Earth Stopped Cold At Dawn
Chapther Five
By Triggersaurus
triggersaurus@hotmail.com

Phew, this one took me ages! It’s longer than my others, I really wanted to try and incorporate another trauma in this, so that took up some space! I have also been having some problems with American lingo, being from England, and I’ve changed ‘lift’ to the American version now, ‘elevator’, hopefully that will be less confusing! I also have a problem with finding out the qualification letters of a surgeon in America (which would explain Dr. Camworth’s lack of credentials below) if anyone can help me with this, mail to the usual address. Enjoy all! Triggersaurus

Previously: The ER staff are on a mission to stop the Carter/Kerry rumour before Kerry finds out, and it has been agreed that Ben should have surgery to cure his knee problems.

It is night in the ER again, and things are quiet for a brief moment in time. Carol and Doug are sitting in the lounge, Carol is on Doug’s lap, and Mark sits across from them both on the sofa. They are all laughing.

"So the Task Force are on their way then?" asks Mark through his laughter

The other two nod, and Mark gets up to pour more coffee.

"So when’re Jen and Rach off then?" asks Doug as Mark brings him a mug.

"Day after tomorrow. I had Rach last week, she went back with Jen for this week so she could say goodbye to all her friends."

"You seeing them off?"

"Ahh, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not really that far…"

Carol butts in, "It’s St. Louis, Mark!"

"Yeah buddy, go and say goodbye. It’ll be a while before you see her again, and you don’t want to look like you don’t care."

Mark hangs his head and looks into his coffee. "Yeah, well…"

"Hey Mark, it’s gonna be hard but you can’t just let your daughter leave the state without saying goodbye!"

"Okay, I’ll go alright!"

"That’s my boy!"

The door opens and Jerry outs his head around the door. "Uh, Dr. Greene, there’s a woman in one saying you were going to see her half an hour ago. And Dr. Weaver’s looking for you Carol."

Doug starts to hum the theme to ‘Jaws’ as Carol gets up to leave.

"Shut up Doug, I’m sure it’ll be fine!"

Doug gets louder, and Carol swipes at his head as she leaves the room.

A small crowd stands in front of the lifts, looking around themselves shiftily. Haleh stands in the middle, pointing at people and whispering, "Okay, Lydia, you take the ICU…Malik, you do Geriatrics…Yosh, can you do surgery?"

"The whole thing?!"

"As much as you can, and the SICU as well. Okay guys, go, while it’s quiet! See you back here at 1.20."

"Let’s synchronise our watches…"

"Very funny Malik. Now go!"

Haleh heads back off towards the main desk, holding a chart and looking hurried as she passes Kerry Weaver, who is marching in the opposite direction. Haleh goes to the main desk, and puts her chart away as Doug comes round.

"Anything there for a paediatrician with nothing to do?"

"Nope. You can check out the old man with food poisoning in four though, if you want"

"No thanks, that’s okay. If anyone wants me I’ll be in ped’s."

"Alright."

He saunters off in the direction of the lifts, and as he steps in he meets Malik on his way out.

"How’s Operation Carter/Kerry going?"

"Man, I’ve just been round half the hospital trying to stop this thing! Tell Carol to just keep her trap shut next time she gets some gossip!"

The doors shut and the lift moves upward as Doug grins.

Up in Peds, Doug finds a crowd of doctors and nurses around Ben’s bed again. They are all in conversation with each other, and it is impossible to see the boy from the outside.

"Hey", Doug says over all the noise. As the doctors turn to see who it is, a gap forms in the ring and we see Ben, sat on the lap of a nurse, with his right leg stretched out straight. There are tear stains on his cheeks and he is still in obvious pain.

"Hey there, kiddo! What’s going on? These guys being mean to you, huh?"

He picks the boy up and helps him bend his leg back into a comfortable position, as the nurse stutters, clearly not happy.

"Ah, Dr. Ross. We were just examining him…" said the doctor who had spoken to Doug yesterday.

"Yeah, well, it was obviously hurting, I think we can give him a break for now, can’t we?"

"Well, for the time being I suppose…but it is important that he realises that he realises his treatment is going to hurt as well."

"Okay, but I don’t think you should put him through any more pain other than the completely necessary."

"Alright, point taken Dr. Ross. We were just discussing the possibility of surgery tomorrow morning. We want to get this started as soon as possible, in agreement with DCFS, so they can find him a foster family quickly, and so he has to spend as little time here as possible."

"Uh huh. Right. Sounds okay to me. What are you going to do exactly?"

