RP: A Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

[peter_crawford]

Date: 10 January
Characters: Peter Crawford, Adison Quinn, Jen (NPC)
Location: JPS hospital
Status: Private
Summary: Peter's got his hands full
Completion: Complete

Comments

[peter_crawford]

"Just one tube," Peter reassured the young man with the pins. "Just double-checking your blood-thinners. We can't adjust your meds if there might be an error with the lab, so just to be on the safe side..." He pressed his gloved thumb to the spot where the needle came out, holding it for a good minute to make sure that it stopped bleeding. "You let me know if this starts bleeding again, okay?"

He taped a gauze pad over the tiny hole and discarded his needles, then marked the tube of blood with date and time and Brad's name. He headed out in the hall and let out a breath of relief at seeing the lab girl. Somebody new, but she's a body from the lab.

"Hey. We've either got a major lab screw up or some kind of medication disaster," he said to the girl. "I'm not sure which, but I've got eight patients with critical labs. I drew two," he added, pulling lab slips out to match the tubes he held. "I need to add type and cross to the amputee though. He's oozing a lot, and the doc wants to toss him a unit just to be on the safe side. He's anaemic as it is." Peter offered over the extra requisition, then smiled.

"And hi. I'm Peter."

[adison_quinn]

"Despite the fact it's my department, I'd rather a lab screwup than a med disaster," Adison said, accepting the tubes and tucking them into an empty rack marked STAT/ASAP. "Thanks. Which two...?" She compared the names on the tubes to her reqs, tore away the two the nurse already drew, and accepted the additional order from him. "Type and cross, got it. I'll take care of them.

"And I'm Adison. I'll probably forget your name," she added, walking backward toward the first patients' room. "Easier for a couple hundred older employees to remember me than it is for me to remember a couple hundred of you." She smiled, gave a little half-wave half-salute, and turned to knock on the door. "Hi there, I'm from the lab, I'm here to take some blood. How are you today?"

[peter_crawford]

Peter chuckled. How right it was. It'd taken him weeks to learn just the nurses on ortho. He turned to the stack of charts and picked up the first one, flipping to the orders section to write the telephone order from his notes. It didn't take long to document the orders, note them on the kardex, then find Jen and retrieve his keys.

He picked up the bag of IV medication for the amputee and headed down the hall, meeting the lab-girl just outside the door. What was her name? He frowned, then tried. "Adrienne? No... Adison." He gestured for her to go ahead, then followed her into the room.

"Double-teaming you, Mrs. Ames," he told the woman in the bed. "Adison's here to double check that bloodwork from earlier. I'm just here to dope you up." He held up the bag of antibiotics, then started connecting it to her IV.

"Good thing you said the doctor was giving me blood," the patient said in a mock grumble. "You vampires are gonna take it all!" She looked up at the girl, then smiled. "Although you're a rather nice sort of vampire. I suppose if I could choose, I'd choose one like this. Wouldn't you, Peter?"

He glanced over at Adison, then grinned. "Yes ma'am, I guess I would."

[adison_quinn]

"I promise I'll leave you a little bit," Adison said, busying her hands with her work to keep herself from glancing up at the nurse. Peter, he'd said. Was he flirting? Or just being fun for the patient's sake? Probably the latter. For all the time she spent flirting, she knew she was terrible at knowing when others were.

"There you are," she said, doing four things almost simultaneously: removing the needle, activating the safety device, dropping it in the sharps container, and pressing a piece of gauze over the site. She mixed the blood in the tube gently, then set it in the hand holding pressure over the puncture site so she could grab her pen (shaped like a syringe; it had been a gift from her mother the day she passed her certification test) and properly label the tube. "I'm sorry we had to stick you twice."

She lifted the gauze momentarily to see whether the stick was bleeding; it was, more than she'd have expected. She barely stopped herself from raising an eyebrow at it, instead pressing the gauze back down. She couldn't just leave the patient bleeding, after all.

[peter_crawford]

"I s'pose I'll survive," Mrs. Ames said, giving Adison's hand a pat. Peter noticed her looking at the gauze with a worried expression, then her eyes meet his.

