Page 6 of Leave a Mark
Lee smiled as he plucked a pair of gloves from the supply table. “I’ll need to do a pelvic exam.”
She opened one eye.
“Morphine first.”
In spite of himself, Lee choked on a laugh. Dr. Leger folded her arms across her chest, unamused. “I’ll be fast. I promise.”
“Mmm… what a catch,” she rasped.
Lee bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing a second time. If she could crack jokes in this kind of pain, what was she like on a good day? Lee cleared his throat before speaking again.
“Ms. Blanchard, I’ll need you to roll onto your back and raise your knees. I’ll keep you covered.”
“It’s Wren. First-name basis now,” she mumbled before moaning and rolling over. But with the movement, her eyes shot open, and she began to pant. “Oh shit… oh Jesus — What the fuck…”
Lee slipped his right hand under the sheet and used his left above to palpate her abdomen. Beyond her cervix, he could feel swelling, but no adnexal mass. He pressed deeper.
“Ten… Oh God, make it stop—” she gasped, her voice hollowing out.
Lee looked up to see his patient had gone completely white.
“Her pressure’s dropping,” Dr. Leger said.
Shit.
“She needs surgery. Now.”
“Don’t fuck up my ink…” she whispered. Her eyes rolled back, and she was out.
AS LEE SCRUBBEDhis fingers and hands — counting each stroke — he gave thanks that Dr. Jem Yeng, Chief of Obstetrics, was the attending on call and not Dr. Barrow. Lee had only scrubbed in on a few cystectomies, but he’d watched Barrow do dozens of hysterectomies, making calls about women’s organs he never would have made.
With his hands in front of him, Lee backed into the operating theater behind Dr. Yeng and waited for the scrub tech to fit him out with gown and gloves. He saw Mercer standing at the head of the surgical table where his patient was already intubated, giving him another measure of relief. Mercer was a friend, but he was also a careful and skilled anesthesiologist. Wren Blanchard’s emergency had come on a good day at UMC.
“Dr. Hawthorne, she’s your patient. Why don’t you take the lead?” Dr. Yeng offered.
Adrenaline surged in his blood. Lee had assisted in scores of laparoscopic procedures, but something about this particular patient made his heart race.
“Thank you, Dr. Yeng,” he managed. But when he approached the table and saw the flesh peeking through the square of surgical drape, Lee stilled. In an operating room, it was easy to forget that the body on the table belonged to an actual person. Swathed in blue drapes, heads nearly covered with masks and hair caps, patients barely looked human. Apart from race and body type, one patient resembled every other.
Except Wren Blanchard.
The abdomen in front of him was a work of art. A cherry-blossom tree in full bloom spanned her body from pelvis to ribs. Pink petals floated away in a breeze, and a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds was just taking flight. The dark branches and roots of the tree struck a stark contrast to her fair skin, as did the blackbirds. But the pink blossoms, each one blushing in its own way, could not have looked more natural — as if such images made their debut on skin before growing up from the ground.
“Wow.”
“You should see the rest of her.” Lee looked up to see the smiling eyes of the scrub nurse. “It’s quite something.”
“She asked me not to mess up her ink,” Lee said, bringing his eyes back to the masterpiece in front of him. “I thought she was delirious. Clearly not.”
“Well, she’s bleeding, so you’d best get started, Dr. Hawthorne,” Dr. Yeng chastened gently.
“Right.” He held out his hand for the scalpel.
In the end, he made two small incisions. One in the trunk of the cherry blossom just to the right of her navel. The other, lower, just above her pudenda, he was able to hide in the beautiful root work of the tree.
After Lee had corrected the ovarian torsion and removed the hemorrhaging corpus luteum, he stitched up the incisions as carefully as he could so that Wren’s scars would be tiny. For the first time in his career, he found himself hoping that his patient would be happy with his sewing skills.
CHAPTER FOUR
