CHAPTER SEVEN

Saturday night started off with a bang for Rob and Sandy. They were slammed with all kinds of STATs. And then…

“Trauma respond, ETA three minutes. Trauma respond, ETA three minutes” was announced across the overhead system.

Carmen, one of the phlebotomists, went to the ER. Sandy went immediately to Blood Bank to get four units of uncross-matched O Negative packed cells from the refrigerator. She tagged each one with an emergency release form, along with an assigned tracking number. She then added them to the log sheet. Next she put a temperature indicator on each unit, which would monitor the 2 to 8 degrees Celsius temperature that needed to be maintained while they were in transport. Finally, she took the cooler containing the four units of blood to the ER.

As she was leaving the emergency room, an elderly woman in the crowded waiting area was waving to get her attention. Sandy worked her way through the crowd to get closer to her.

“I’m sorry to bother you, honey, but everyone here, including me, is wondering what ETA means.” She spoke so sweet and slow with a hint of a southern drawl, the way folks from somewhere in Georgia might sound.

“It means Estimated Time of Arrival.”

“Oh…thank you so much, honey.”

“You’re very welcome, Ma’am.”

“What’s the trauma about?” Rob asked when Sandy got back to the lab.

“A guy on a motorcycle got hit by a semi. He looks pretty bad. The sight of him made me gag; I had to leave. Carmen is drawing his blood right now. ER’s waiting room is packed. Even the hallway is full.”

“Great,” he said. “Is it this way every weekend?”

“Not all the time, but a lot of the time.”

“Trauma specimens…type and cross four units,” announced Carmen while delivering the samples to them. Sandy went to work on the type and cross right away.

For trauma tests, Rob performed a complete blood count (CBC), complete metabolic panel (CMP), Alcohol level, and Pro-Thrombin Time (PT), and an Activated Partial Thrombin Time (APTT).

“What’s the trauma patient’s H and H?” Sandy asked Rob as she came out of Blood Bank.

“Hemoglobin is 7.2 and hematocrit is 21.3. He’s lost a lot of blood,” Rob said.
“At least the patient is O Pos, antibody screen negative. We still have ten units of O Pos left after the four I just cross-matched.”

The phone rang and Rob picked it up. “Sandy, E.R. is placing an additional order for cross-match four units of packed cells. The patient is now in the OR. So take the blood to the OR when you’re done with them.”

“O.K…it looks like I’ll be in Blood Bank for a while,” she said.
Carmen was still in the ER, drawing other patients, while Ralee, the other phlebotomist, was drawing blood in other departments of the hospital.

The phlebotomists were sending specimens through the pneumatic tube system as quickly as they were collecting them. There were no specimen processors on weekends; therefore, Rob had to receive and verify the specimens into the lab computer system before the specimens could be analyzed. Sandy came out to help him in between specimen incubations. When she was done cross-matching, she dashed out to deliver the four units of blood to the OR.

Receiving and verifying specimens took a lot of time away from their own work. It was non-stop work for both of them until around 4:00 in the morning. Along with the backlog of work, the phones were also constantly ringing. The ER doctors and nurses were impatient, calling for results, at least, every five minutes – or so it seemed.

“Lab, Rob speaking.”

“Dr. Smith here. Any lab results yet on Amanda Reyes?”

“Just released the CBC results. The urine microscopic is now being read, and the CMP is still running.”

“Kindly tell Dr. Smith that I’m about to release the urine microscopic results in the computer,” Sandy added.

After relaying Sandy’s message to Dr. Smith, Rob hung up the phone and headed to Microbiology to set up a STAT sputum culture, along with a gram stain.

Work finally slowed down, but there were still some slides for manual WBC differential counts to be done. Still looking into the microscope, Sandy felt Rob’s presence nearby after he came back from Micro.

Feeling somewhat stiff from the work-related stress tension and from looking into the microscope for too long, she lifted her head and then rotated it. After that she lifted her shoulders and then rotated them forward and backward to relax them.

Without any warning, she felt Rob’s hands on her shoulders, massaging them gently, but with comforting pressure on her stiff muscles. Sandy, after the initial shock from Rob’s touch, didn’t object but rather welcomed it and enjoyed it thoroughly. The sensation was non-sexual, but very soothing to her stiff neck and shoulder muscles. “Hmm, that feels good,” she said.

“You’ve been working non-stop and so intently that I thought you could use it.” He moved his hands a little lower towards her shoulder blades and towards her middle back, still massaging the tightened muscles.

Sandy felt so relaxed after the massage. When she finished her work, she decided to reciprocate Rob’s goodness by massaging him a bit. While he was seated, releasing some lab results in the computer, Sandy went to work on his shoulders. Rob didn’t object either. So, she continued massaging his neck and shoulders. Rob stopped what he was doing when Sandy moved her hands down his spine and down to his lower back muscles.

“I hope that if I ever find the right woman for myself that she can give me a massage like you can.” Sandy felt heartened by his compliment. After she withdrew her hands, he let out a moan of satisfaction and then thanked her. Sandy thanked him also for massaging her earlier.

She left to answer the beeping call of the pneumatic tube system. Morning draws had started coming down the chute. They were now starting into the second segment of this busy night’s work before their shift would come to an end.