I am a surgical nurse by trade. If I get too technical, a search of the site may help, but if you ask, I'll gladly do it for you. This time I went and dug up an old essay, part of my first Nanowrimo novel.
ScrubBloodI wrote an essay about this long ago. Here it is, warts and all.
Blood red spurts pump a beadline of rubies across the front of her dark green gown, draws a line across her light green duckbill mask, across her forehead and her pale blue puffy paper hat. Perhaps a glistening spot on her glasses as well, harder to see, she squints her eyes to check. She adroitly drops a clamp in the surgeon's right hand, then holds taut a black silk length of suture for the left, then repeats the process. Hands over suture scissors, takes each clamp, unclamping each at his subtle signal- as he ties down each dark thread. She is intent, focused, watching, waiting. The tension eases as Dr. Goode mumbles,
"Hmmsmm."
A Mumble of surgeons, she thinks. The proper collective noun. I don't hear them anymore, I simply watch and come to expect. And when I am wrong? Snippy breed they can be, even the best, even the most even tempered, professional. A Grumble of nurses? An even more apt collective noun. And perhaps a whine of scrub techs. She sighs, and lets her internal monologue unfold.
"Hold here."
She lays down her hand to hold back tissue, he shifts her hand a smidge. The fat is warm and slippery through the doubled gloves, the fascia rubbery, smoother, denser. How did I manage to change so much, she wonders. I couldn't tolerate being barefoot in mom's garden after I spotted the first worm of the season, just in case I might step on it. She smiles at her former squeamishness. She lifts her right foot up and wiggles it, then the left foot, not moving her upper body, certainly not her hand. Or oatmeal, I used to retch cleaning out the pan, her smile broadens, unseen, under the concealing, protective mask. I hated that slimy cereal sticking to the aluminum pot with the copper lid, she remembers it was also perfect for popcorn. And she thinks, I wouldn't eat an egg with a smear of red, or if the white wasn't charred. She tries to remember what process beat the queasiness out of her, leaving her with an iron stomach- at least as far as external stimuli went. Perhaps education, fascination at the skill. But it was before she'd seen surgery close up, she was sure.
An itch slinks across her nose, threatens to cause a drip inside the mask. She ignores it until it slinks away in embarrassment. She passes a blue filament of suture, eyelash size needle almost visible on the Castro holder. Admires the red line of spray, drying now, looks over to the circulating nurse, gestures with her head and looks crosseyed at the blur on her lens.
"Yup, I'll get it," murmurs Barb, as she slips off her stool, and grabs a small towel, wets it, and stands behind her, head cocked.
"Oh, yeah, go ahead." The surgeon stops working for a minute to allow the clean up.
"You got it on your face, just a sec." Barb wipes the spots of blood from Anne's face, and glasses. "That ok?"
Anne squints again. "Thanks, much better."
"Any on me?" Dr. Goode grins. "Nice shot though?"
"Nope. You're fine, Greg." Barb adjusts Anne's specs, backs off to her corner, her book. It's going to be a while.
She watches the deft, careful line of minute thread marching around the artery, suctions away the slowly pooling blood, tiny amounts that make it hard to see his work. Her mind drifts in the silence, in the concentration.
She dreams about throwing small pots on a wheel, off the hump. Pile of grey clay spinning under her hands, water in a sponge smoothing a small section on top, to be coaxed and pushed and firmly instructed. The deep pleasure of feeling growth in mud, first a bump, dimple, a column, and then opening into a small bowl. She can live in that experience, practice in her mind. Even there, though, she can also feel when it goes wrong, and it falls out too wide, too thin, starts to oscillate and fly off.
My back hurts, she thinks. Can't think that, won't help, do-ya do-ya want my love?c'mon now! do-ya... arrrghghg. The radio had been playing on the last case. Hours of dopey pop, songs she'd hated the first time around, heard way too many times since, forced to hear again too many days in here. Now she had that piece of sugar in her head, popcorn behind a tooth, and it was not coming out. She hums "The World's Address" to clear it out, it usually worked. But not this time, damn song kept insinuating itself into her head. But asking for music here would not help. There were far worse songs. That's the way, uh huh, uh huh I like it uh..... see? She breathes slowly, shifting her hand as instructed, passes a rubber shod clamp.
I hold a life in my hands, where did I learn courage? She marvels at the change in herself, at how far she has come from the frightened, shy, little girl who so wanted to just disappear, to... well she had to admit, there was a kind of disappearing going on here. What I do matters, she realizes, but it also doesn't show, it's hard to explain her responsibilities, and she largely prefers not to.
"Follow me please."
She holds the tiny suture gently taut, alert to change in pressure, watching him work his way around, the layer of tissue being sewn, keeping her head out of the light. His
loupes made it difficult to tell where he is looking, except that there is only one place for him to look right now. He moves his head in a strange rather birdlike motion, his focus on the very very small right in front of him, his peripheral vision uncertain. It always strikes her as funny.
She likes the silence. No one being pompous about politics, no football, no home repairs. In a pinch, she would start up the latter two subjects to prevent the first. She knew when he was finished with the artery, Dr. Goode would talk with her about pottery, or Monty Python and The Holy Grail, or books she had actually read, or might really be interested in reading. He could be very funny, but not many of the nurses or techs knew that. She didn't quite know how to feel about this, she liked a sense of some distance from the docs. They were good enough folks, all in all, really, but they were, in a very real sense, in charge. They were different, and not entirely to be trusted, not personally, not with my personal feelings, she thought. Oh, I know if I were sick or injured, they'd be fine, admirable, but I don't want to say, get drunk around them, she judges. She decides this is probably a bit unfair. Nevertheless, she keeps, always some semblance of distance. Any nurse who marries a doctor loses my good opinion of her intelligence, she says to herself. And a man who marries a doctor? Oh, much the same, she thinks. Although I wonder if a man would marry a female surgeon for the same kinds of reasons? I wonder if that might not even up the power differential? Her thoughts dithered on in this fashion as the hands of the clock crept.
Then she has a small epiphany, I layered on my courage, experience by experience, like I learned this job well. Not one event, she thinks, all of them together. I remember, and I hoard and try to fit into my whole life what I remember, and she wonders why this seems so rare. Maybe it's not, but she feels rare, and peculiar.
"I know what you want, you want to be an Anonymous Angel." Moira told her last week, apropos of nothing obvious, which is much of what she loves about her friend. The phrase, the assessment, warms her, she feels her stomach unclench, recognizing it as a great, and truth filled, compliment, impossible to refuse. So she takes it in and treasures it in her heart, just like the BVM is said to do.
The artery was sewn, the length of cloth tape looped and threaded through the red rubber tubing, clamped at the end released, and the blood stays inside where it belongs, a tight seal. Deep breaths all around. Anesthesiologist pokes his head over the drapes.
"Going good?"
"Yeah." Dr. Goode feels the pulse thoughtfully. "Say another 15, I'll be done here."
And very quietly, she begins to hum.
"Spam, spam, spam, spam....."
And Greg joins in.
"Lovely spam, wonderful spam...."
Barbara shakes her head, bemused behind her mask.
