Wanting to believe in him, that he wasn’t capable of attempted murder, that he did love me, and that he had doctor potential, I wholeheartedly, with some nagging guilt, agreed to move to Florida and to fund his education. Within forty-eight hours, I set up two interviews, had two realtors willing to show us property in Orlando and on the coast, had our entire visit to Disney paid for by one of the ER recruiting companies, and was offered an assistant medical director position near the ocean before I had even thought about crossing the state line.
Containing my excitement about possibly living on the beach, I floated through my last shift in the ER in Augusta, Georgia before we embarked on our week-long family vacation to our favorite playground on earth. There would be no patients getting me down today, as I was about to see Mickey again no matter how sick, nasty, or disturbing they presented. Even the fecal matter that I nearly slipped and fell into in room six, after the fully grown, ambulatory patient decided to take a diarrhea shit on the floor instead of walking three feet to a toilet only produced a few f-bombs quietly from my pie hole.
Dictating my last few charts and singing a Lady Gaga tune rather noisily, I was sitting in the doctor’s office when I received the first call from Heather. Her mother was in route by ambulance to the hospital where I used to work in Charleston due to indigestion or some vague chest pain. Heather wasn’t quite sure of the details but did know that her mother’s coworkers found her not appearing well and clutching her chest in her employee of the month parking space. Apparently, she had been having increasingly nagging indigestion for the last month but did not want to concern anyone with her minor ailments. Heather implored me to find out who the best doctor was working in the ER that day, as her mother did not trust the hospital or its staff one bit. We were both afraid she may try to leave as soon as the ambulance pulled into the bay, as the stubborn genes ran deep in this family.
Reassuring her that I would make the call, I warned her to not let the doctor discharge her from the ER. Any woman at her age of sixty-two with indigestion should be assumed to have heart disease until proven otherwise. Heather’s feisty tone conveyed her determination to have her mother completely evaluated regardless of her mother’s or a cardiologist’s wishes.
Hanging up with Heather, I called the ER immediately. The secretary that answered still remembered and loved me. She promised that she would make sure Dr. McCrae, one of my favorites, would see my best friend’s mother. His tan, tall, surfing hotness would make it impossible for Lana to refuse an admission even if she loathed that hospital. Plus it would give Heather some nice eye candy while she waited in the chaos of the ER. She assured me that she would get McCrae to personally call me back as soon as he was finished with the cardiac arrest that he was currently working.
My own heart almost stopped as soon as I realized Heather was calling me again for the second time. Quickly switching lines, her muffled sobs confirmed my alarm.
“She just died in the ambulance as soon as they pulled into the ER. They are pounding on her chest and shocking her with electricity but she’s not moving. Her skin is gray. I don’t think she is going to make it, Charlotte.”
My best friend’s mother, Lana, was the cardiac arrest victim that McCrae was working.
Before I could offer any words of encouragement or condolences, Rhonda’s chime went off and a serenity was upon me that I dare not describe to my distraught and already mourning best friend. Moments like this did not usually instill one small sliver of hope within me. I knew Lana’s chances of any meaningful survival were minuscule. Even if her heart began beating again, which was highly unlikely, her brain would most surely be damaged to the point of being an invalid, unable to feed or poo by herself. However, an optimistic, bizarre feeling sat in the pit of my stomach that stretched beyond my own medical reasoning, one that I could not explain. Heather promised to phone me back as soon as she knew something.
McCrae was actually the first to return the call. His tone was full of remorse and apologies. He kept repeating how sorry he was, he couldn’t do more. Hearing the frustration in his voice that I had experienced many a time when I had lost a patient, he relayed the events from his thwarted point of view. Lana had gone into a Vfib arrest as soon as the ambulance pulled up. It was a deadly but shockable rhythm, one that should have easily been converted back to life with a little electricity. He blamed the staff, but then blamed himself mostly.
“We should have been quicker. It was a total cluster fuck in the resuscitation room because we just weren’t expecting the chaos when the doors opened and they rushed in with her lifeless body. We thought we were just getting another bullshit chest pain that was probably gas. It took too long to get her hooked up to the monitor and charged for the shocks.”
He was beating himself up but ultimately he had led the team that got her heart to beat again. He had already calculated her odds and we both knew medically they weren’t any good. She had made it out of the ER and into the cath lab where a cardiologist managed to open the completely blocked artery that had caused her heart to stop beating. The artery was notoriously known as the widow maker. But they still had to shock her heart countless times while the procedure had taken place. McCrae had heard that she was defibrillated no less than twenty occasions. “Her chances are dismal at best,” I heard him counsel me.
(Look for the continuation of the story in my next post…..and thanks for reading)
Image: Pixabay.com