"Basically, we are going to break both kneecaps, lift them out of the joint and wire the two pieces together to ensure they reset correctly. We’ll insert an artificial synovial sac under the knee cap and then wire it in place with the femur and fibula and tibia."

"And you’re going to do both legs in one go?"

"We have agreed, because of the circumstances, it would be best to do so, then he can start to walk with both legs at the same time, hopefully before he leaves."

Doug nods and looks at Ben, who is playing with a pen from Doug’s scrubs’ pocket.

"How does that sound, huh? We’ll have you walking before you leave here!"

Ben carries on playing. Doug looks back at the doctor, whose lab coat reads "Dr. Camworth MD -------. "It won’t mean much to him right now."

Dr. Camworth smiles at Ben. "No, I’m sure it won’t, but hopefully it will soon."

There is a pause as they all watch the boy play with the pen.

"So, you thinking bout doing this tomorrow morning?"

"Yes. We want to get the surgery done so that we can concentrate on the use of his legs and physiotherapy. We’ve got the Theatre booked for 5.30, and hopefully we’ll be done by 10. Will you be around for that?"

"Sure, I’ll be there."

"Okay then Dr. Ross, we’ll see you in the morning! You too, Ben! Bye bye!

Ben looks up but doesn’t wave or say anything as he normally does if Doug or Carol say goodbye. He just watches them leave, before looking back down at the pen, which is still inexplicably holding his attention. Doug looks at him and notices why the pen is so fascinating. All the time he has been talking, Ben has been drawing on his scrub top. There is an interesting pattern of scribbles all over the shirt, and Doug sighs, half smiling at the same time. He takes the pen from Ben and points it at him.

"Hey, how would you like me to draw on you, huh?" he pokes the boy in the chest. Ben squirms and giggles as Doug walks off down the ward, grinning and continuing to tickle him with the pen, as Ben’s laughter gets louder.

Down in the ER, the nurses have gathered again at the main desk, grabbing a couple of seconds while Kerry is in a meeting. Once again, Haleh stands in the midst of it all.

"So we’ve covered surgery, ICU, peds, ortho, the SICU…you did do the SICU didn’t you?"

"Yes. And it took me ages, they’re never all in one place up there," said Yosh.

"Great. So we’ve still got Radiology, all the labs on the fifth floor, the basement…"

"Not that they would even know, they hardly ever surface…"

"We have to be sure…besides, Carol’s promised us all dinner out if we do this for her, and not just Doc Magoo’s either…"

"WOAH! You didn’t tell us that before!"

"Yeah, well, I thought I’d see how hard you worked before I mentioned it."

There are cries from around the group of "I’m off to Radiology!" and "I’ll be in the basement…" Mark comes up to the desk and asks what all the fuss is about.

Haleh leans over the front and says quietly, "The Task Force has renewed energy."

"Oh. Good to hear Haleh, keep the good work up!"

He comes round and files a chart, then goes over to the computer. Suddenly the ambulance bay doors smack open and a bloodied figure stumbles in carrying a prone form, also covered in blood. "Help! Help her! Someone…"

"Haleh, grab a gurney! QUICK!" Mark races around the desk to the figures, and slides a gurney produced by Haleh under the body of the unconscious girl. They move to the trauma room as Haleh stars on the vitals of the girl. Mark pushes the gurney and shouts back, "Sir, sir, we need to know what happened to your friend. Can you tell us what happened?"

There is silence behind him as they speed into the trauma room and start attaching IV’s and monitors.

"Heart rate 60, pulse thready, BP’s 60 over 80, pupils fixed and dilated."

Mark absorbs all this and pulls back the girls eyelids as he continues to holler at the man who brought the girl in. "Sir! CAN YOU TELL US WHAT HAPPENED? Carol, can you go and see where he is?"

Carol runs out of the room, leaving Mark, a just-arrived Carter, Haleh, and Lydia to continue. "She’s bradying down!"

"Okay, Carter, start chest compressions, Lydia, get 2 of O neg, let’s get moving people!"

He clears off some of the blood and can see she has been stabbed in the chest several times. He checks the rest of her body for other wounds and calls out to the others "Okay guys, we got the knife."

It is stuck in the woman’s upper thigh, on the inside. "Let’s get that out, put it to one side, the police will want to see it."

"V fib!"

"Crash cart!"

Lydia drags it over and charges it up. "Clear!"

The body leaps but the heart rate monitor still shows a flat line. "Charge at 200!"

"Charging!"

"Clear!"

Again the body jumps. This time the monitor flashes back into life.

"She’s tachycardic!"

Carol rushes back in and stops in the doorway. "Mark. MARK. He’s gone. He’s not there."

Mark stops his work to look at her. Everyone temporarily halts with him. Suddenly they all snap back into it again.

