Literature & An Operation

A B L A C K D O D G E SRT’s roaring engine gradually died down as the vehicle pulled up from the freeway and into the drive-in that led to a gate where a sentinel suddenly got up from his post and rushed to receive the car.

“Where are you headed, ma'am?” asked the sentinel who was tall but not that tall, mostly average height.

The driver’s tinted window slid down and Susan Claire’s face came into view.

She arched one end of her lips to give a smiling expression while noticing that the sentinel had across his chest just below his left shoulder which revealed his name as 'Julio'.

Mexican?

Susan was not sure as the sentinel had zero accent, overlooking that he had just addressed her as 'ma’am'.

Even her own grandmother despised that word in her eighties! Her soul rest in peace...

“Captain is just fine,” Susan responded, flashing her badge at the sentinel.

“Oh, my bad! I hadn't noticed...”

“It’s alright,” the police captain cut in casually, “it’s not like I’m not head of security of this city.”

Sentinel Julio broke into a nervous laughter, probably a little rattled for mistaking the captain of the APD for somebody else or maybe that one secretive crime he had once committed and got away with was beginning to surface due to the captain’s presence.

Crazy how the law can make you feel guilty when you're a hundred percent innocent.

He got back to his post and pressed a button that drew back the gates, letting the vehicle pass through.

Once she had parked, Captain Claire stepped out of her car and headed straight for the tall building almost half the height of an average skyscraper — the Austin Hospital.

*

There was a lot of commotion going around the operating room before Jenna got a call from her assistant that the police captain wanted to talk to her.

“He’s flat lining!” called one of the five doctors in the room as she checked the patient's telemetry.

The patient was a teenage boy who had a severe head injury made visible by the cracked side of his right temple that Jenna, the primary surgeon, had just finished stitching together and her gloves were stained with blood.

Jenna ordered for the EKG machine after which she began administering jolts of electricity over the patient's bare chest.

The patient’s body convulsed after every administration but no signs of life were presenting themselves, not for the second and third time either until Jenna requested for full charge of the machine.

The line went dead for almost eleven seconds before turning into a tiny rhythm of up and down and Jenna could feel the patient's chest cavity fill up with air and letting out slowly through his nose .

“We’ve got a pulse!” came another doctor.

Jenna found herself breathing a bit faster than the patient that she and her team had just saved, feeling enthralled and victorious at the same time.

They had gotten past their biggest challenge again—cheating death, though to Jenna, this term felt a bit...over the top. You can't cheat death; only beat it and survive or lose your life.

There is no in-between.There is No ‘cheating’ but a freaking good amount of effort to survive, both from the patient and the doctor against death.

Moving away from Jenna’s thoughts, the head of the Austin Hospital left the operating room to meet up with Susan who seemed to be in the middle of watching an ambulance pass through the gate from a window.

“Susan? I never begged you for the ‘getting sick’ type,” began Jenna who had gotten out of her operating attire but had a lab coat on.

“Oh you're gonna have to wait a while before you see me getting here in one of those!” the captain joked, nudging her head down to the ambulance outside.

“Ok, so what brings you here?”

“You remember the freeway incident involving a patient and an ambulance?”

“Yeah, we had one of the cops treated after getting shot.”

“Well, that was no patient,” Captain Claire went on to explain, “he was a convicted robber who’d stabbed himself in the guts with a spoon so critically that he had to be rushed to the primal medical institution.”

“Which is here.”

“But that had been his plan all along and we all saw how that turned out but thanks to your daughter, things didn’t go south as much.”

Jenna managed a tiny grin, despite cautioning her daughter, the Viper, everyday to be careful out there. For a while now, she had become accustomed to her daughter’s escapades as one of the city’s spangled superheroines alongside Carol.

“What are you suggesting then?” asked Jenna.

“Some safety protocols for the hospital staff, especially when handling patients. You can never know what they are up to despite their condition.”

“Isn’t that a little paranoid even for you?”

“I work with people who can move from here to Kansas in a second to put down assholes who break the law for a living, ” replied Susan, “you tell me.”

Jenna slightly shook her head and raised her index finger.

“Speaking of which, Natasha’s been asking about Carol until I called her and she hasn't answered her phone.”

