...On the one hand this is interesting; on the other hand, aaaaaaaaaaaa.

"Yes, of course. Not sure I can take him and 112, though." 

"- Should I take over with her? I think we're not getting a new podmate, the unit's short, but I told Alice I'd take her other guy and I could trade you - he's easy..." 

This is starting to feel like some sort of Hot Potato Patient game. "Yeah, sure, that works." Marian sighs. "On the off chance that I have time at all, want me to grab you a coffee on my way back?" 

"Ooh, always." 

"Did you feel the earthquake a few minutes ago, by the way?" 

"- The what? No." 

"Huh. I felt one over here." An earthquake that's only in one part of a single building makes no sense, but Marian is way too frazzled to be curious about geology processes right now. "Anyway. See you soon." 

The rest of the patient's scan is at least not obviously horrifying, either to Marian or the tech. 

They get him slid out of the machine, and off the scan table, without any particular incident, and Emma helps her hustle him out into the hallway. It is, thankfully, not much further from there. 

As soon as the automatic doors to the unit creak open, half the staff on the unit surge toward her. The other half seem to all be in Alice's new pod, but that still leaves enough people to descend on her patient like a swarm of piranhas - friendly piranhas, at least from Marian's perspective, maybe less so for Fifty-Seven, Red. 

Within ten minutes he is tucked into the new ICU bed, with a heating blanket plugged into the wall, two new IV lines, a catheter placed, and bloodwork drawn and headed to the lab in the pneumatic tube system. Elaine is confirming with her stethoscope that nope she cannot hear any air moving in his left lung. The charge nurse is hassling Dr Millinger to read his scans and inform them whether they can get him off the backboard now.  

Marian stands at the foot of the patient’s bed with a COW, perusing his rather sparse and useless chart. The age is marked as 99, which seems very implausible but is what it defaults to when the birth date is left blank. She makes requests as she thinks of them.

“Can someone please get me his temperature - oh yeah can you bring the ED back their vent, I promised...” The newer ICU model is much better, in that she can read the screen from here. 

Ally hooks up a new bag of saline, this one fresh from the warmer. “I got 92.3. Poor guy’s an icicle. Want a continuous temp probe?”

“Uh that’s be great - once we’re allowed to move him, Dr Millinger can we -“

“Sure, spine’s clear - put him in a C-collar though, could be soft tissue injuries. Took a lot of blunt force from something - multiple broken ribs, and,” he squints at the washed-out grey of the brain CT scan, “reckon that’s a hairline skull fracture and tiny subdural bleed. Hopefully it’ll stay tiny - I’m ordering a followup scan in six hours, got it? And get me an arterial blood gas while we’re waiting— is that a real O2 sat -“

She is going to spend her ENTIRE DAY having harrowing adventures at scans, isn’t she. 

“No, I bet it’s— oh fuck.” She scrambles for the patient. This time, the reading of 87% - and dropping - is accompanied with a tidy waveform. “He’s - fuck he’s on 100% O2 already, forgot I did that - I can’t go up - Elaine! Ally! I need a hand - let’s get him off the board so we can lift his head—“

Gravity means her patient will have an easier time getting air if he’s sitting up, but his actual problem is that he’s bleeding to death into his lungs and she CANNOT fix this by herself and they’re still waiting for the operating room to call back...

They unstrap and roll him, gently and carefully, and slide the board out, replacing it with the two halves of a cervical collar.

Marian winces when Ally yanks the Velcro loose, tearing her patient’s hair. Not that he cares, right now, he’s spectacularly sedated and she’s glad of this, but he has a head injury and they should be careful. 

Ally draws a blood gas while she and Elaine crank up the head of the patient’s bed. “Grab me some ice for this, would you?”

The phone rings.

Dr Millinger answers, because unlike SOME surgeons he doesn’t consider this beneath him. “Marian, it’s the OR - are we ready to roll?”

“Great! Yes please!”

And after a frantic minute of unplugging and wrangling machines and trying to keep tubes from being yanked, they are in the hallway once again!

The OR nurse wants a report! She is not much happier with Marian’s attempt than Marian was in the ED, and is more snappy about it.

Marian is used to this and doesn’t take it personally. She apologizes that the labs aren’t back and she doesn’t know the patient’s blood type or anything about allergies. (She does NOT passive-aggressively blame this on the ED nurses, it’s not their fault either.) 

The patient starts coughing and wriggling again as they slide him across onto the operating table.

Marian lunges to grab his wrists before he can go after the breathing tube. “Sorry sorry sorry! Uh I can up the propofol, but it tanks his BP - I can up the pressors— wait crap someone upped it already, sorry I told you the wrong rate, he’s on ten. I can go up to fifteen and then up his sedation but do you have a second drip ready...” 

She fiddles with IV pumps.

“On it - I’ll push some Versed for him now, should settle him down without knocking his blood pressure too much.”

“He got pretty combative in the scan, just to let you know.”

She doesn’t mention the earthquake, despite her uneasy superstitious feeling that this was somehow related, because that’s obviously insane.

The patient calms down. His next blood pressure is down to 92/59 but the mean pressure is tolerable so Marian lets it slide. 

“We’ve got this in hand,” the nurse says distractedly. “We’ll call when we’re bringing him back over, I’d say give us 45 minutes to an hour. Dr Millinger he’s desatting again, can we move—“