Damage control surgery, like the one performed by the medics at the field hospital, is intended as a stopgap to contain blood loss and ruptured organs until the patient is stable enough to tolerate a second, more thorough procedure to find and fix the damage. Typically doctors wait one or two days before attempting definitive repair, but it’s a fraught balancing act: waiting prevents the underlying wounds from healing and can lead to worse complications, yet going back in too soon means a very high risk of death on the operating table.
The night passed somehow. Then the morning. Every hour Avery survived improved his odds, and I was just starting to hope the worst might be over when a fresh emergency hit.
Rowan responded first, and when she called for the nurse to bring Vik, I knew it was bad. The two physicians bustled around their dear friend with rapid efficiency, checking the output from the various tubes and wires protruding from his body, comparing readings with his chart and consulting in clipped shorthand. Avery didn’t even seem to recognize them; he tossed in agitation but his gaze didn’t focus. Terrifying phrases like “altered mental state,” “borderline pH,” and “BP plummeting” buzzed over my head.
“We have to take him back to the OR,” Rowan informed me, serious but decisive. “Something must have happened — new bleeding, or an injury the combat surgeons couldn’t get to.”
“It’s only been sixteen hours,” I argued stupidly, as if protesting reality would change it. “He’s not ready.”
“If we wait any longer, the outcome is certain,” Vik told me in a soft voice far calmer than he must feel. His familiar earth-pigmented eyes held both compassion and urgency.
My mouth was too dry to form any more words, so I just nodded, kissed Avery’s sweat-dewed temple, and watched helplessly while they wheeled him back to the operating room.
The next ninety minutes were a black tunnel of despair. I knew there was still a chance, that there must be some light, but I couldn’t find it. I should have been visualizing him getting better, but all I could think about was what would happen if Rowan and Vik came back empty-handed, as if rehearsing it would somehow make it possible to endure. If I’d just seen him alive for the last time… I pressed my forehead against clenched fists while dark visions swirled.
“It went well,” Rowan suddenly interrupted. “He’s in the recovery room, and his vitals are coming up.” She rattled off some technical details, but her positive tone registered more than the specifics of what they’d repaired. “The next few hours will be crucial, and we’ll have to monitor closely for infection, but we’re hopeful.”
Graham was tearful and babbling something to me, but I focused on Rowan. “Can I see him?”
I didn’t think family members were usually allowed into that part of the facility, but after a moment she assented. “If you stay out of the way.”
I nodded my agreement and stood to follow her. Graham got up too, but Rowan cut him off. “I’m sorry — I only have space for one.”
“Tell him I love him!” the captain entreated as we walked away, but I ignored him. There was only one message I had the capacity to deliver.
The room was small, with a couple other patients being prepped or brought back to consciousness, so I stood against the wall and let the staff work. I didn’t take my gaze from my beloved’s face, still slack with anesthesia. At least that meant Avery couldn’t yet feel the pain after another round of cutting and roughing up his insides, which remained partially visible through the plastic covering sewn to his skin.
Don’t leave me, I pleaded silently. I need you. Stay with me.
One slow hour at a time, he did. His circulatory system stabilized, his cells finally got the oxygen they needed, and his torn tissues were able to start repairing themselves. His color gradually improved, and in another day they were able to fully close his abdomen.
Under the influence of morphine and exhausted by his battle for survival, Avery drifted in and out of awareness, but I only left his side for the briefest of occasions. So many things could still go wrong, and I wasn’t about to risk missing a moment with him. I snatched what sleep I could, sitting on the floor with my arms and head on his cot, between rounds of vital sign readings and dressing checks. Mostly I just watched to make sure he was breathing, held his hand when he was able to, and flipped idly through the books someone had optimistically brought to the bedside.
“You should go home for a while, Julian,” he rasped when he woke after the third surgery, his throat hoarse from successive rounds of intubation. “Get some rest. I’ll be ok. Graham will stay with me.”
I recoiled automatically from the barren desert that loomed behind any thought of separation. “No. I’ll rest when you’re more stable.”
“Really, Julian,” Graham tried to convince me. “We can handle this. The room isn’t far; we’d send for you if anything happened.”
“No,” I refused again. The idea of someone else hovering over my husband in his weakened state — someone who barely knew him, who hadn’t been in his life until what felt like yesterday — made my skin crawl. “You go get some rest, if you’re so worried about it.”
I didn’t care that Graham seemed offended by my lack of cooperation. I tightened my fingers around Avery’s under the blanket, and he gave me a pitifully frail squeeze in return before letting his lashes drift closed again.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” I whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * * * *
Avery:
At the end of my sixth day in the med center, Rowan and Vik decided I’d recovered enough to be released. I basically felt like I’d been run over by a tank — every muscle ached, my abdomen was one big pit of fire, and I barely had the stamina to sit propped up for half an hour. But I was alive, and my doctor friends were happy with the trends on my vitals, and so far there were no new signs of problems with my healing. I hadn’t even ended up losing that much of my intestines, and they didn’t think there would be any serious long-term complications.
I could have been angry that any of it had happened. LSDF had put me through a huge amount of pain and stress and fear for no fucking reason other than their own greed, and I wasn’t technically even out of the woods. It would probably take months to fully recover, and Rowan told me that soreness from a major surgery could last a whole year.
But mostly, I was just grateful to be alive. Grateful my partners hadn’t had to watch me die. Even grateful I’d been with the traders that afternoon, because it wasn’t likely they’d have escaped without me covering their retreat. At least there were a few less widows and orphans than there would have been. I’d come so close to drawing my final breath that it was almost like starting over — every day a bonus gift I didn’t think I’d get to unwrap.
At this point, I was honestly more worried about Julian than about myself. Even though I was doing so much better, his features remained shadowed, haunted even, as if he had lost me. He’d insisted on staying with me around the clock, leaving only when the other leaders needed to consult with him about the militia’s stragglers, and even then he wouldn’t go farther than just outside the building.