keep his focus on the case at hand.
19
Ray parked in the ramp near the emergency entrance. He walked under the large canopy that joined the two structures. The wet pavement glistened under the lights in the otherwise gloomy dusk.
Two large glass doors slid open as he approached the building. Stopping at the registration desk, Ray told the female attendant, a graying woman in a green smock, the name of the patient he needed information on. She keyed the name into the system and looked at the flat screen monitor on her right.
“That patient has been moved to surgery. Follow this hallway,” she gestured with her arm, “to the end and take one of the elevators to the second floor. Then follow the signs to the surgical information desk.”
Ray followed the directions and waited for an elevator. When one of the doors opened, Saul Feldman, his close friend and internist, was coming off the elevator in his direction. “How are you?” said Saul extending his hand. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Trying to. I stopped by to see if I can get some info on…”
“Young woman, the TV woman.”
“Yes,” Ray answered, “Lynne Boyd.”
“I was just coming from the OR, I can tell you what I heard in the doctor’s lounge. How about a coffee?”
Saul Feldman led the way to the cafeteria, and after getting two mugs of coffee they settled at an empty booth in a deserted area of the large, brightly lit room.
“So, what’s her condition, is she going to make it?” Ray asked.
“She’s still alive. And if she makes it, well, all the planets lined up for her,” Feldman offered.
“How so?”
“The newest physician on our trauma team is a young woman. In the last couple of years she’s worked both in a mobile field hospital in Iraq and Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. She’s spent months stabilizing badly wounded GIs so they could be evacuated to Landstuhl, and then she spent time at the other end, at Landstuhl, as part of a surgical team. “So today she was on call when the shooting victim came in. I heard that the victim was almost gone by the time the ambulance arrived. Hanna Jeffers, that’s the young surgeon’s name—little woman, ninety pounds at the most, and really intense. And she’s gutsy as hell, and not afraid to take chances to save a patient. In the few months she’s been here she’s earned the nickname ‘fearless and fast’ Hanna.
“Jeffers has them run the patient to surgery, she wanted to get a CT of the wound, but the patient was too unstable. So Hanna goes ahead and cracks the woman’s chest and starts administering NovoSeven. That’s something they used in Iraq to control bleeding, but it’s not FDA approved for use here. Well, that raised some eyebrows. But that’s only the beginning. Then Hanna puts the patient on a heart-lung machine and starts repairing the damage. I talked to a couple of the scrub nurses, and they said she’s fantastic. She’s got incredible hands, she’s very fast, and she can sort of improvise as she goes.
“So she did things the military way?” asked Ray, as he visualized the scene in the OR.
“Yes. Military, that’s the perfect phrase. I guess she was ordering people around. Everyone was expected to move in double time. And she didn’t show proper deference to some of her distinguished colleagues. Some of the old boys are a bit upset by her less-than-conventional approach to surgery, but I can’t fault her. No one comes close to having the experience she has at salvaging patients with this kind of horrific wound.”
“But she’s rubbing people the wrong way?”
“The cardiac group, it’s the last exclusive boys club left in the local medical community. In the last ten years about half of the new physicians coming to town have been female. In family medicine and some of the specialties, it’s now mostly female.”
“So she’s breaking new ground,” Ray observed.
“More than that. She’s really stirred things up. The old boys, they
19
Ray parked in the ramp near the emergency entrance. He walked under the large canopy that joined the two structures. The wet pavement glistened under the lights in the otherwise gloomy dusk.
Two large glass doors slid open as he approached the building. Stopping at the registration desk, Ray told the female attendant, a graying woman in a green smock, the name of the patient he needed information on. She keyed the name into the system and looked at the flat screen monitor on her right.
“That patient has been moved to surgery. Follow this hallway,” she gestured with her arm, “to the end and take one of the elevators to the second floor. Then follow the signs to the surgical information desk.”
Ray followed the directions and waited for an elevator. When one of the doors opened, Saul Feldman, his close friend and internist, was coming off the elevator in his direction. “How are you?” said Saul extending his hand. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Trying to. I stopped by to see if I can get some info on…”
“Young woman, the TV woman.”
“Yes,” Ray answered, “Lynne Boyd.”
“I was just coming from the OR, I can tell you what I heard in the doctor’s lounge. How about a coffee?”
Saul Feldman led the way to the cafeteria, and after getting two mugs of coffee they settled at an empty booth in a deserted area of the large, brightly lit room.
“So, what’s her condition, is she going to make it?” Ray asked.
“She’s still alive. And if she makes it, well, all the planets lined up for her,” Feldman offered.
“How so?”
“The newest physician on our trauma team is a young woman. In the last couple of years she’s worked both in a mobile field hospital in Iraq and Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. She’s spent months stabilizing badly wounded GIs so they could be evacuated to Landstuhl, and then she spent time at the other end, at Landstuhl, as part of a surgical team. “So today she was on call when the shooting victim came in. I heard that the victim was almost gone by the time the ambulance arrived. Hanna Jeffers, that’s the young surgeon’s name—little woman, ninety pounds at the most, and really intense. And she’s gutsy as hell, and not afraid to take chances to save a patient. In the few months she’s been here she’s earned the nickname ‘fearless and fast’ Hanna.
“Jeffers has them run the patient to surgery, she wanted to get a CT of the wound, but the patient was too unstable. So Hanna goes ahead and cracks the woman’s chest and starts administering NovoSeven. That’s something they used in Iraq to control bleeding, but it’s not FDA approved for use here. Well, that raised some eyebrows. But that’s only the beginning. Then Hanna puts the patient on a heart-lung machine and starts repairing the damage. I talked to a couple of the scrub nurses, and they said she’s fantastic. She’s got incredible hands, she’s very fast, and she can sort of improvise as she goes.
“So she did things the military way?” asked Ray, as he visualized the scene in the OR.
“Yes. Military, that’s the perfect phrase. I guess she was ordering people around. Everyone was expected to move in double time. And she didn’t show proper deference to some of her distinguished colleagues. Some of the old boys are a bit upset by her less-than-conventional approach to surgery, but I can’t fault her. No one comes close to having the experience she has at salvaging patients with this kind of horrific wound.”
“But she’s rubbing people the wrong way?”
“The cardiac group, it’s the last exclusive boys club left in the local medical community. In the last ten years about half of the new physicians coming to town have been female. In family medicine and some of the specialties, it’s now mostly female.”
“So she’s breaking new ground,” Ray observed.
“More than that. She’s really stirred things up. The old boys, they
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