Thorny felt a brief pressure in his own chest. Even though they were too late to save her baby, Linda still had a chance. Needing to do something to restore his clinical detachment, he glanced up at the overhead monitor. “Her blood pressure is—”
“—Eighty-five over fifty.” Angel completed his sentence without looking up. Thorny winced; he’d forgotten.
Angel’s fingers brushed across Linda’s chest. “No pneumothorax or any significant bleeding—mildly depressed sternal fracture—the left fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs are broken. The aorta seems intact. Her heart—” Suddenly Angel froze; utterly, inhumanly, motionless.
For a heart-rending second, Thorny thought she had malfunctioned, and realized that he might have to lift her out of the way, somehow, and take over.
But she started speaking again, her mouth moving while the rest of her body remained eerily rigid. “Her left ventricular function is very poor. I’m not sure how to explain that.” Thorny sighed in relief, and remembered how often he’d told her; “When in doubt, don’t just do something, stand there.” Apparently, she’d taken that literally. He shook his head, pushed his attention back to the patient, and wrinkled his forehead.
“I’m not sure either. Her grandmother died of heart failure at sixty, and her mother at forty-two, though that was complicated by smoking. But Linda never had any signs of a heart problem. I—”
Suddenly, Angel was a blur of motion.
“She’s in v-fib!” Nurse Miles shouted. “No pulse!”
Even before the sentence was completed Angel had grabbed the defibrillator paddles, and charged the machine.
“Clear!” Angel ordered, and everyone obeyed instantly. Chalk one up for a humanoid robot, Thorny thought; people might have hesitated if something that was obviously a machine had issued that order.
Angel delivered the electrical shock to Linda’s chest. Thorny peered anxiously at the heart monitor—and exhaled thankfully as it started beeping again. Nurse Miles pressed her index and middle fingers against Linda’s neck, and smiled slightly. “Good pulse.”
Speaking for their benefit, Angel ordered an intravenous bolus and drip of Cardiopax. The IV unit chimed in response before she finished saying “bolus.”
As Angel still held the defibrillator paddles, Thorny placed a tube down Linda’s throat to help her breathe and made sure it was positioned properly. He started to ask Nurse Miles to connect it to the ventilator when—
“Clear!” Angel shouted, signifying that Linda’s heart had stopped again.
Once, twice, three times—finally her heart started beating again, but now her blood pressure was dangerously low. They were losing her, Thorny thought, there was no time to…
But before he had a chance to speak, Angel brushed the nurse aside as the cart containing the cardiopulmonary support pump scooted over to the table. Moving so fast her hands seemed blurred, Angel prepped Linda’s right groin and then, more deliberately, threaded the catheters.
“Right atrium,” Angel announced, then “proximal aorta.” As Thorny nodded, there was another blur of motion and Angel hooked the pump up and primed it.
They waited a minute in silence, then two.
Come on, Linda. Thorny silently pleaded.
Linda’s vital signs stabilized as the pump assisted Linda’s heart and brought oxygen to her body. Thorny allowed himself a breath. The nurse stood there wide-eyed, shaking her head.
“I never… I never…”
“Sorry,” Angel said. “I had to move very fast.”
“No, dear, don’t be sorry,” the woman chuckled as she recovered her composure. “If you can do that, you’ve got to do that. Jus’ happy I didn’t get in your way. Look, blood pressure up to 100 over 60; heart rate’s only 90. I’m Sarah Miles. You?”
“Angel S.R.X. It means surgical robot, experimental.”
The dermatologist, who’d stayed well out of the way during all of this, cleared his throat nervously. So much, Thorny thought, for staff briefings.
“You ain’t human!?” Nurse Miles exclaimed.
“No,” Angel giggled, “But I’m a pretty good simulation, trying to get better. I’d like to be your friend.”
Nurse Miles just stood there with her mouth open.
Thorny cleared his throat, “Angel, that might be too much of the direct approach. Meanwhile, we’d better finish the whole body scan, and then get her to the OR so we can… take care of that bleeding placenta. Also, we need to get cardiology and surgery involved. We still don’t know why Linda’s heart isn’t working.”
If the tests and all Angel’s tricks didn’t tell them, they’d have to go in and find out.
Angel nodded. “I called them while I was talking to Nurse Miies. Dr. Bruk Tunman is on for cardiology, but he hasn’t answered yet. Dr. Elvis Creighton is on for surgery, and he just said that he’s on his way. I hope you don’t mind.”
Thorny shook his head. “No, that’s fine. They’re both good.” But to himself he added, Damn. It would have to be their chief surgeon. No one with that high an opinion of himself should ever have been made chief of anything.
Nurse Miles looked at him, “You in charge of her, or it, or… whatever?” she wanted to know.
“I’m her instructor. And yes, she’s supposed to be a she.”
The nurse gave a wide grin. “Then as far as I’m concerned, she it is. Never been friends with a robot before, though we’ve got a bunch of them around. They’re kind of standoffish. Not like you, Dr. Angel.”
Angel laughed. “Thanks, Sarah. That makes me feel good. I’m really looking forward to meeting Dr. Tunman and Dr. Creighton too, and I hope they’re as nice to work with as you are.”
Thorny cleared his throat. “Well, we can always hope,” he said slowly and deliberately.
Angel picked up on it. Good pattern recognition algorithms, of course. She looked a question.
“Tunman will probably be thrilled to meet you, but I’m a little concerned about how Creighton will react.”
“Amen to that,” Nurse Miles added with no hint of humor in her voice.
Within the next hour, they were in the operating room. Linda’s blood pressure had dropped a little with induction of general anesthesia but then, to Thorny’s relief, held steady. If her body could take the stress of surgery, he thought, there was a good chance she could still make a full recovery. Before the accident Linda’s health had been excellent—she’d been a vigorous swimmer and runner until her figure had gotten too awkward a month or so back.
Angel’s hand moved deftly and quickly during the cesarean section. This would be the sixth one she’d performed under his supervision. She had seemed a little hesitant and unsure of herself the first time—while she was full of simulations of exactly how it should be. But every real body is a bit different, and her neural net processors still had to fit her body’s motor responses and pattern recognition subroutines to the variances in real patients. He’d imagined, absurdly, little gears turning and slipping in her head—but after she oriented, her skill and speed far exceeded that of any human he had ever seen.
Linda’s fetus turned out to be male—stillborn, of course. Despite himself, Thorny thought back to that last office visit. No, she and Tom didn’t want to know what its sex was. “We don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. Just as long as it’s healthy.”