JOEY
"Code Trauma. Incoming patient. Twenty nine year old female, victim of a high speed Motor Vehicle Collision. Traumatic Brain injury suspected. Requesting Level 1 Trauma Activation. Repeat. Requesting Level 1 Trauma activation."
The voice filtered into the speaker at the top corner of my office, and the peaceful silence I had been enjoying all afternoon shattered like a pane of glass.
I rushed out of my office immediately, my heart pounding against my chest as adrenaline coursed through my body.
The chief resident rushed towards me, a clipboard in her hands.
"I have already requested for a OR, but the patient is in a really bad condition. She hasn't had any surgery prior to this, but there's heavy bleeding, and part of her head seemed to have been bashed in."
I listened to her report as I washed my hands and walked into the operating room. The patient was already prepped and ready, and my mind in alignment with my brain, was already sharpened for action.
"What's the stat on her vitals?" I asked, keeping my voice cool and collected. Judging from what the resident just told me, the patient was in really bad shape, but if I panicked or did as much as show a sign of fear, everyone in this operating room would panic too.
And I couldn't afford for that to happen. I needed everyone to be on their best right now. This patient needed us, and we were going to do all it takes to save her.
A nurse recited her vitals for me, and I immediately moved in to start the surgery. The patient only had mere hours to live before she bled out, and it was my job to stop that from happening.
I took a steadying breath to ground myself and stepped forward. The moment my eyes fell on the patient's face though, I froze.
Beneath the mass of blood and injuries, was a very, very familiar face.
My heart stopped beating in my chest, and a loud ringing sound started to echo in my ears.
Every single organism in my body stopped working, and my hands started to tremble slightly.
The woman who was bleeding out on my operating table, who was at the risk of dying any moment from now, was my wife.
Lydia.
"Lydia?" I said out loud, desperate to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating. My voice came out as a whisper, but saying her name solidified what I was staring at.
Suddenly, I couldn't breathe. Air got trapped in my lungs and my vision dimmed and blurred as I stared at her broken, battered body.
My wife.
A road accident victim.
But how was this possible? It made absolutely no sense that this was my wife, lying unconsciously before me.
It shouldn't be her.
It could not be.
I couldn't fathom what I was seeing. It was impossible to comprehend, because Lydia had gone missing three years ago, and was pronounced dead two years ago, after searching fruitlessly for one year.
If she was still alive, why had she stayed away from me? And most importantly, how did she get into a road accident that seemed to have damaged her entire brain?
The resident cleared her throat beside me. "Doctor Joey? Is everything all right?" she asked.
Her question wasn't out of concern for me. It was a way of subtly reminding me that I had a job to do, and a patient to save.
Shaking my head to dislodge the fog of confusion that had settled in it, I stepped up and started the surgery.
Her brain was worse than it looked.
Her hippocampus — the part of the brain that was responsible for forming and retrieving memories — had taken a huge hit.
I tried to repair it as best as I could, but it was hard, particularly due to the fact that her neural pathways — connections between neurons in the brain which were responsible for transmitting information — were damaged beyond anything I had ever seen in a decade.
Determined to save my wife's life, I did the best I could.
Time went by in a loop. My mind was blank, and my entire body was still as I worked.
Regardless, all I could think about was how to save Lydia. Everything else could come later.
My focus intensified as I worked, and I mentally shut down my heart, stopping myself from getting too emotional to continue with the surgery.
After what seemed like forever, when it reality, was just twenty hours, the surgery came to an end.
"Finish up, and take her to the ICU. I need you to keep a close watch on her and let me know if anything changes in her vitals. We don't know if she's going to wake up yet, but we've done the best we can do," I stated to the resident, who nodded and started to carry out my instructions.
Still dazed from the discovery, I cleaned up and made my way back to my office where Rowan was waiting for me.
My best friend's face lit up as he saw me, and he was about to speak when I interrupted whatever he had to say.
"Lydia is back."
His smile fell off, and his expression became filled with shock.
"What?!"
"She's the patient I just performed surgery for," I added. Saying those words out loud made it more real, and my knees suddenly went weak.
Rowan stood up at my words, utterly perplexed.
"Are you sure? What if she's another person who just happens to look like her?"
I turned dead eyes to him.
"I would recognise my own wife anywhere, Rowan. You know that. That was Lydia. She's alive."
He shook his head but said nothing, a thoughtful expression on his face.
Slumping down to my seat, I rubbed my face and tried to figure out what was happening.
My wife.
Alive.
Rowan sat back down beside me.
"That's…impossible," he muttered.
An unbelieving chuckle slipped past my lips.
"I would have thought so too, if it was someone else who told me the news. But I saw her. Myself. And I can't stop thinking about the fact that she had been alive all these while. Which makes me wonder, what if she never went missing at all?"
Rowan turned to look at me.
"And what exactly do you mean by that?"
I sat up, my heart still pounding as different thoughts ran wild in my brain.
"Think about it, Rowan. If she hadn't gotten into an accident, I wouldn't have known that she was alive. What if my wife left me intentionally? What if she never meant for me to find her ever again, leaving me high and dry?"
My heart tightened with pain as those words slipped past my lips, but I had to face it. It might be the truth.
"You've lost your mind. Lydia loved you so much. She couldn't have done that," he countered.
A part of me agreed with him. He was right. Lydia did love me.
But that didn't explain her disappearance, and sudden appearance.
Now that she was back, I was going to get my answers. And I would find out if she truly loved me, or if I was a fool for pining for her all these years.