What’s the damage
I felt myself
slump against the table a bit as they mentioned her. Like I could suddenly feel
the weight of my body again. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what he had to
say. Ignorance could be bliss after all.
“That’s Mi,”
Emmet said speaking up first. “I wasn’t on shift but Esmee dealt with it. How
is she doing?”
Leo sighed
and shock his head and my heart froze. I surly knew enough to know what that
meant. In any language in any hospital around the world. It still felt kind of
impossible though like she was a part of everything and things would unravel
around her. She could be dead but she shouldn’t be. There was so much more.
“What can I say,
Poor little girl. I have no idea how anyone could cause such destruction to themselves.
I won’t give you false hope guys. It isn’t really good news I can give you
here.”
I don’t know
what happened inside of me. What strange button was pressed or what reflex gave
away. Or weather my resolve had finally gave up at trying to block out the gruesome
wounds that had presented them self to me just a few hours ago but I knew then I
was going to throw up and no amount of deep breaths where going to help.
Heaving I got
to my feet and rushed over to the kitchen sink and turned the tap on before I allowed
myself to have my mini melt down. I would be Ok. I always was but I needed this
moment and apparently the moment had to be then.
“All right, it’s
OK hon,” Emmet soothed as he reached me and pulled my hair back over my
shoulder. “You’re going to be OK.”
I heard someone
go to the fridge and then Leo appeared beside me rubbing the side of my arm. “I
say it once and I will say it again Esmee, You are not cut out to be a nurse.
Your far too soft,” Leo smiled sadly.
“I will take
that as a compliment,” I said chocking on the acid taste that lingered in the
back of my throat. I also took the water that Leo had got from the fridge and
turned my back on the sink taking a sip to try and disperse the taste. I felt
better again. I was more focused. I didn’t know if I particularly liked the
feeling but Vomit had always had a way inside of me of making me calm. The act
of being sick had soothed me. The lullaby of an eating disorder never really
left you.
“Here take a
seat. You look wobbly.” Emmet said dragging a chair over to me pushing me down.
I smiled as in way of thanks and took his hand into mine. I had never wanted
him close to me as much as I had then.
“Carry on
Leo,” I said reluctantly. There was no point in dragging it out her condition
would be the same.
“The ambulance
crew took over her breathing in the ambulance and managed to get her heart
started again with a few rounds of CPR. When she got to us she was still not
making any respiratory effort at all so we incubated her and took over her
breathing with a machine. Her heart then went into erythema but once again
corrected it’s self with CPR. She has also lost a critical amount of blood. She
cut down to the bone on both wrists and severed her main arteries. She pinched
her femoral artery. We did a path repair of this in the A&E however she
will need work on this in theatre by a team of doctors including plastics when
she is more stable. We pushed a lot of blood into her and she was in a critical
but stable condition when we sent her to our paediatric intensive care unit. We
hope she will recover but of course as with any time without oxygen to the
brain we don’t know if she has sustained any amount of brain damage.”
