Chapter 3 - Operation Under Heavy Seas
The Callahan slammed against a massive twelve-foot wave, causing the entire ship to groan and shudder. In the ship’s primary operating room, blood bags and surgical trays rattled against their restraints.
Lieutenant Commander Voss was sweating through his surgical mask. The ultrasound monitor showed a clear, terrifying image: an acute, ruptured appendicitis with severe abdominal fluid buildup and localized peritonitis.
"She’s in septic shock," Voss said, his voice laced with panic. "Her blood pressure is dropping. 85 over 50. I'm... I haven't performed an emergency open appendectomy under active sea conditions in four years!"
"Then you had better remember how fast, Voss," Admiral Halloway’s voice came over the wall intercom from the observation gallery. "Because if you lose that woman on my ship, I will personally see to it that you spend the remainder of your naval career inspecting supply crates in the Aleutian Islands."
Voss swallowed hard. He looked at the unconscious woman on the operating table. The woman he had spent two days belittling as an incompetent civilian.
Now, stripped of her plain gray scrubs, the surgical team saw what her civilian clothes had hidden. Across her right shoulder and abdomen were long, faint silver scars—shrapnel wounds and surgical repair lines from high-caliber combat trauma. She was a living canvas of high-risk military survival.
"Scalpel," Voss demanded, forcing his hands to stop shaking.
Outside the surgical suite, in the Admiral’s private briefing room adjacently connected to the medical command block, Lily sat on a massive leather chair. Her shoes dangled far off the floor.
Chief Petty Officer Marcus Reyes—a towering, bearded boatswain's mate who looked like he could lift a jeep— sat on a small stool across from her, holding a tray with a warm cup of cocoa and a plate of shortbread cookies.
"Is my mom gonna fix her belly?" Lily asked, holding her plastic stethoscope around her neck.
Reyes looked at the little girl. He had seen fierce warriors in his twenty years in the Navy, but looking at this child, he saw where Sarah Bennett got her quiet, unbreakable strength.
"Little miss," Reyes said gently, "your mom is the toughest person on this ocean. The Admiral himself is watching over her. Nobody on this ship is gonna let anything bad happen to her."
Lily took a slow sip of the cocoa. "I know. She’s a captain."
Reyes paused, setting the tray down. "She told you that?"
"No," Lily said innocently, swinging her legs. "She thinks I don't know about the box under her bed. It has a shiny gold leaf and a purple ribbon with a heart on it. She cries when she holds it. But when I ask, she says it's just old metal."
Reyes closed his eyes for a second, swallowing a lump in his throat. He knew what that medal was. A Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor.
Inside the surgical suite, the storm raged outside, but inside, Voss was entering the critical phase of the operation.
"Suction!" Voss called out. "I can't clear the fluid fast enough! The ship’s roll is shifting the peritoneal cavity!"
"Hold her steady!" the corpsman yelled as the ship pitched violently starboard.
Voss’s forceps slipped. A major vessel began to bleed rapidly into the surgical field.
"Pressure drop! 70 over 40!" the anesthesiologist barked. "We’re losing her blood pressure!"
Voss froze for two critical seconds, paralyzed by the sudden flood of blood obscuring his field of view. "I... I can't see the vascular base!"
"Move over," a raspy, strained voice suddenly commanded from the table.
Voss gasped. Sarah’s eyes were half-open through the local sedation and twilight anesthesia. She had fought her way back to consciousness through pure, instinctual willpower.
"What?!" Voss stammered.
"Suction... left quadrant..." Sarah choked out, her voice barely a whisper but sharp enough to slice through the panic in the room. "Clamp... the ileocolic artery... blind sweep... three centimeters... right..."
Voss looked at her, shocked. "You're under anesthesia—"
"Do it!" she gritted out through clenched teeth. "Three centimeters... clamp... NOW!"
Voss blindly followed her command, plunging the surgical clamp three centimeters to the right of the suction line and clicking it shut.
Instantly, the spewing blood stopped. The suction cleared the cavity.
The monitor beeped steadily. The blood pressure stabilized. 80... 90... 105 over 70.
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Voss stood there, staring at the clamped artery, his chest heaving under his gown. He looked down at Sarah. Her eyes had closed again as the sedation dragged her back under, but her point had been made.
Even flat on her back, dying on an operating table, Sarah Bennett was the smartest surgeon in the room.
