Disclaimer:
“ER” is property of Warner Brothers Television, NBC, and all
respective producers and cast. I
have written this story for fanfiction and nothing else.
I am not making a profit from this. This
is simply for fanfiction enjoyment. **
In A Heartbeat
Another trauma
victim was wheeled through the doors of Cook County General as Kerry rushed to
treat the victim on the way to Trauma 1.
Mark was just about to take his lunch, when the radio
on the admit desk crackled.
“ER,” Randi answered.
“We’ve got a 5 car pileup on the 154 freeway!” shouted the
paramedic at the other end, “5 majors, and 7 minors coming your way!
And we need a ride-a-long on the Medivac chopper!”
“I’ll take it,” Mark volunteered.
“We’re sending a doctor down there now,” Randi replied, “but we
can only take 3 majors.”
“County,” said the paramedic, “North side is already booked with
another accident.”
Mark grabbed his jacket before heading for the roof.
Once on the roof, he discovered that it was pouring outside.
Rain pelted down relentlessly. Mark
pulled his jacket tighter around him as he boarded the awaiting chopper.
As Mark hopped off the helicopter, a horrific scene laid before his eyes.
“One car skidded out of control on the wet ground, when it happened,”
the driver of the helicopter had explained on the way to the scene, “then one
thing led to another.”
A small white compact car stood facing the side of the road.
A mini-van had collided into the driver’s seat.
The small car was a crumpled heap of metal, and the mini-van’s hood was
damaged beyond repair. Just to the
left of the mini-van, a car had swerved to the left, smashing into the
guardrail. The truck behind it
slammed into the back of the car. Behind
the mini-van, a family car had crashed head-on into the back of the mini-van.
Mark headed for the compact car, where a little girl
was trapped in the car seat.
“Mommie!” the girl screamed out, as Mark started to talk to her.
“Its okay,” he soothed, as she turned her face towards him, “I’m
Dr. Greene, and I’m here to help you.”
“It hurts,” the girl cried, tears streaming from her eyes,
“where’s my Mommie?”
Mark looked over to the driver’s seat, where a badly injured woman met
his sight. Paramedics were at her
side, trying desperately to get her out with the Jaws of Life and treating her
injuries from the other side of the car at the same time.
The woman was not conscious.
“It’s okay,” Mark repeated, “you Mom has people helping her right
now, and I’m going to help you. What’s
your name?” As he tried to comfort
the child, Mark pulled on gloves and began to assess the girl’s injuries.
“A-a-amy-y,” the girl stammered.
After stabilizing the young girl, Mark took off his jacket and put it on
the girl as she was put on a gurney and rolled into an ambulance.
Looking towards the mini-van, Mark spotted another victim.
He raced across the freeway with just hospital scrubs and a thin shirt to
protect him from the rain. Suddenly,
an SUV roared to life and began barreling into the road of crumpled cars.
One minute, the giant vehicle was sitting among the cars that were backed
up behind the sectioned off accident scene, and the next, it tore down the
highway. In the blink of an eye,
everything changed for Mark Greene.
As Mark was running across the freeway, the SUV slammed into him.
The man driving the SUV hesitated momentarily before stomping on the gas
yet again, as Mark’s body disappeared underneath the monstrous car.
Seconds after the SUV hit Mark, it rolled over him.
Mark’s head snapped back, slamming onto the pavement.
The SUV swerved left and right to avoid police whom had just witnessed a
hit and run.
Mark felt pain unlike anything he had ever felt
before. He felt as if knives were
tearing into his side, stabbing so deep, that he could barely breathe.
He could tell that his left arm was broken, because moving it just
slightly forced merciless pain to arise. His
chest had also taken the blunt force of the blow, and it was now soaked in
blood. Mark laid face up on the
pavement, unable to move, wincing from the agonizing pain.
Rain soaked his entire body, making the wind beat his wounds with a
sharp, stinging cold.
A paramedic rushed over to Mark. She
cringed as she saw his beaten body. Mark’s
chest was covered in blood, right side of his face had a long bloody scar
running down the side, his feet were twisted around each other in an unnatural
way, and pools of blood had started to collect around his feet, ribs, and head.
“Doctor..,” the paramedic paused, not knowing Mark’s name.
Mark tried to answer, but as when he tried to speak, nothing came out.
He panicked, trying to say his name, but still his voice would not come.
Panicking, Mark breathed harder, but the pain in his lungs forced him to
stop trying.
“I’m
Wendy Ranks,” she introduced herself while attending to Mark, “I’m from
North Valley Presbyterian, but we’re going to send you to County.”
Wendy attached a C-collar to Mark’s neck and immediately called for
assistance.
“Fisher!” she called out, “I need some help here!”
Fisher, another EMT rushed over.
“He can’t speak,” Wendy explained.
Fisher looked at Mark’s bloody chest.
“No wonder he can’t,” he commented, “look at the trauma to his
chest.”
As Mark stared up at the sky, he blinked against the pelting rain.
Suddenly a sharp pain stabbed him in the side.
Mark winced and screamed in pain, only a strangled gasp for air came out.
“He has some rib fractures,” Wendy commented, talking to the
paramedic whom she had just called.
“No kidding,” Mark thought.
An umbrella was held over Mark’s head as another
paramedic rushed over with a backboard in hand.
Mark struggled to ask the many questions in his head.
“ What happened? Can
someone get my glasses? Who’s that
holding the umbrella?” these questions swirled in Mark’s mind, but soon, all
he could think about was the pain. Mark
tried to speak again, but his shaky, raspy breath made breathing unbearable.
He began to panic, for the shallow, struggled breath augmented the pain
in his side, feet, and head. All the
while, paramedics were easing him onto the backboard.
