“She told me,” Ann said, “that she blows off to her wife or to her veterinarian friend. Sometimes she rides her bicycle or does yoga.”
“You’re saying that we just don’t see it,” Ricky said.
“Yes, I believe that’s it. She has the same feelings and vents just like we do, but she doesn’t do it in front of us.”
“I thought this was very helpful,” Ricky said. “We should do it regularly.”
“We were for a while,” Haley said. “But we’ve been busy, so we slacked off.”
“I’m tired,” Ann said. “I have to go home.”
“We do too.”
“Did somebody pay Julio?” Ricky asked.
“I didn’t,” Haley said.
“Neither did I,” Ann said.
“Julio,” Ricky shouted. “We need our check.”
“You’re all paid up,” Julio answered. “And I got a good tip.”
“Who paid?” Ann asked.
“The older lady.”
Chapter 39
“Code blue, Labor and Delivery, Code blue, Labor and Delivery.”
Peggy and Ann approached Faith’s bed in ICU where personnel, including Haley and Ricky, were rapidly amassing. Josh was scrambling to get out of the way. A defibrillator and a crash cart had been brought up to her bed.
Josh, flushed and tearing, said, “I have to get out of here!” He darted for the door, Ricky right behind him.
Ricky diverted Josh to a corner of the unit and talked with Josh, soothing him as best he could, struggling to remain calm himself. Mostly, he just listened. “What happened, Josh?”
“I don’t know. We were trying to talk to her. She was responding a little bit, but we didn’t think she was ready to extubate. Since we ran out of fentanyl and propofol to keep her asleep, we have been using old slow drugs morphine and methohexital, so she doesn’t wake up as fast when we stop the drugs. We even thought it might be another hour or two. Suddenly she started moving her arms, reached up, and pulled her tube out. She hasn’t done that before, so I didn’t expect it. She also bent her legs up. I called for help when the tube came out. I didn’t know what to do next. Somebody brought me an Ambu Bag to breathe for her, but I was terrible at it. Her heart rate went down, and I melted. That’s when Haley arrived, and I was so glad to see Ann and Peggy.”
Ricky put his gloved hand on the sleeve of Josh’s gown, easing him into a chair. From where they sat, part of the conversation was audible. Neither of them could hold off tears.
Josh went on, “Then all kinds of people started coming, and I heard the page for the Code Blue. I can’t believe this is happening. After all we’ve done. I thought she was pulling through. I thought we had it made. I told her family that she would likely come off the ventilator later today, and that she was getting well. This is bad. This is so bad.”
“They’re working on her, Josh,” Ricky said. “They can figure out what’s up.”
Peggy, Ann, and Haley talked among themselves, discussing the possible reasons Faith’s heart stopped, ordering medications and lab tests, and introducing themselves to others who had come to help. From where Josh and Ricky sat, it appeared orderly.
Ricky listened to Josh. “I didn’t know what to do when she yanked her tube out. I didn’t know she would do that. There was no one else in the room with me. I felt so helpless.”
“I would have, too.”
“So why didn’t she breathe after the tube came out?” he asked.
Ricky stayed silent.
“Should I call her sister?” he asked. “What am I going to say to Natalie if Faith dies? What am I going to say to Jim?”
“Why don’t we wait a few more minutes while they figure out what happened and get things back to normal? We don’t have much information. I can’t imagine what we would say to them at this point. To them, I’m a stranger. You’re in no shape to talk to them. It would send them into a tizzy, and they couldn’t do anything about it.”
Josh mumbled, “I wonder if Faith knows what’s happening.”
“I don’t think so. You said she wasn’t awake before she took her tube out. And you said the old medicines work a lot slower than the new ones. I bet she’s still asleep.”
“Please don’t die, Faith. Please don’t take Cori with you. Please don’t leave me.”
For a short burst, a heart rhythm appeared on the screen of the monitor, above the heads of the people working on her. Chest compressions stopped, and there was movement of people and equipment. Suction made its disgusting noise, someone talked about epinephrine, and then chest compressions began again.
Haley and Peggy were talking, with Ann listening. “It seemed like she was ready to come off the ventilator, and yesterday, she passed the test.” Haley was reciting. “She took her tube out, which we might have done anyway, just a little later in the day. So why didn’t she breathe?”
“There has to be something else,” Peggy said.
They became busy again with medicines, chest compressions, and ventilator settings.
Time dragged on, making Josh wonder if this was about to end and end badly. “Has this been going on a long time?” he asked Ricky.
“No, less than ten minutes.”
“That’s what I meant. Don’t we quit at thirty minutes?”
“If there is no response. But she had a rhythm there for a while and they stopped compressing. It looks like they sent off lab tests, ordered a chest x-ray, and tried to take a blood pressure.”
Josh spewed a flurry of unrelated stories on Ricky. “I talked to her family yesterday. They were all upbeat and excited that she was improving. Her sister Natalie is only fourteen, yet she understands so much in life. She has been good for me. Jim has a deep, comforting voice. Her mom, Marianne, hardly talks.”
“It sounds like you know them well.”
“I’ve been talking to them twice a day since Faith went on the ventilator. One of the anesthesiologists told me that some patients are aware even though they don’t respond and even though they don’t remember after they wake up. So, I have been talking to her, too.”
“I didn’t know some of them were aware,” Ricky said. “That’s amazing. I will have to remember that.”
“We have loved eating together in the evening. We do that in the cafeteria downstairs when one of us is on call. Sometimes we go to Padilla’s when we are both off. It’s amazing how many blue enchiladas that girl can eat.”
“That’s a good place.”
“Yes. And I like to cook for her. We are only off together the night after she is on call, so I try to have dinner ready when she gets home. It’s the only time we can talk.”
“Residency is hard,” Ricky said. “But then you get out of it what you put into it, so taking it easy is not in your best interest in the long run.”
“We both stay when there is something interesting going on.” Josh paused, leaned forward placing his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “My sister Marla, who’s an attorney in Santa Fe, helped her do the paperwork for her divorce from Brian. Faith was happy and relieved by that. But in the process, it was so hard for me to get her romantic attention. It’s like she doesn’t get the main idea sometimes. I didn’t get her attention until she had to move out of the apartment she had with Brian.”
“That’s when she moved in with you?”
“Yes. Her family came to help her move and I got to meet all of them in person. That was fun. I especially like her dad and her sister. It’s fun to torment her sister, she reacts so dramatically.”
“It’s good you have that kind of relationship with her family.”
“Then the night she found the positive pregnancy test, she was shocked. At first I thought she was down about it. But it turns out that Brian would have wanted her to have an abortion, which she didn’t want. Now we are both so excited, and we are so happy it’s a girl. We’ll call her Cori.” He paused. “This sounds like I am saying goodbye to her, doesn’t it?”