Angel's Wings

Chapter 4 SURGERY

Light… Dark….Light … Dark.

Sixteen year old female, car crash.

Lacerated face and back. Suspected Spinal column injury. Second victim female crushed right leg… Other vehicle suspected drunk driver, DOA. Words half heard as she drifted into unconsciousness.

Lacerations on face and back. Suspected Spinal column injury. Possibility of paralysis high. Multiple contusions to torso from seatbelt.

The nurse rattled off the surgical report as the surgeon scrubbed into the operating room.

“Patient’s mother taken to room 2 with broken Femur and fractured right wrist. She is awake and has given consent for treatment of daughter.”

Peter Charleston wasn’t listening at this point. He was a fat old man. Peter had been a surgeon for almost thirty years. He had seen it all and long since stopped being impressed by any of it. Car crashes, gun shots, cancer, you name it and he had performed surgery on it. “Where are the X-ray images?” he asked the surgical tech as he entered the sterile room. The room was ten by twenty foot tiled with a drain in the center of the floor. Bright lights over the metal table illuminated every spot. A medical cart with a stainless steel top held various sharp objects and drawers for sutures or medicines. Hanging on the wall was a lit cabinet with clips attached to the top and sides.

“Already on the light, but there is something wrong with them.” The surgical technician answered. That stopped the surgeon. “What do you mean wrong with them?” he asked.

“There is a haze over the spine we can’t account for.” The surg tech pointed to the illuminated X-ray film. Dr. Charleston walked over to examine the film. His half-moon glasses on the tip of his nose, he asked aloud “ Why did these not get redone?”

“We did, sir, three times and the images all came out like that.” another nurse answered him.

Peter walked to the middle of the room where his patient lay, back exposed and prepped for surgery. Seraphina was draped in a blue gown, her back open to the room, ready to be operated on to save her spine. Bright purple and green bruising colored the majority of her back. Peter picked up his utensils, fixed his glasses further up his nose, and said “ Well young lady let us examine you.”

He pressed a blade into her skin above the shoulder blade and to the left of her spine. In one long smooth movement, he opened a flap along her spine to examine the spinal column. As soon as he opened her back, Seraphina Sanders’ body jumped. Her back muscles flinched and knocked the blade out of the surgeon’s hand. The room lit up with noise and a strange light. The nurses scrambled back from the table. Peter Charleston was left holding his glasses in wonder from the floor knocked over by Seraphina. A perfect pair of white wings burst from her back. The wings were almost 10 feet long completely outstretched, pure white, feathered like a swan. The operating room staff was soon covered in a slimy substance that had come out with the wings. It coated every surface from floor to ceiling.

As quickly as they appeared, the wings vanished back into Seraphina’s back, leaving behind a very lifelike tattoo that stretched from the nape of her neck to the middle of her thighs.

Peter Charleston pulled himself off of the floor. He stared wild-eyed at his lead surgical nurse. She stared back and the room was silent.

A quick glance at his patient showed Peter a perfect specimen. The spine was no longer bruised or misshapen. The cut he had made around her spine had melted back into her skin without a trace it had ever been. The girl mumbled words in her drugged sleep. The first nurse to move grabbed paper towels and began wiping things down. “That was an experience…” She spoke and tried to break the tension in the room. “What do we do now?”

“Move her to recovery. Notify her mom in room two that she is out of surgery.” Peter Charleston spoke slowly. Nobody would ever believe what he had just witnessed and he couldn’t explain it if he tried. Somehow he had to tell the girl’s mom about what had transpired. Although he wasn’t entirely sure he was up to the task of doing so.

***

Mary Sanders had never been a patient person. When she woke up from her own surgery, the first thing she did was ask about her daughter. Nobody in this cursed hospital seemed to have any answers to her questions. They wheeled her into room two and transferred her to the bed.

“Excuse me, can you tell me about my daughter?” She asked the male nurse who lifted her into the bed.

“I’m sure they will tell you as soon as they know something.” He answered again. “You should try to get some rest. You have had an exciting day.”

“ I just want to know where my daughter is. Is she still in surgery? Did they fix her back? Is she alright? Why won’t anybody tell me anything? ” If her leg hadn’t been broken, Mary would have been pacing the room. As it was, she was confined to bed with a shattered leg and a broken wrist.

The nurse was paged to another room, and he left without answering any questions. A short while later, another nurse entered the room. She pushed a wheelchair near the bed and set the locks. “We are going to see your daughter Mrs. Sanders. She is out of surgery and being moved to recovery.”

“About Damn time.” Mary swung one leg off the bed. With a lot of help from the nurse she settled in the wheelchair. “Let’s go.”

They wound their way through the hospital until they came to a sign marked Recovery. The Nurse picked up a white phone hanging on the wall. Another nurse picked up the line at the desk. “We are here to see Seraphina Sanders.” A buzzer sounded and the door clicked open. The nurse wheeled Mary through a set of double doors into the Recovery wing. Beds lined the side. Separated by curtains, each bed had a number on the wall behind it. Each room consisted of a bed, a table, and monitoring equipment. Nurses milled about, checking on patients or charting various things on clipboards. It was noticeably cooler in this area of the hospital than all the other areas they had passed through.

Seraphina was in the last stall. She was separated from the other patients by at least three bed lengths. Her bed was curtained off from the door leading back into surgery, towards the operating rooms. Mary’s heart sank in her chest when she saw her little girl lying in that bed.

Mary’s nurse stopped by the desk to grab Seraphina’s chart. “Please page Dr. Charleston that Seraphina’s mom has arrived. He wished to speak with her about Seraphina.” The nurse at the desk obeyed.

Overhead the announcement went out for Dr. Charleston to come to recovery.

Sera had an IV in one arm with a tube connecting her to a bag of liquid hung from a cold metal pole. The drip was slow and steady, Mary watched it while she waited for the doctor to arrive. Sera had not woken up yet when a portly old man stepped through the double doors beyond the curtain. His half-moon glasses and disheveled appearance startled Mary.

“Are you the girl’s mother?” His voice matched his appearance. Gravely rough voice coming out in spurts from his mouth.

“I am…” Mary watched him carefully, hanging on to every word.

The old surgeon started giving the normal spiel about vitals and relative health. In his mind he wanted to tell her the whole story of what had happened in his operating room, but he wasn’t sure she would believe him. So he told her that Seraphina’s back was fine and it wouldn’t surprise him if she was up and walking around soon. Mary’s face flooded with relief.

“We will be discharging her soon, and the two of you should get some rest and take it easy for a little while.”

Two hours later Seraphina and her mom were both discharged and ready to go home. The hospital staff called a taxi. An orderly helped Mary into the car. He turned to lift Seraphina and found her standing next to the passenger side front door. She wore a pair of borrowed green scrubs. Her clothing had been completely destroyed by both the crash and the paramedics cutting everything away to assess the damage. The orderly gawked at her in surprise and moved out of the way for her to enter the vehicle. She got in, gingerly and sat stiff against the hard back seat.