“Huh, that explains why the Viper’s been zooming through the street alone. When’s the last you heard from her?”

“Well, that would be on the day of the freeway incident.”

“That’s almost two months.”

“I even contacted her company but nobody has seen her since then.”

“Alright, I'll see what I can do.”

***

The Captain wasn't the only one having trouble trying to figure out a problem as Ms. Helen, the Language teacher, was going through a similarly tough time trying to get her class to concentrate and grasp the concept of an excerpt from Gabriel’s Inferno.

“Ugh!” spat Bianca, closing her book shut, “I’d rather bury myself in Romeo and Juliet than go through this hellish torture!”

“I don't know...” came Xander who had become Bianca’s desk mate permanently after she chased away her former one.

“It’s boring!” Bianca went on to lament.

“It’s kinda...” Xander paused a little and Bianca quickly noticed his dark brown eyes move from his book and stopped at where Natasha was seated, “fiery.”

There were four more desks in front of him and he could have been looking at anybody else but if there was one thing the Queen B was good at, it was being observant.

Xander briefly watched Natasha brush away strands of her short golden hair from her face as she read through the same book that everyone was reading.

Bianca narrowed her eyes at Xander and up to that point, ever since Xander had set foot at the school about two months ago, she had felt drawn to him but not in an intimate way, well that is afterwards.

Surprising it may sound, Bianca liked Xander’s cool ‘I don't give a fuck’ attitude and she felt like he challenged her. So, in response, Bianca, the ‘queen’ she is, decided that romance wasn't going to help her maintain her ‘coolness’ next to this new kid.

Well, all that coolness was just pure poppycock to Ms. Helen who lashed out at both Xander and Bianca, making them turn back to their books.

“Still think this is fiery ?” shot Bianca through her breath.

Xander grinned, risking another glance over at Natasha and found she had also turned to look at him. Her lips were trying to hide a smile that Lucas caught, directing him to Xander.

Shaking his head, Lucas turned back to his book after getting that weird, confused and angry feeling coming from deep inside him.

After class, Natasha and Cassie were walking over to their locker rooms, all the while Cassie complaining about how the class had been amazing despite her heated argument with Henry who outrightly detested the class.

“Why not just go with science,” Cassie’s eccentric desk mate had been saying, “the arts only serve in complicating the complexity of the human race...”

“Oh yeah!” Cassie had retorted, “says the nerd who's into quantum physics and shit!”

“Huh!” Henry went on to gasp, being the guy to be clearly offended by such a remark, “you take that back!”

“Ciao!”

With that, Cassie was then standing with Natasha at their lockers as she summed up by telling Natasha that she had found what she was looking for for her upcoming school play.

Grabbing some books from her locker, Cassie drew it shut and left right before giving Nat a quick hug, squealing about her new idea before rushing off and leaving her best friend standing there, totally confused by what had just happened.

“Okay...” whizzed Natasha as she turned back to her locker.

She was about to close it when a strange ominous feeling began to creep up behind her and for a very slight moment, this summoned a memory of a certain similar feeling she had only felt back when she was...

“Look for me in hell.”

Rattled, Natasha quickly turned round after somebody whispered in her ear.

“Whoa, did I startle you?”

It was Xander, grinning smugly at her.

“Really,” responded Natasha, raising an eyebrow, “now you're quoting lines from the book?”

“What’s the point of reading stuff if you can't apply shit?”

Natasha found herself smiling before turning back to shut her locker.

“Speaking of reading,” added Xander, this time moving closer to Natasha and almost obscuring her from shutting her locker, “how about taking a break and I donno...going to this dope ass cool-off joint?”

“I...I don't think I...”

“Oh come on,” Xander went on with his persuasive ‘manoeuvres’. “Just one night to blow off some steam!”

“I’ve got a tuition test that I need to study for,” Natasha said softly.

“Alright, your loss,” Xander shrugged, dipping his hands into his jeans pockets and began to walk away.

“Oh, I’m so gonna regret this!” Natasha whispered to herself.

“Wait!”

Xander stopped in his tracks before performing a spin and looking at Natasha while grinning.

“You’re not gonna regret this!”

With that, Xander turned to leave and Natasha finally closed her locker, smiling all the way as she left in the opposite direction through the hallway.