And right now, half the department's doctors were tied up and the rest were away on training rotations. I was the only one available to handle this kind of emergency.
I scrubbed in, pushed through the doors, and stopped short. The patient everyone had been talking about was Rowena Rodriguez.
She must have lost a lot of blood already. Her eyes were glazed, her voice a drifting mutter: "Senior Paddy really screwed me this time. I told him to use protection but he whined that it didn't feel good. Hiding that the baby's his is one thing, but you can't hide albinism. If only Clint hadn't done that genetic screening..."
...
"At least Senior Paddy took the baby away."
The assisting physician and the anesthesiologist in the operating suite both turned to stare at me.
But right now none of that mattered. We had to save her.
I'd just signaled the anesthesiologist to bring the surgical consent form when Rowena's expression snapped into focus. She grabbed my wrist and screamed, "I refuse surgery!"
Saving her was the priority, but we couldn't override a patient's wishes.