"Just a double check," he assured her. "Sometimes your blood thinners work a little too well. According to what the lab shows this time, I'll likely be giving you an injection in a while to stop you up a little."

"Those pain pills are doing a bang-up job of that already," she grumbled, but her eyes twinkled with good humour.

Peter laughed. "Then I'll bring you an injection and some dynamite." He jotted his initials and the time on the IV bag, then looked down at Adison.

"Slowing at all? I've got some stretch tape..." He dug it out of his pocket and offered it over. "A little extra pressure. I'll keep an eye on it for a while."

[adison_quinn]

"It's... slowing a little, yeah," Adison said, checking once more. "Thanks."

She switched the bloody gauze for a fresh piece, smiled at the patient, and wrapped the tape around Mrs. Ames' arm. "I'm all done. Peter will take good care of you, but I'm sorry to say I can't stay and chat. Have a lovely day, okay?" She tried to infuse the trite phrase with sincerity; it was important to show you cared, even for someone you only saw once.

She made sure her tray was in order, gave Peter and Mrs. Ames one last smile each, and left the room. All six draws finished, eight INRs and one type&cross, and much quicker than she thought she'd be able to manage, thanks to Peter the ortho nurse. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she found her step light as she made her way to the lab.

He was kinda cute, too. Nice smile.

~~~

Adison dropped off the STATs, picked up her next set of reqs, and made her next round, picking up the lower-priority draws she'd skipped on her last round at the same time.

When she got back to the lab (back and forth and back and forth), the tech cornered her. "Good, you're here. Hold off on that next set; Mary'll pick them up. Take these results down to Ortho; they're STAT critical levels."

"Right." Adison set her tray down, took the printed results, and hurried down to Ortho. Something weird must be going on down there.

[peter_crawford]

The bloodbank had called for a pickup, and Peter had sent Jen to pick up the unit and a coke. He'd need both before the shift was over, he had the feeling, and he gathered supplies to head into another room. A routine knee replacement with bloody urine. Not good. He'd got the order for a catheter to measure and monitor, and although the patient wasn't pleased about it, he was cooperative and it took only a few minutes to do.

Peter hung the drainage bag on the edge of the bed and watched the cranberry colored urine drain, then helped the patient settle and washed his hands. "I'm right in the hall if you need me."

He'd just reached the station when Adison came around the corner. "I'm not sure I like that look," he said, looking at the sheaf of results she held. "And I'm pretty sure you're not going to tell me it's a bad day in the lab."

[adison_quinn]

Adison gave him an "I can't help it" look along with the results. "It isn't a good day in the lab, but you still won't like these results. Your lowest is a 5; most are eights and nines." She scowled. "My training's limited but I can't imagine how this would happen in such a variety of patients, all at once."

[peter_crawford]

Glancing through the printouts was like reading a bad novel, it just kept getting worse. "I can't either. You get one patient, once in a while. Someone's taking something they didn't tell you about. Some herbal thing, or drinking, or... God." Peter dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated, then took a breath.

"But we've got it. Double checked and confirmed. Good thing we got orders for the K already, just in case."

Jen came around the corner and handed Peter his coke, but paused before offering over the transfusion. "I'm guessing it's not the lab?" She gave the lab girl a vague smile, then nodded at the charts. "I pulled new order sheets and wrote everything up. I'll send it up the pharmacy tube and we'll get ready to get stickin. Did you call House?"

"No, I'll page her now." Peter wasn't looking forward to telling the House supervisor that it wasn't the lab, that he had eight critical value patients and no explanation for it. He sighed, then looked over at Adison. "Thanks. I mean, for your help. Getting these so fast." He offered a wry smile. "If you're on in the morning, I guess I'll see you for follow up's?"

[adison_quinn]

"Yeah, I am. They might not send me, though; we vampires are pretty interchangeable."

Adison nodded politely to the second nurse and turned to go back upstairs. A few steps away she turned on her heel, walking backwards.

"Good luck," she called, giving one of her half-salute waves.