The emergency did not care what they needed.
The emergency needed a toxicologist, and I was the toxicologist, and so the woman they had erased simply reappeared, in full, because a man’s life required her to.
I turned to the charge nurse.
“Page the cardiology team and hold the surgical prep,” I said.
“This patient needs to be reassessed before he goes anywhere.”
The nurse looked at me for one second, two — and then turned and ran back into the trauma bay.