Pool_1

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He called them his younger years. His surgical training could only be described as brutally sadistic. But, he wasn't that same person anymore, not that young resident. Maybe responsibility and savvy make up for lost vigor. Maybe not. Two straight days of unremitting emergency now had him sagging, shaken even, when the phone rang. Christ,what now? He wanted to throw a hammer at the damn thing. It rang again. And again. Oh God, he dreaded as everyone else went still. Silence in an operating room is a wallpaper of regular beeps, pfoooshes, and clicks. Absence of these sounds isn't silence, but vacuum. Beep beep beep. Regularity, a steady hold of the child's beating heart. The soprano tenor in each chirping tone reassuring that arterial oxygen levels are high - the brain is safe. An unhurried soothing respirator hiss rising to a crescendo dropping in an abrupt pfooosh clicked off by a back flow valve, sssssssssssush click sssssssssssush click sssssssssssush click sssssssssssush click. That is as quiet as any surgeon would have it. Only an hour before, those beeps had become groveling baratone groans, the respirator dead silent - yanked off line as anesthesiologists frenzied obstructing bloody ooze from a young girl's lungs. In a tumble of professional instinct and experience, the comforting wallpaper of unprovoking chirps had been reestablished. Sounds were once again comforting. Lulling. Reassuring - until that damned phone. Damn! Marcus Macaluso's mental plea of a Not for you was quickly dashed, though in an unexpected way, the worst way possible, an unappreciated way. It's that triage thing. In theory, emergency goes first. Survival trumps convenience, age, status, or anything else. But, ass holes who didn't get it? Macaluso, even on good