"Okay, has anyone got any ID? A purse? We need to know who this is."

Carol searches the pile of clothes to one side of the room as treatment continues.

"5 milligrams of epi IV push!"

"Thoracotomy tray!"

Some hours later we see Carol clearing up the trauma room. Mark is there, sitting on a stool, disconnecting various wires from a body. Doug comes in.

"Wow. What did I miss?"

"That prostitute who brought Ben in," Carol says, looking towards the bed. Doug leans against the wall with his arms folded. He looks at the body wide eyed.

"Caroline? What happened to her?"

"She was stabbed, probably raped again. Police are here; they want to take the body. Some guy brought her in, carried her here and then left before we could find out the whole story."

Doug looks at his feet, and a quiet descends.

"How’s Ben?"

"He’s going down for surgery at 5.30."

"Already?"

"Yeah, they want to get him outta here as soon as possible."

Mark looks up at Doug.

"Are you going to tell him about her, about Caroline?"

Doug looks back at him. "No, I don’t think so. He seems to have completely forgotten about her. Besides, I don’t think I should if he’s going to surgery this morning."

Mark nods, as the room turns silent again for a moment. He gets up, breaking the silence.

"Okay, well I’m going to talk to the police. I guess I’ll see you later. Hope all goes well with Ben." He disappears out of the room.

"He seems kinda cut up about all this, doesn’t he?"

"Yeah. I think he’s mad that the one trauma of the night didn’t make it."

"Maybe, yeah. I don’t know, I think he feels something more than that, he was talking to her when she came in before, he said he thought he scared her off when he mentioned the police…. maybe he’s blaming himself."

Carol finishes her tidying and stands up straight from picking up gloves from the floor. She groans and stretches. Doug goes up behind her and puts his arms around her, resting his head on her shoulder. "Let’s get outta here, go sit down, watch some TV…"

"Mmm, that sounds good…as long as it’s not west coast baseball."

Doug pulls a sad face and they walk out of the room, arms around each other’s waists.

Minutes later they open the door to the staff lounge. The room is full of ER staff, slumped in chairs, clustered around the coffee pot, even Malik lying across the table, asleep. They both turn around and look back out at the ER. Jerry is sitting at the main desk, half asleep, head in hands. He keeps jolting awake, then snoozing off again. Mark is talking to two police officers in the background. No one else can be seen. The ER is dead. Suddenly, a noise erupts behind them in the lounge.

"Aww, HALEH!"

"Please, not now!"

"I just DID the basement!"

"I don’t CARE if we get dinner!"

"Even if it’s at the HILTON!"

Carol looks up at Doug. "Sounds like disillusion in the troops."

Doug grins back down at her. "Well, you know what they say…’If you want a job doing well…’"

"…You have to do it yourself," sighed Carol. They turn away and head off to the lifts.

A couple of hours later, Doug and Carol are in Peds at Ben’s bed as the nurses prepare to send him to pre-op. An array of toy cars cover the bed as all three of them drive the cars through the wrinkles in the bed sheets and laugh. The staff nurse heads towards the happy, and rather loud, corner of the ward.

"Ahem, I hate to interrupt your fun, but it’s time we got Ben downstairs to pre-op."

Doug gets up from his previously sprawled position. "Yeah, um, I’ll be going with him."

"Okay, great. Well, if we can just put these cars back…."

She collects the cars up off the bed, heads to the playroom, but returns to grab the car out of Doug’s hand that he’d forgotten about. Both Ben and Carol find this very amusing. Doug reaches over and grabs Ben, holding him in the air while he squirms and laughs. As they head off down the ward, Doug looks over to Carol, who is watching them both. "And you can stop laughing too!"

They go out into the main corridor and follow the nurse who is marching some way in front of them. They stand outside the elevator bank, and Doug looks at Ben.

"Hey, now, do you remember what’s gonna happen when we go in there?" he points at the elevator doors.

"Yeh. We go up."

"Okay, but today we’re gonna go down instead."

"Okay. Can I sit down?"

"Where? Here?"

"No, in the lellavater."

"Well, if no one else is in there, yeah, I guess so."

The doors open and they step inside. Doug puts Ben down on the floor, and he shuffles to a corner and hangs on to the walls. The nurse watches him and then turns to Doug.

"Are you sure that’s safe?"

"Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s having fun."

The nurse looks back over at Ben sceptically. The elevator starts to descend and Ben squeals.

"You okay down there?"

