I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.
"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."
"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.
To each their own I figured, dismissing this.
"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"
"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."
"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.
"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.
I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.
"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.
"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.
Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"
"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.
"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"
"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.
"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.
"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.
I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."
Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.
"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"
"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.
"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"
He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.
"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."
"Okay."
Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.
Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.
"Give me half of them." I told Brett.
With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.
"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.
He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.
"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.
Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.
I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.
"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."
She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.
"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."
She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"
"Well…" I shrugged.
"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"
I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."
I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.
"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.
"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."
"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.
When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."
It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.