Baby Doe & Other Patients On The Caseloads [FG]

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

Flynn Garner.

This morning the creased blue scrubs found themselves on the right side of my wardrobe’s rail. Johnny’s shirt has slowly started to be pushed deeper to the left; it does not stop me from taking a moment just to look at it every time I open my wardrobe door. Feel the fabric, even take in the smell. He has been dead almost a year. Dead. It is such a blunt word. Straight to the point with just one syllable. There is no better way to describe it. Gone. No more. Not here. A negative and another negative.

Today I chose to wake up to a positive. I cannot let time just simply pass by, especially when the circus is coming to town in just a few weeks. I am going back to the hospital. My uniform packed away in my rucksack; I will be putting it back on today.

Back in the staff locker rooms, rows and rows of newly refurbished lockers, the same one I had this time last year is still vacant with my initials printed on it with a permanent marker. Scrubs have always been so comfy to wear. So airy and with room to move, I am just glad it is summer as they are not the most thermal in the wintertime. I have been thrown into a random surgical shift with some more experienced students. It will be a day of shadowing, a refresher on all the practical stuff. Reviewing all the college papers has helped me keep on top of the theory.

It is just me, two surgical students and our senior surgeon starting the day with a patient ward round before hitting the operating theaters. ”We will start on the paediatric ward, there is an outlier there.” The senior surgeon takes charge and I just follow the group. The two students are clearly being awkward, trying their hardest to keep their yapping out of my earshot. I guess showing up at the hospital unexpectedly on a random Wednesday is going to get everyone talking. I just hope it eases and they all look beyond that crown that has been implanted onto my head. I am just Doctor Flynn Garner here, just Flynn. Nobody else.

”Around 4-month-old female. Found on the hospital grounds six days ago by a janitor starting their shift. Was completely jaundiced and malnourished on admission. Complete liver failure, is booked for a transplant this morning after a successful growth of a liver in the laboratory from donated cells…” The senior surgeon explains the history of our first patient, an interesting case and quite exciting as I have never seen an organ transplant before yet. Especially an organ that has been grown in lab and not donated from another body!

”Found in the grounds? Has she been ID’ed.” I ask, a sad personal history though despite the intriguing medical side. ”No, still known as Baby Doe. The peacekeepers have not been successful at identifying her parents.” The little jaundiced baby is hooked up to so many observation machines, lines twisting and tangling into the beeping monitors. Poor little thing is so small looking in the cot. ”Garner, can you help prep her for surgery with the anesthetists? You two, with me to operating room three.”

”Do I not get to go into the op room too?”

”Not today but you are free to watch from the observation suite.”

Well, that is not fair! And the fucker is quick on leaving the bedside before I can protest. Prepping a patient for surgery is not even a job for me. The nurse is already on it, and I am left watching. In the way it seems when I try and unhook one of the machines and the nurse whacks me on the wrist. Then Baby Doe starts bawling, a horrible cringeworthy screeching non-stop noise from such a little patient. This is why I don’t like babies.

”Hey, shush shush. It is okay.” I try and comfort her to no avail, all four of the jaundiced baby’s limbs are flailing in the air. I offer out my own sterile hand and the little thing grips onto my index finger, something that triggers the off switch. ”Stay like that, I am not taking a crying baby to the anesthesia room.” The miserable nurse says as she starts to push the baby’s cot and I guess I will just have to follow, especially now that the baby has a hold of my finger.

”I wonder why someone would abandon their baby like this.” I tell the nurse, trying to start a conversation with her as the silence is just so fucking painful.

”It is nothing new, there is a case every month.”

”And is every one named Baby Doe?”

”Yeah and it doesn’t matter, the orphanages give them a name when they are discharged.”

”Shouldn’t they get some kind of identification while here?”

”They get a unique hospital number, like all of the other patients.”

”She should have a name too.”

”Naming an unknown baby, that sounds like something a victor would do.”

Fuck this bitch. Does she just see her patients as numbers? A literal pediatric nurse, I thought they would have more personality than someone like her.

”Fine, I will.” I look down at the baby still gripping onto my finger, whose big blue yellow rinsed eyes stick out from the rest of her body. There is something about the little sick innocent baby that wants me to call her, ”Rora, start calling her Rora until we find out her real name.” Then Baby Rora is whisked away, through the swinging doors of the anesthetic bays, somewhere a washed up victor is not welcome today.

