Chapter 5 - Code Crimson
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At three o'clock that afternoon, a piercing alarm shattered the steady hum of the third floor.
“Code Crimson, Trauma Bay One! All available surgical and ICU personnel to the trauma bay!” the overhead intercom blared repeatedly.
Elaine turned to me instantly, her administrative demeanor vanishing into pure clinical command.
“Claire, grab two bags of uncrossed O-negative blood from the cooler and follow me right now,” she ordered.
I moved with immediate focus, sprinting toward the blood bank unit and securing the refrigerated transport packs.
The emergency trauma bay was absolute organized chaos when we pushed through the double swinging doors.
Paramedics were performing aggressive manual chest compressions on a young man strapped to a backboard.
His gray Henley shirt had been cut completely open, soaked crimson with blood pouring from an entry wound near his sternum.
“Twenty-two-year-old male, multiple gunshot wounds to the upper torso, extreme hemorrhagic shock!” the lead paramedic shouted over the noise.
The trauma surgeon was shouting orders for suction, intubation, and rapid transfusions.
I looked down at the patient’s pale, blood-spattered face and my stomach dropped violently into the floor.
It was Leo Santoro, Marco’s younger brother.
I recognized his angular jawline and the familiar Santoro crest tattooed on his left clavicle from portraits hanging in Marco’s estate.
“Pressure is dropping! Fifty over thirty and falling fast!” the respiratory therapist called out in alarm.
“He’s losing breath sounds on the right side!” the trauma resident yelled, reaching frantically for a scalpel.
The resident was visibly panicking, his trembling hands hesitating over the patient’s swelling chest cavity.
I stepped directly to the bedside, dropping the blood bags into the rapid infuser line before leaning over Leo’s chest.
I placed my fingers firmly against his trachea and felt the unmistakable, fatal deviation to the left side.
“His trachea has shifted!” I shouted clearly directly to the lead attending surgeon.
“It’s a tension pneumothorax, not just vascular collapse!”
“He needs a needle decompression in the second intercostal space right now or his heart will arrest!”
The resident froze, but the attending surgeon locked eyes with me for half a second.
“She’s right! Give her the large-bore angiocath!” the attending barked.
Without a second thought for who the boy was or what his last name meant, I grabbed the sterile fourteen-gauge needle.
I found the second rib space along the midclavicular line with my left fingers and drove the needle firmly into the pleural space.
A violent hiss of trapped, pressurized air rushed through the catheter lumen, releasing the lethal pressure crushing Leo’s heart.
The cardiac monitor immediately let out a rhythmic beep as his pulse surged back into a recognizable sinus rhythm.
“Pressure rising! Seventy-five over forty-five! Rhythm is stabilizing!” the monitor nurse announced loudly.
“Incredible catch, nurse,” the attending surgeon breathed, taking over to insert the permanent chest tube drainage system.
My hands were covered in Leo Santoro’s blood, and my royal blue scrubs were stained across the chest.
Suddenly, the heavy security doors of the trauma bay burst open with immense, violent force.
Four armed security guards tried to block the entrance, but they were tossed aside like paper dolls.
Marco Santoro strode into the trauma bay, his face pale with raw terror and his dark eyes wild with desperation.
His black tailored suit was disheveled, and his knuckles were scraped raw.
“Leo!” Marco roared, his voice trembling with an agony I had never seen in him before.
Hospital security rushed toward him with tasers drawn, shouting for him to back away from the sterile field.
“Hold your fire!” Elaine Porter commanded from the corner of the room.
Marco’s frantic gaze swept across the chaotic room until his eyes landed squarely on me standing over his dying brother.
He saw my blood-soaked gloves holding the chest tube clamp firmly in place against Leo’s exposed ribs.
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His breath hitched in his throat as the monitors steadily beeped Leo’s returning heartbeat into the sterile room.
For five long seconds, the feared mafia kingpin looked at the girl who had once poured his coffee, his eyes shining with disbelief and overwhelming gratitude.