He has his eyes squeezed together, but he’s grinning, and Doug looks at Carol and grins himself. The elevator pulls to a halt on the third floor and a whole load of people start to push their way in with a gurney, a sleeping man lying on it, hooked up to many wires and IV’s. Carol bends over and scoops Ben off the floor before he gets squashed. They ride down to the second floor and the elevator empties. The nurse speeds off again.

"What’s the rush?!" Doug whispers to Carol who is still holding Ben.

They enter the pre-op room a couple of moments behind the nurse, who is going over some papers with a pre-op nurse. She comes bustling over and smiles at all three of them.

"Have you signed the consent forms, Mr. and Mrs…. err…." she looks down at her papers.

"Um, sorry, we’re staff here, we’re just bringing Ben down. DCFS have to sign all the forms."

"Oh. Very sorry. Have DCFS signed the form of overall consent for all treatment?"

"Yeah, uh, I think you’ll find it’s…" Doug leans over and lifts a couple of sheets of paper, "…here."

"Oh. Thank you, thank you. Right, well, now we’ve got that sorted, would you like to bring him over here…."

She goes over to a gurney and pulls the sidebars up. Carol puts Ben down in the middle. He is looking slightly nervous with his new surroundings. The nurse has wandered off to find a tray of meds, and Doug leans on the bed to talk to him.

"Okay buddy, what’s gonna happen now is that lady there is gonna give you some medicine, okay? It’s gonna make you real tired so you can sleep, okay?"

"But I’m not sleepy."

"Well, that’s because we’ve been playing. But you need to go to sleep now, because they have to make your legs all better so you can walk."

"Oh. Can we play some more when I wake up again?"

"Yeah kiddo, ‘course we can."

The nurse returns, dragging a tray behind her. She pulls up a seat and sits down, pulls they tray to one side and starts to prepare the syringe. Ben, playing with Doug, is blissfully unaware.

"Okay young man. Can I have your hand? Right, I’m just going to put this in here so we can put your medicine in." She holds his hand steady as she gets an IV line ready with the other hand. She moves forward and pushes the needle at Ben’s hand, but he pulls it away and looks her straight in the eye.

"Don’t do that. I don’t want any. It’s bad for you."

The nurse looks shocked. Carol looks at Ben. "What’s bad for you Ben? This is okay."

"No it’s not. I don’t want any…" he searches for the word, "...drug."

Doug’s eyes go from being confused to glinting with understanding.

"Hey, these aren’t drugs, they’re not bad for you. We have to use them in hospitals to make people go to sleep so they don’t hurt. It’s not what you’ve seen before, this is different."

Ben watches Doug. "But I’m not ‘llowed to have them."

Carol speaks up again, "Ben, you’re allowed to have this, they’re not bad at all, they’re good!"

Ben watches both of them carefully and seems to ponder this idea.

"Is that okay? Can we do this now?" Doug asks him.

Ban nods and sticks his hand out again. The nurse, still looking slightly shocked, puts the IV line in. Ben screams and looks at his hand as she does this. "IT HURTS!"

"Yeah, okay buddy, we know, it’s okay, it’s gonna stop soon," Doug tries to comfort him. Ben still cries as the nurse moves back to the tray to get the anaesthetic. She moves towards him again with the needle in the air. "NO! I DON’T WANNA HAVE IT!" Ben screams again. Carol moves forward and holds Ben’s free hand that has been flailing around in the air, hitting Doug twice. "It’s not going to hurt this time Ben, hey, listen to me, it’s not going to hurt this time. It’s just going to go down the other needle that the lady just put in, okay? It won’t hurt, I promise."

Ben looks at her, his screaming stopped and his cries reduced to whimpers as the nurse puts the anaesthetic in the IV.

"You’re going to feel very sleepy now Ben, okay? Just close your eyes, that’s it, just go to sleep, we’ll see you when you wake up…"

The boy closes his eyes and slips under, falling backwards as the anaesthesia kicks in. Doug catches him before he hits the bed, and lays him down softly.

"Phew!" says the nurse, wheeling her tray away to the end of the room. She hits an intercom and calls "We’re ready in here!" Two aides come in through the end door, and grab the gurney with Ben on it and wheel him through to Theatre, as Dr. Camworth sticks his head around the door, arms in the air, having just scrubbed in. He nods at both Carol and Doug, who are just standing where they were left. "We’ll be done by 10, providing there are no complications…will you be around for that?"

"Sure." Carol nods wearily following Doug’s response.

"Good luck."

The surgeon nods again and leaves. Doug and Carol move forward and wrap their arms around each other in a hug. They both look exhausted, and turn around to face the window, where the sun is rising.

Credit is due to Ange for her invaluable help with my fanfics, THANK YOU!!! Feedback to triggersaurus@hotmail.com as ever guys!