I am going to need to lick a lot of boots these next few days if I want to be taken seriously here again. All while ensuring that little baby gets out of here with a real identity and health. Nothing is ever simple in my life. It never will be.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

Flynn Garner.

It has been almost two weeks since I watched the surgeon perform a liver transplant on the baby, they were taken straight to intensive care afterwards. I have not seen them since and yet today on my list of mediocre jobs that do not include donning surgical scrubs, I am expected to write up the discharge plan for a patient I have not been involved in the care of. I have noticed that they call her ’Rora’ on the handover though, I bet much to that nurse’s dismay. At least the poor little thing is not just a number now.

The paediatric bays are so much brighter than all the other wards. There is an equal amount of suffering blended in with the polka dot walls and smiling clouds. Most nurses have smiles pinned across their faces, wearing just as flamboyant uniforms as the walls.

Little Rora looks unrecognisable to the baby I literally watched have her organs switched over a fortnight ago. Expert work that is for sure and now I am left to be the one to send her out of the hospital doors. A home has been decided by the social workers, an orphanage that will continue her aftercare.

I tap away at the touch screen tablet in my hand, hovering over the bed of the little patient. Bright blue eyes stare up at me with curiosity and without the screeching of before. A little cute looking in the beige blanket that she is wrapped in too. ”You are going to a good home, they are going to look after you!” I tell the baby that has had the worst start in this world. Hopefully she is another life saved, with thanks to the janitor that found her and the surgeon that breathed life into her with his phenomenal hands. Hands I want to learn from not observe from a far behind a glass.

”An orphanage is not a good home.” There is a voice hovering behind me, an unwanted stench breathing down my neck. It is the miserable nurse I met on the first day. ”It is better than being left out in the trash.” I tell the nurse, stepping back from the bed to allow her to run the last observation checks before I can finally discharge the patient. ”Lets hope she is fostered, you have got a big house. Why don’t you take her?”

I just stare at the observation fields on the device, waiting for the nurse to read out her oxygen saturation levels so I can proceed through the check box exercise of the system. ”I am not fostering a baby.”

”Good, you can’t even look after yourself.”

There is a big bold question mark printed in the centre of my mind. This nurse has a problem. An uncalled-for problem with me. While she is absolutely right, we are professionals here. Or meant to be at least. I shouldn’t be having this conversation. Not now. ”I am not sure what your problem is, can you just tell me what her sats are?”

”You are so immature. That is my problem.”

I really have someone holding a thermometer in a baby’s ear calling me immature, is that what other surgeons must put up with?

”Her temperature, please…..I am not immature!!” I crack a little, honestly the audacity to have to deal with a person like this at work. Literal work.

”You are still that thirteen year old kid aren’t you? The little dick head we all had to watch in the arena. You have not grown up Flynn!”

”I am not sure what your problem is with me. I don’t even know you!” My arms drop to my knees, almost just almost the device nearly slips from my grip on the floor. I double dosed on the calming tablets at lunch time, the nurse is lucky. My reputation in this hospital is lucky.

”I sat behind you and the obnoxious Aurora Emerson in most classes. Being a victor is your excuse for not recognising me, right?”

”Right, it probably is. Can we just get this discharge done?” There are people standing outside of Rora’s room, shadows waiting through the privacy glass. Welcoming faces that will take her to her next life and the two people that should be looking after her right now are feuding over an invisible grudge. ”Thirty-six point four.” The nurse finally reads out all of the observation markers with the most cringeworthy tone in her voice.

”Great, thank you!” What a fucking sigh of relief, once this is done I am going to beg to be taken off of the paediatric rotation. There is no way I will be able to dose up on enough capsules to deal with someone like her every day. ”It is done on the system, pharmacy will dispense her take home meds in ten minutes it says.” The nurse is silent, up until the moment the orphanage workers step into the room. She is good at faking a persona, that is for sure, and I just leave the care handover with her. That is my time with baby Rora over. For what little involvement I have had in her care, I hope it has been enough for her to thrive. A name and a new home. I hope I don’t see her in this hospital again.