“Dr. Greene,” a paramedic suddenly came to view, looking into
Mark’s eyes, “we’re going to get you into the Medivac chopper.”
As Mark was lifted onto a gurney, he could hear several unfamiliar voices
hovering about him.
“
As Mark was being rolled to the chopper, he lost consciousness.
“ER,” Randi answered the radio’s ring.
“County, we have another major coming your way.”
“What?” Randi retorted, looking at the scene around her.
Kerry was receiving the bullet of the last trauma patient being wheeled
though the emergency doors. Carter
was busy in Trauma 2 assessing a woman’s injuries, Jing-Mei was helping
Anspaugh rush a patient to surgery, Kovac was in Exam 2 attending to a child,
and Malucci was giving a patient a hard time in the suture room.
“We can’t take any more traumas!” she cried, “we’re backed up
here! We’re closed to traumas!”
“You don’t understand,” the voice on the other end said in
desperation, “it’s…<crackle>...<buzz>”
Randi slapped the side of the radio as static loudly interrupted the
voice. “What?” she said, almost
shouting, “what did you say?” After several failed attempts to get a
coherent sentence from the radio, Randi hung up the receiver.
She walked briskly down to the halls to where Kerry was criking a victim,
announcing that another major was on it’s way.
“Didn’t you tell them ‘no’?” Kerry cried, not taking her eyes
off her patient.
“I did,” Randi answered, “but they didn’t listen.”
“Yeah, well next time, make them listen!”
Randi sighed as she left the room in a huff.
As
“MARK?” both cried simultaneously.
“Mark, what happened,” Benton
cried, as he stared at
his extensive injuries.
Tears began to well up in Elizabeth’s face the minute
she saw her fiancée.
“Mark,” she blurted out, craning her neck so that he could see her
face, “Can you speak? Say
something!” Elizabeth’s now shaky hands
fumbled around as she clasped her hands around Mark’s arm.
Being careful not to move it, she stroked his arm and then his forehead,
trying to ease at least some of the fear that was apparent in his eyes.
Mark struggled to speak, desperately trying to utter a mere sound, but
the excruciating pain in his lungs forced yet another shallow breath to jump
down his throat. Realizing they were
standing still, Benton
pulled the gurney
alongside him as he screamed out, “Let’s move people!”
In the ER, most of the chaos had finally calmed down.
“Randi,” Kerry called, “I need to talk to you.”
Randi rolled her eyes before following Kerry down the hall.
She could feel another lecture coming on.
“Dr. Weaver,” she pleaded, “I told them we were booked, but they
didn’t listen. Plus, there was
static…”
“You need to tell them to take the traumas up to Mercy if North Western
is busy!” Kerry interrupted, “We
can’t have major trauma patients waiting in line in triage, but that’s
what’ll happen if you don’t tell them that we are closed to traumas.”
“So, what? You want the
patients to wait, bleeding in the streets, until a hospital is ready or want to
take them?!”
“Kerry!” shouted
“Not now,” Kerry admonished, not looking in his direction.
“What the hell do you mean ‘not now’?
Come to Trauma 2! Mark’s been hit!”
Benton and Elizabeth sped past the two, shoving them aside.
Kerry and Randi stared in shock at the victim on the gurney.
Blood was everywhere, soaking the gurney, but it was the familiar face
that made Kerry and Randi stare at each other in shock.
Running as fast as she could, Kerry rushed to Trauma 2.
A paramedic ran the bullet by Kerry, Benton, and Elizabeth.
“Hit and run by an SUV. Multiple
rib fractures on the left side…”
“An SUV?” repeated Benton
incredulously.
“No breath sounds on the left! And
we have to intubate!” shouted Elizabeth, grabbing the
intubation tray.
“… loss of consciousness, fractured ankle, fractures of the left arm
and possible concussion… ”
As the paramedic left the room, Carter entered.
“What’ve we got?”
“MARK?” Carter cried out recognizing the figure on the gurney.
Carter put on his stethoscope and listened to Mark’s breathing.
“Breath sounds absent on the left.”
“We know that, Carter!” shouted Benton.
“He needs a chest tube,” Kerry said.
“BP’s 70 over 50. Get a
CBC, type and cross 4 units, and dip a urine,” Carter called out quickly.
As Carter helped Kerry insert a chest tube though Mark’s chest, Yosh
burst into the room.
“I heard what happened,” he explained, his usually calm voice now
shaky, “anything I can do to help?”
“Yes,” Kerry said not looking up, “get 4 units of … “
“A positive,” Elizabeth
finished.
“I… I think we should type and cross,” Kery said gently, “just to
make sure.”
After
“Pupils are round and sluggish, possibly hyphema!
Get a cross-table c-spine, chest and pelvis.”
“Carter, call CT!” Kerry commanded Carter as they finished inserting
the chest tube.
Carter grabbed the hospital receiver, dialed, and shouted into the phone:
“Clear CT right now, please! We
have a docto… I mean, trauma patient on his way.”
Yosh returned to the Trauma room armed with 5 units of blood.
The entryway was blocked by doctors, nurses and staff peering into the
room. Yosh shoved his way through.
“Out of the way, please!”
Once in the room, Yosh began administering the blood to Mark.
Suddenly, the portable heart monitor Mark was hooked onto, screeched in
alarm. The slow, shaky beeps sped
up, and in a split second, the monitor howled out a long, successive tone.
Mark’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.
“Oh, God!”
“Charge to 200!”
Haleh charged the paddles as Elizabeth
stared down at Mark,
hands shaking. Carter, Kerry,
Elizabeth and Yosh held their hands up as
“CLEAR!”