chapter 2
fiction
I
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
N THE HOSPITAL where I work, codes go something like this. A nurse finds a patient slumped
over in bed. The nurse calls her name. No answer. The nurse shakes the inert body. No answer. Harder. Still no answer. The nurse steps
to the door and calls, in tones that rise at each syllable, “I
need some help here.” The rest of the available nurses on
the floor converge. Within a minute, every bystander within hearing is gathered at the door.
In the basement of the hospital, an operator listens intently to her headset. She flips a switch, and a faint click
opens the hospital to the microphone on her console.
“Adult Code 100, 6 South. Adult Code 100, 6 South.” The
message goes out on the hospital PA system, her disembodied voice filling the hallways. It also goes out to a system of
antique voice pagers, from which the operator’s measured
words emerge as inarticulate squealing. The pagers are
largely backup, in case some member of the team is, say, in
the bathroom, or otherwise out of reach of the PA system.
The team consists of eight or nine people: respiratory
techs, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, and the residents
on call for the Cardiac ICU. On hearing the summons, the
residents drop whatever they are doing and sprint. In their
voluminous white coats, from whose pockets fall stethoscopes, penlights, reflex hammers, EKG calipers, tuning
forks, ballpoint pens (these clatter across the floors to be
scooped up by the medical students who follow behind),
the medical team’s passing is a curious combination of high
drama and burlesque.
The team arrives on a scene of Bedlam. The room is so
crowded with nurses, CNAs, janitors and miscellaneous
onlookers that it can be physically impossible to enter.
Shouldering your way through the mob at the door, you are
stopped by a crowd around the bed; the crash cart, a roll-