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Dr Yang has a reputation - a mixed one, to be fair. Brilliant, tireless, witty - at the same time, frequently insensitive, abrasive, and disrespectful.
Surgeons. She’s seen worse.
Still, her behaviour in the OR, bronchoscope in hand with Altman’s husband on the table, is shocking. She tries to give her the benefit of the doubt - for some, humour is the best distraction, and she’s in the unenviable position of working on her mentor’s husband. The timer’s not unreasonable, either; the less time under sedation, the better. And she happens to notice that Dr Yang barely glances at the clock, once it’s started.
She hadn’t expected the lack of reaction when they were coding him, though. They all understood the physiology of it, the blood loss, the eroded artery, the frankly unwinnable nature of the situation bar divine intervention. But she had been… pragmatic, and very coldly so.
But then - after time of death is called, and the sick weight of it starts to sink in, she hears Dr Yang ask if there’s a family to notify.
And it hits; unthinkably, incredibly, like a horse kick to the chest. They didn’t tell her.
She’s not trying to snoop. But there is cleanup to be done after every case, and they’re all in a somber mood, so instead of going to see the next patient (the list is upended now, anyway, with a multitrauma coming in downstairs), she sticks around.
She’s disposing of leftover propofol when Dr Yang comes back into the room. She’s still got her scrub cap on, her hair impeccably neat underneath, but she moves almost jerkily, and her eyes are red.
She doesn’t say anything as Dr Yang finds a trolley and drapes it, then gloves, water, packs, and with uncommon gentleness, begins to clean the blood and betadine paint off the body.
Then she unties and pulls out the ETT, the blood inside drying and sticky, and wipes the saliva and blood from around his mouth.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Dr Yang says, abruptly, like she’s just noticed she’s not alone in the room. “I wouldn’t dream of touching your tube normally, but…”
She surprises herself saying, “I’ll take out his drips.”
They subside back into silence after that. Dr Yang finishes cleaning him up and steps back from the table, and sighs. His chest is - cracked open isn’t accurate, the ribs and muscle no longer held open by a retractor; it is cleanly cut, and closely opposed.
Dr Yang’s jaw twitches. Almost frenzied, she sets out a sterile field, opens sutures out. She reaches for local anaesthetic, then drops it convulsively.
She closes Henry’s chest in layers, with impeccable technique. She closes it the way you would a living patient at the end of a case, to preserve the strength of the chest wall and musculature; she closes his skin with a subcuticular suture, for a good cosmetic result.
Then she clears up her sharps and supplies, says, almost as an afterthought, “Thank you,” and leaves.