by Jennifer Carey

Created on: September 27, 2010

                                                                                   "As quick as it came...."

"I feel like I'm going to pass out."

"What? Ma'am, what?" The doctor screams to Kara with his thick accent, as if she is speaking a foreign language.

"I said, I feel like I'm going to pass out." Kara has to close her eyes to speak because she does, in fact, feel everything draining from her. She sees black bubbles all around her periphery and feels a detachment from all the scurrying movement in her little trauma bay.

"Ma'am, people do not usually pass out while they are laying down." This doctor, supposedly the attending, tells Kara.

Kara feels no comfort, only a sadness that he will not help her: she will have to pass out, her husband at her feet - clearly scared shitless. She is a registered nurse and knows it is only her stubbornness that has prevented a loss of consciousness to this point. She also knows from the way she feels that without help, she will lose that fight, too. She already has a line of fluid running wide open, but there is just a waiting for the attending obstetrician to get down here. Until then, these emergency doctors do not really know or want to address the fact that she is laying in a pool of blood with more soft ball sized clots tumbling out of her vagina every few minutes. The other problem is that Kara knows if she does pass out she will wind up intubated - waking up a few days later - swollen and in an ICU bed. Kara does not fear for her life, she knows they can still stop this, but she does worry for Joe because he will think he is losing her. Kara gathers everything she has and lifts her head up a fraction so she can see him down by her feet. She give him a thumbs up to try to make things seem more normal.

"I'm going to pass out, but I'm going to be okay." Kara just needs to assure him, somehow, and make him a promise all the same.

Kara sees Dennis, her assigned nurse, glance up at the monitors and lower her head. Trendelenberg! That does feel a little better, she thinks as he also takes off her nasal cannula

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