MARIA HELD NICO back as Anna rushed into Kat’s tent.
Nico closed his eyes. If something happened to Kat, there was no hope for him and Anna. He had to act.
Maria touched his arm. “Her husband and father have been calling in a number of favors. Tom’s gotten a call directly from the White House. He’s willing to use executive privilege to get Kat on a transport. There’s one on the way back from dropping a patient in Hawaii. She can go out in an hour. Tom wants us to decide what’s best.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. If only it were so easy to figure out what the right thing was. The words were on his lips to ask Maria to make the call to Tom, but he stopped himself. The triage process was in place to protect people. If he intervened, he was playing God.
“Why don’t you just ask Anna what she wants to do?” Maria suggested.
“No!” The last thing he was going to do was burden Anna with this decision. If something happened during transport or whoever was next in line got bumped and died, Anna would never stop blaming herself. But if Kat stayed on Guam and had a bad outcome, Anna would never stay there. She would leave just like she had with Lucas. This was his only chance to show her he could take care of her and their family and the people of the island. He had to. He wasn’t going to abandon them the way his father had.
“We need to get her off the island.” Anna snapped off her gloves. “We can’t tell on the ultrasound what the exact problem is, but we’re hoping that the cerclage will help. She needs a proper hospital with better diagnostic equipment to figure out what’s going on.”
“There’s no way to get her off the island,” Nico said simply.
“I’ve been thinking…” Dr. Balachandra stepped toward them, tapping a finger to his chin. “Dr. Atao, you already have Emma in the hospital. What if we opened a surgical suite and had one of the Stateside OBs talk us through the procedure?”
Anna shifted on her feet.
Nico opened his mouth to encourage her, but Dr. Balachandra continued. “I’ve delivered a lot of babies, and I’ve dealt with uterine prolapse—I think I can do this. It’s her best chance, if we put her on a transport, who knows what might happen on the way.”
“I can get an OR suite sterilized,” Maria chimed in.
Anna shook her head. “I’m not willing to risk the surgery. We don’t even know if it’s the right procedure!”
“I’m taking the risk, Dr. Atao, all I need you for is to assist and monitor the baby, but this is not on you.”
Anna flashed her eyes at Dr. Balachandra. “It’s not about blame, it’s about doing what’s best for the patient and making sure we don’t let our personal desire for heroics affect our decision-making.”
Nico stepped back. Did she think that’s what he was doing? Or what she’d done when she operated on Lucas?
“These are unusual circumstances, and it requires creative thinking,” Maria said carefully.
Anna didn’t have to say it out loud for Nico to know what she was thinking. It was the way things always seemed to work on Guam. And she wasn’t wrong. There was greater acceptance here for the fact that not everything could be fixed. But as a woman of modern medicine, Anna would never acknowledge that.
“I’ll go start setting up.” Maria left with Dr. Balachandra in tow.
“I think this is the wrong thing to do,” Anna said ominously. Nico’s stomach churned. Was he making the right call? If something happened to Kat and Anna found out later that he hadn’t told her about the transport, she’d never trust him again.
Her eyes were dark, weary from the stress of the last several days. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be okay.
But the sinking feeling in his stomach told him he was going to lose Anna again.