Andrea Whitmore had arrived by then. She was in her fifties, tall and spare, with steel-gray hair pulled back from a face that gave away almost nothing unless she wanted it to. She reviewed the images, closed the chart, and turned toward the nurses’ station where Vance was pretending to occupy himself with paperwork.
“Dr. Vance,” she said, loud enough for half the department to hear, “my office. Now.”
Then she looked at me. “Dr. Mills, we’re taking your son to surgery immediately. Dr. Kowalski will be attending. I’m bringing in Dr. Lisa Chen—” She stopped, corrected herself. “Dr. Lisa Warren to assist. One of our best general surgeons. Your son is going to be fine. But this should never have happened.”
They wheeled Ethan toward the OR at 8:15 a.m., nearly seven hours after his symptoms had started and almost seven hours after the period in which a straightforward appendectomy might have spared him far worse. I walked alongside the gurney, one hand wrapped around his. He looked up at me as the doors to the surgical corridor approached.
“Dad,” he said quietly, “I’m scared.”