“Whoopee,” Haley cheered.
There were virtual high fives.
“Gad,” Ann said. “That like to killed me!”
“Ricky, thank you for taking such good care of Josh,” Peggy said. “And you stifled you own distress!”
There was more conversation as they dispersed.
“I am looking forward to a quiet evening with Alicia.” Peggy said.
Emily came up for a more detailed sign-off. “Tell me what I need to do for her tonight.”
“Well, she’s off the ventilator, has communicated with Josh, and is no longer on medicines to keep her blood pressure up. Her morphine will wear off more during the evening, and then she may need more pain medicine. We started her on a heparin infusion, and that will have to be adjusted.”
“No problem,” Emily said. “Are you against using newer blood thinners in pregnancy?”
“No, I didn’t think of them.”
“We use them often in the hospital and in the office,” Emily said. “Heparin and low molecular weight heparin, in my experience, have frequent failures. And I think heparin failed Faith today.”
“I would say that’s correct,” Peggy said. “Good call. Maybe heparin is not the right choice. Can you change her over during the night?”
“Sure,” Emily said, “have a nice night. I won’t call you.”
In the ICU, Josh had not left Faith’s side, and had helped with her care, which is how he thought he earned unrestricted visiting. He had also supervised a blood transfusion on the adjacent patient. Brownie points were handy bargaining chips.
“Josh,” she whispered, “can I have more water?”
Josh put a straw in a Styrofoam cup with ice water. She took it down, one swallow at a time.
“My throat is sore,” she whispered. “My throat is super sore.”
“I’m sure that’s true. Maybe we can get a lozenge.”
He was holding her hand. Except for a single bathroom break, he had held her hand all afternoon, enjoying her fingers and her squeezes. Most of the afternoon, she had slept, and the slow deep respirations had continued. She had been on six liters of oxygen with all pulse ox readings above ninety percent.
In a flash, Natalie came up on Facetime, so Josh held the phone to capture Faith’s face. “Hello, Dr Faith,” she yelled. “Wait, Josh, I want to start recording.” The explosive enthusiasm in Nat’s voice came across well. Faith opened her eyes, and there was a little bit of a grin through sleepy eyes, tape marks on her face, and a dry mouth. “Yeah, Dr Faith. It’s so good to see you.” In short order, the faces of Jim and Marianna also appeared, to which Faith responded with a quiet snore.
“I think she has recovered,” Josh said. “We had to use old slow drugs on her because we were temporarily out of the new short-acting ones. Peggy says she will be wide awake tomorrow.”
“We don’t care,” Natalie replied. “It’s a miracle we have her at all!”
Josh choked up. “Yes, we’re lucky to have her. Or we could have her with brain damage or kidney failure. It looks like she escaped both of those. And we still have Cori.” He put the Doppler on Faith’s belly so they could hear Cori’s heart.
Natalie was quiet. Josh kept Faith’s face on the screen. Finally, Josh spoke up in a normal-sounding voice. “Jim, may I please marry your daughter?”
Jim stammered, a notable first in Josh’s memory. “Natalie, Marianna, is it OK if Josh marries Faith?”
Natalie was already squealing. “That is the sweetest thing, Josh! I’ll be glad to have you as a brother-in-law.”
“Yes,” was Marianna’s only word.
Jim didn’t say anything. Natalie prodded him, “Is it OK, Dad?”
“Yes,” he said. “Josh, I would be glad if you married my daughter.”
“Thank you, guys,” Josh said. He still had Faith on the screen.
“Get in the picture with her,” Natalie insisted.
Josh complied, smiling at the family on the screen. Returning to the side of the bed Faith was facing, he restored the screen to her face. “I’m so happy,” he told them. “This was such a day. I thought I lost her. I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Or us,” Jim agreed. “We were glad you didn’t call until it was over. You told us it would be late afternoon before you would know if she was off the ventilator, so we weren’t even concerned. Then when you called and told us what had happened, we were floored.”
“I’m so glad things went well,” Natalie said. “When will she get out of the hospital, and when will you bring her here?”
“She’s not out of the woods, yet, Nat,” Josh said. “We have to get her blood thinners regulated, help her regain her strength, and watch for other complications. Many COVID patients lose a lot of muscle strength and are fatigued. They don’t seem to just pop back.”
“Well, keep talking to us, even after she starts calling us,” Natalie begged. “Call us when she’s not around so we can ask you questions.”
“OK,” he promised. “I can do that.”
More giggling was heard, followed by whispering. “We’re OK with all that,” a cheerful Jim replied. “Take care of yourself and thank you for all the care you gave her.”
“My pleasure.”
Chapter 40
Josh had sent a text to Peggy suggesting that it was time to confront Faith about Brian. Faith was now officially out of ICU sitting in a chair. Peggy dressed up and entered the room, finding a chair next to Josh. Faith had been crying, and was holding a tissue.
“I told her,” Josh said. “We just need to talk for a while. Maybe you know more about Brian’s problem that we do.”
“Not more than I knew when I talked to you before.”
Faith was staring at her with wide eyes. “Was he sick?”
Peggy said, “I guess so. Pain management, which includes psychiatry and anesthesiology, had planned to admit him with depression. He had successfully detoxified and was making progress. I don’t know what triggered the admission, but he visited the Pain Management that afternoon, the admission was arranged, but then he didn’t appear.”
“Detoxified?” Faith asked.
“Yes. He had an opiate problem, started when he had knee surgery. He was on Percocet and fentanyl.”
“That was a long time ago. He was on opiates that whole time?”
Josh recognized that Faith didn’t know this. “You never saw any evidence of that?”
“No,” she said.
Peggy went on, “I guess he failed his basic ob-gyn written for the second time—”
“I knew about that,” Faith said.
“— and Emily and Dr Thompson, the Dean of Faculty, were addressing the opiates and his depression.”
“I’m crushed,” Faith mumbled. “All this anger and mean behavior was opiates and depression?”
“Yes,” Peggy said. “There was a whole team of people working on him.”
She sniffled, “So my divorce wasn’t the cause of this.”
“No, Faith,” Peggy said, “don’t you think it’s the other way around? The divorce is the result of his depression?”
“So, the move to Albuquerque wasn’t my fault either.”
“Definitely not. Albuquerque should have been a good place for him,” Peggy said. “He had a good job here with an opportunity to step up and have a successful career. This might have been a better place to do that than in a dog-eat-dog competitive department, like in Dallas. You are flourishing here, and he could have, too.”
Josh had his arm around Faith. “His affair wasn’t your fault, either?”