Extreme Measures Read Online Free PDF Page A

as always, sent a surge of energy through the White Memorial Hospital emergency room.
    Priority One
—another chance to validate WMH’s reputation as the finest trauma center in Boston, in the state, and according to many, in the world.
    Before the radio report was complete, the E.R. team was in action.
    Arms folded, Eric Najarian stood alone to one side of the gleaming receiving area, savoring the immense pride and confidence of the technicians, nurses, and residents as they prepared for battle that February morning.
    The image of the emergency room as a feudal castle under siege had first arisen in Eric’s mind during his second year of residency, and had grown in complexity and color over the two years that followed. The technicians—EKG, respiratory, and laboratory—had become the support troops and intelligence agents, gathering information and transporting arms and other gear to the militia, the nurses. The interns and junior residents were the officers—the lieutenants and captains.
    And above them all, watching more than doing—waiting for the moment when the encounter with death hung on a single major decision, on one brilliant tactic—stood the lord of the castle, the trauma team leader.
    Over the years of his apprenticeship at White Memorial, Eric had driven himself to the limit with thoughts of the day when he would hold that position. Now, six months into his tenure as one of the two chief residents on the emergency service, he drove himself even harder.
    He had grown up in Watertown, not ten miles from the hospital, and was the first in his family even to attend college, let alone graduate school. He had started way at the back of the pack, but after eight years of schooling, every one of them as a full scholarship student, and five more years of the most grueling residency, he was finally beginning to make his mark. And Reed Marshall, the other chief resident, notwithstanding, there were those who now regarded Eric as perhaps the best that White Memorial had evertrained—the best in a hospital that had spawned 150 years of the finest physicians anywhere.
    Terri Dillard, the charge nurse on the shift, finished issuing a set of orders to her staff and then spotted Eric.
    “We’re set for him in Four,” she said, crossing to him.
    “I told you we’d get one today,” he responded, smiling. “I want the crowd in there kept to a minimum, Terri, okay? Have Dierking get in a CVP line and handle the peritoneal lavage. I don’t trust the other two yet, and I don’t want to have to worry. June Feldman can meet the chopper and do the intubation if necessary. What did they say the guy’s pressure was?”
    “Seventy.”
    “Hmmm.”
    Eric stroked the moustache he had grown and shaved off half a dozen times in the past three years. He had no particular desire to have one, but there were times when he felt his authority was compromised by his looking years younger than his age, which on that day was a month shy of thirty-one.
    “What are you thinking about?” Terri Dillard asked.
    “Your eyes,” he said absently.
    “I wish.”
    It would be a surprise, she was thinking, if Eric Najarian ever thought about much of anything except medicine. During her nearly ten years as an E.R. nurse, she had seen all manner of residents come and go—flakes and philosophers; insecure jerks who needed to verbally abuse nurses; brilliant thinkers who came unglued at crunch time; soft-spoken young women to whom she would not hesitate to entrust her life. But this man was one of a kind. When he wasn’t working killer shifts in the E.R., he was in the library or the lab. If the E.R. was backed up at the end of hisshift, he would pitch in and play intern for as many hours as it took to catch up.
    As a physician, Reed Marshall was good, very good; but he seldom stepped down from the pedestal of his position—seldom got “dirty.” Eric was a barroom brawler. And although Terri knew nurses who had dated Eric, and even slept