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She needed to get away from him, for many reasons, but most of all her sanity. She jumped on the excuse to leave. “It’s a text page about Mr. Turkow’s blood pressure—it’s down. I need to run up and examine him.”
Jake frowned and nodded. “All right. Call me if you need me,” he said. “I’ll be by to check on him later.”
“Of course.” As if there was any other option? He was the boss, after all. She took one last bite of her chicken sandwich and then hauled her tray to the sideboard, feeling his gaze on her back as she left.
She let out a sigh of relief when she stepped into the elevator to head up to the third floor. She could do this. Work with Jake as a professional.
She had no choice but to do this.
* * *
By midnight, Hannah had lost count of the number of pages she received. Thank God for her note cards because she’d responded to some issue on almost every patient on their service and she’d never have been able to keep track of the patients without her notes.
As Jake had predicted, she didn’t even see the inside of her call room until two in the morning. She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes. One hour. She desperately needed one hour of peace and quiet.
At two forty-five, her pager went off, announcing the arrival of a new trauma patient. Overall, the night had been quiet as far as trauma calls went. But maybe the trauma activity only started to heat up in the wee hours of the morning.
The responsibility of being a doctor seemed almost overwhelming. Yet this was something she’d dreamed about for years. Ever since she’d been hospitalized with a ruptured appendix at the age of thirteen. Her surgeon, Dr. Marilee McDaniel, had been amazing. After a week in the hospital, Hannah had vowed to be just like her.
The hardships would be worth it. Hannah rolled out of bed and splashed some water on her face in a pathetic attempt to wipe away the fatigue. Forty-five minutes was almost an hour, wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
She headed down to the trauma bay, only to find Jake already there, standing at the patient’s bedside. He didn’t look nearly as tired as she felt.
“What do we have?” she asked in a low voice.
“A young man with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.” Jake glanced up at her. “Are you familiar with it?”
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome? She stared at him. Her mind went blank. Absolutely, completely blank.
“No?” The sharp disappointment in his tone hurt, more than it should have. “I suggest you do some research—it’s a rare genetic disorder.”
She glanced over at the patient, a very handsome young man who looked to be in his early twenties. He was moaning and grimacing, as if he was in excruciating pain.
“Start a dilaudid pain pump and get a full-body CT scan,” Jake said to the nurse. “And I want to see the results of his CT scan, stat.”
Hannah pushed the emotionally draining exhaustion away and forced herself to focus. She had read about the disease, she knew she had. As she and Jake stepped away from the bedside, she finally pulled the knowledge from the deep recesses of her brain. “Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is classified by weak tissue, primarily blood vessels, resulting in multiple aneurysms.”
“Yes.” There was a flash of approval in Jake’s gaze. But then he turned serious again. “Unfortunately, Christopher Melbourne was first diagnosed with this disease at the age of seven.”
Seven? Good heavens, she couldn’t even imagine. “It’s a miracle he’s survived this long,” she murmured.
“Yes. Although with the abdominal pain he’s currently experiencing, I’m very much afraid he has a leaking abdominal aortic aneurysm.”
Her stomach clenched. Abdominal aortic aneurysms were known to be serious, life-threatening conditions. “Can you surgically repair it?”
“No. Too risky. All his blood vessels are weak and fragile, to the point that they would never hold a new tissue graft. As it is, he’s been walking around with a large aneurysm in his axillary artery that no surgeon has been brave enough to repair.”
They couldn’t operate? “So what can we do for him?”
Jake slowly shook his head, and she caught a surprising glimpse of true anguish in his eyes.
“Nothing. Except make him as comfortable as possible until he dies.”
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