Free Lies and Alibis by Tiffany L. Warren

on collision, the unidentified male was driving the wrong way on I-20.  They haven’t done a tox screen, but the male smells of alcohol according to the paramedic.”
    “ Who the heck drunk drives in the middle of the freaking day?” I ask.  “This disgusts me.”
    Lucas’s lips form a grim line.  “You take the mother, then.  I’ll take him.  Connie, tell Dr. Langford we need her for a pediatric consult.  Also, get social services on standby in case the mother doesn’t make it.”
    Less than a minute later the emergency room is a flurry of activity.  The child comes in first.  My heart leaps when I hear the little girl speaking coherently.
    “Please help my mommy, she’s bleeding.  A lot!  And don’t forget to call her boyfriend, because they’re getting married.”
    Nurse Connie speaks to the child, “We are going to do everything we can for your mommy!  We need to get you well, too.”
    The little girl’s chatter fades into the background when her mother’s stretcher is wheeled into the ER.  There’s so much blood.  It’s everywhere.  You never realize how much blood a person has in their body until they start bleeding out.  A paramedic, covered in blood, is sitting on the stretcher, doing chest compressions, trying to keep the woman alive. 
    I go into autopilot mode.
    “ Lopez, I need twenty bags of O positive.  Get an operating room as well.  If I can keep her heart going, we’re going to have to find that bleed and stop it.”
    We wheel the stretcher into a trauma room, and the nurses start hooking the woman up to machines.  Things look bleak, but I have to try.  For the little girl. 
    “ Blood pressure is 68/40 and dropping.”
    “ Crap!  This is a Class IV hemorrhage!  Lopez, I NEED THAT BLOOD!  Now!  She’s coding!  Stand back, give me some room!  CLEAR!”
    I shock the woman three times, and still no heart beat.  With tears rolling down my face, I raise my arms to shock her again.  The paddles are slippery from the blood, but I don’t care. 
    “Are you going to call it?” Nurse Lopez asks. 
    “ CLEAR!”  I ignore her. She’s a nurse.  She didn’t go to medical school.  Who in the hell does she think she is telling me to call time of death?
    “ Sydney!  Call it.” 
    At the sound of Lucas’s voice, I drop my arms to my sides and sob.  I can’t call it.  This woman is too young.  She can’t be gone.  She’s can’t even be thirty yet.  She’s got a little girl, and she’s in love and she’s going to be married.
    She cannot be gone.
    Lucas steps into the trauma room and takes the paddles from my hands.  He pulls me into his arms and I am too broken to resist.
    “Time of death,” Lucas says, “1:23 pm.”
    I don’t even know her name.
     

 
    ~ 16~
     
    Sydney
    I sit in the cafeteria, staring at an almost wilted chicken Caesar salad, knowing that I should eat it, but unable to pick up the fork.  My patient’s name was Rosa Alvarado, and she was twenty-eight years old.  Younger than me.  And she’s gone.
    And guess what?  The drunk driver was released to the police’s custody.  The murderer barely had a scratch on him.  He’s probably still drunk from the amount of alcohol that was in his blood stream at the time of the accident.  He was ten times over the legal limit.  I’m surprised he doesn’t have alcohol poisoning. 
    Rosa ’s fiancé showed up at the hospital and he is completely devastated.  We had to sedate him he was so distraught at the news.  The love of his life is gone, gone, gone.
    “ You okay, Syd?”
    Lucas sits down next to me at the table.  He scoots his chair close and drapes his arm over the back of my chair.  His presence is comforting, just like it was in the trauma room, so I lean into him and let him put his arm around me.
    “No, I am not.  I’ve been losing a lot of patients, Lucas.  It’s too much.”
    “ None of us could’ve saved Rosa.  You did all that you could.”
    I shake my head