"Yeah am starving plus my 4:00 surgery has been pushed to tomorrow and the one for 12:00 was put in place of the one at 4" i reply

"Come on let's go"

We grabbed our bags and left the ER heading to the cafeteria. Surprisingly the food here isn't bad at all which is why Tami and I come here to have lunch all the time. I didn't have much of an appetite so I bought a salad and a bottle of water while Tami got a large hamburger and soda. That girl has a hearty appetite. I remember one Saturday we went out together and she ate a whole large double toppings pizza by herself. It was so funny to watch. We sat at one of the tables eating when I asked.

"So how was the family dinner last night?"

She had told me last Friday that she was gonna have dinner with her family on Sunday night and kept on complaining about how she didn't want to go because it always ends in a disaster. Tami never really talked about her family to me until recently because she knew that I had none. She thought she was being inconsiderate since she was complaining about hers to me when I didn't even have one to complain about, but I told her it didn't bother me because I knew she needed someone to talk to. 

And it is true, that kinda stuff doesn't bother me. I mean yes i do think about whether or not my parents are still alive, if they had abandoned me causing me to end up in such a horrible life. And sometimes i dream about what my life would have been like if i had grown up with my parents as a normal regular human being. But that's all just dreams and wishful thinking. It's too late for those kinds of things now. All I have to do is live the life I do have now to the fullest.

"Arg, why do you have to remind me about it?" she groaned.

"That bad huh?" I chuckled.

"It was horrible! in fact, it's the worst family dinner in our history of family dinners and believe me when i say we've had some pretty bad dinners''

"Oh come on it couldn't be that bad" 

"Trust me it was. First it was my mom who kept comparing me to my sister who's happily married with kids or the fact that my sister went into the family business while i am wasting my time"

"Wasting your time? How is being a nurse wasting your time? you're helping people" i say.

"Well I'd love it if you could explain that to my mother. She had this whole life planned out for me but that's not what i want so we continually but heads"

"Well i can see how that would spoil a family dinner" i tell her

"Oh that's just the tip of the iceberg!"

"Wait there's more!?"

"Yup" she replied, popping the P.

"After me and my mom's usual round of arguing my brother and his mate- i mean girlfriend arrived and trust me when i say she is a real bitch and she's got my parents wrapped around her fingers"

"After dinner began she started complaining about how she thinks my brother is gay because they've been together for almost six months now and he still doesn't wanna have sex with her"

"What!" I ask choking on my salad

"Yeah! And after my brother kept on fending off assumptions of being gay and my dad telling him how no son of his will be gay my brother finally told them he's asexual"

"Well that explains the six months of no sex" i say drinking some water

"You'd think so wouldn't you, but my parents being the stubborn people they are didn't believe him and kept on insisting he was gay and that they were gonna send him to conversion camp"

"What!? You're not serious ``I all but yelled.

"As serious as the pneumothorax that lady had this morning"

"They do know conversion camp is no joke right. The shit people go through at that place is unfathomable"

"I know," she sighed.

"But why don't your brother just break up with his girlfriend and move out or something" 

"It's not that easy Cia, it's a uhm, it's an arranged thing and it could cause a whole lot of damage for him and our entire family if he leaves her. Besides he's just sixteen years old he can't pick up and leave his home"

"I see"

"I feel bad for him though he is so young and has to be going through all this. Its hard when your just discovering yourself everything is confusing and without the right support system it could all go downhill very fast"

"So true I just hope Isaac stays strong and doesn't let our parent's bullshit break him. Besides i plan on breaking him out of that place anyway there's no way I'm letting my baby brother go to conversion camp"

"And what will you do with him when you break him out?" I ask with a raised brow

"IWasKindaHopingYou'dLetHimStayWithYou?" She mutters

"Huh!?" 

"I said I was kinda hoping you'd let him stay with you" she repeats giving me the puppy dog eyes.

"What? You do realize I'm in no position to take care of a sixteen year old right now. Plus if your parents find out I could go to Jail!"

"I know but they wont find out, it would look like he escaped or something and I'd take care of any of his expenses of course" she tried to reason.

"And when did you come up with this 'fabulous' plan?" I ask

"This morning when i dropped him off at school" 

"So you want me to help you with a plan you came up with a few hours ago?"

"We still have time to work out the kinks he's not going to the camp until next week Saturday"

"And what am I supposed to tell my landlord when he asks who Issac is?"

"Just tell him he's your brother or something"

"Tami this is a horrible plan"

"No, what's horrible is letting my brother spend one year in that fucked up place. I know this is a lot to ask but i can't let him go there Cia it'll mess him up" she says unshed tears in her eyes.

Sighing frustratedly i say "fine I'll keep him with me but we have to go through this and make sure it goes perfectly because if we get caught by the cops I'm throwing you under the bus" 

"Deal" she agrees loudly attracting a bit of attention to us.

I sighed wondering if I should really be doing something like this when I have major issues of my own. I mean I have no idea who those men were that chased me all over the US or whether or not they know where I am. I could be putting Tami and her brother in trouble but it's too late to back out now or I'd have to come up with a pretty good reason and live with the fact that i broke my best friend's heart, i couldn't do any of those things so i just stuck with my decision hoping that everything goes well.

Sigh so much for laying low and staying out of trouble.

"Oh shit our lunch is up we gotta go" Tami says looking at her watch.

"Crap i can't be late for my surgery" i all but yelled grabbing my bag and half eaten salad

"I know, stop bitching and hurry up" Tami scolds as we rush out of the cafeteria

Arg! I really hate mondays!