“No. You are just telling me about the happy parts of your relationship with her. You guys have such a warm relationship,” Ricky said, his voice cracking. “I hope you have it for a long time.”
“I do too,” he answered. “But it doesn’t look good, does it?” It was an excruciating question.
“Do you think Brian abused Faith?” Ricky asked.
“Um,” Josh said, “not physically, in that she told me he never hit her. But psychologically I think he did. She really was very subservient to him, always wanted to please him, and rarely succeeded. You can tell by all the times she asked whether Brian’s anger and his affair were because of her coming to Albuquerque, or because of her kicking him out. I think she is coming around, though, because I never do those things to her.”
“That’s good. You need to keep going on that.”
“I will. I want her to have control of her life, some control of our lives, and to be the mother she wants to be, not the one I want, her mother wants, or anybody else wants.”
“They’re talking about radiology,” Ricky said. “I think they’re talking about taking her to radiology! Can you believe that?”
“How do you do that when she’s coding? Keep pumping on her chest in an elevator?”
“Let me step over and see.” Ricky walked over, had a short exchange with Haley and came back. “Peggy thinks she has a big clot in her lung and that they may be able to get it out with a catheter in radiology.”
“Is she insane? Or do we not know what we are talking about?”
“I don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s for sure,” Ricky said. “I guess they move people who are coding in an ambulance, don’t they? I suppose you need to get the patient somewhere where survival is more likely.”
“I guess they do.”
Then Peggy’s voice came clearly, apparently having been challenged by someone in the room whom Ricky and Josh had not heard, “Yes, we don’t have any choices. If we don’t try to address the clot, we won’t have a patient. While moving her could kill her, staying here won’t end well.”
Ricky and Josh watched as the monitor was taken down off the shelf and placed on the foot of the bed, an oxygen tank was connected to an Ambu Bag, and IV lines were placed on a pole attached to the bed. The bed began a slow movement toward the door, which Ann opened and held out of the way. They watched the as the bed moved out the door, as the mass of people and equipment progressed down the hall, and as the elevator devoured the bed, patient, and caregivers. As the elevator door closed, chest compressions had started again.
Ricky said, “Let’s wander down in that direction to keep up on the news.”
“What?” Josh said.
“I know where they are going, and we can get there by the back stairs. That way we can keep up on the news.”
“This seems like a last-ditch effort,” Josh said. “What chance of success do you suppose it has?”
Ricky shrugged. “I don’t know. But doing nothing won’t help. We discussed that at Padilla’s the other night. If you don’t take action, you’re accepting failure.” By now, Ricky was marching at a brisk pace. Josh didn’t see the stairway before Josh ducked into it, making him spin to retrace a few steps to follow.
Ricky seemed to fly down the steps, two at a time. Josh would never have been able to select the correct door to exit the stairway since there were identical doors on every landing, and some had two. Ricky selected one of the least obvious and exited. After several hallway turns, Josh now completely lost, Ricky ushered him into a tiny waiting room that had only about six chairs.
“I wish I had dropped pebbles or crumbs,” Josh said. “There is no way I could be back to Labor and Delivery without help.”
“Sit here while I scope this out and make sure we’re in the right place.” Before Josh could answer, Ricky vanished. All he could do was stare at the floor and relive her removing her tube.
“They’re in an arteriography room down the hall. They had to stop working on the radiology procedure because they had to start doing chest compressions again. I guess the ultrasound showed a big clot in the right main pulmonary artery. The radiologist thinks he can get it out if he can thread a catheter from her groin into her lung.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies,” Josh said. “It will mean that I lose Cori too.”
“Yes. But Josh, it’s not over yet. The radiologist thinks he can blow it out.”
“Blow it out?” Josh said, horrified. “How does that work?”
“What I heard was they inject high pressure saline behind the clot, pushing it back out into a gadget that grinds it up and sucks it out.”
“We do that with fibroids tumors of the uterus using a laparoscope,” Josh said. “I have never figured out how such a tiny grinder can grind up a big fibroid in just seconds.”
“I’ve never seen that procedure,” Ricky said.
“Yeah,” Josh said, “they did that in Oklahoma City.”
“OK. Well anyway, that’s what they’re thinking with Faith.”
“But she has to live that long.”
“They aren’t doing chest compressions all the time,” Ricky said. “I think that’s a good sign.”
Josh began reminiscing again. Something inside him needed to be released. “I took her a yellow rose one night when we went to dinner.”
“What did she say?” even though he remembered.
“Thank you.” Josh amazed himself by chuckling. “She totally didn’t get it. Later she told me she talked to her sister afterwards, and the fourteen-year-old interpreted the yellow rose. I have never let her off the hook about that. I have since thanked Natalie for helping me get Faith’s attention.”
“It’s amazing how insightful and knowledgeable she is here at work. She seems so connected to patients, their problems, their preferences, and their personalities. Her anecdotes about patients are hilarious.”
“I know. But at home, sometimes she is completely clueless. As if she’s a different person. She totally didn’t get the rose. It’s amazing. Her dad says she has always been that way, and that her kindergarten teacher said she had trouble getting the main idea.”
“I’m going back down the hall,” Ricky said and slipped out the door. Josh agonized while Ricky was away and relaxed when he reappeared.
“Do you think I should call her parents?” Josh asked, mostly just wanting to do something.
“Let’s hold off a little longer. What made you pick New Mexico?” Josh knew this was just to get him to keep talking. Hadn’t he and Ricky discussed this before? Maybe not.
“I didn’t want to go east. I wanted warmer weather. I didn’t get picked by any program in Arizona or California, so I wound up matching here. I was disappointed at the time, but not now. I like New Mexico, I like Albuquerque, I like this residency, and I like Faith.” His heart ached again.
“Have you talked to your parents?” he asked.
“Yes, occasionally. They’re all well. I’ve talked to my sister often. We fought like cats and dogs when we were young, but in retrospect, she always helped me and protected me. What are they going to do to her?”
“In order to inject saline on the far side of the clot, they need to give her more heparin and they are worried about that. I didn’t know this, but large amounts of heparin lower the blood pressure, which she doesn’t need. Peggy was talking about giving her something to counteract that. Dopamine.”
“It’s more and more stuff,” Josh said. “When do we get to a place where there’s no coming back?”