chapter 2
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
nurse has it ready. “Push it,” you say, and she does. Stop
compressions, check the screen.
Suddenly the wavery tracing leaps into life, a jagged irregular line, teeth of a painful saw. “V fib,” the other resident calls out, annoying you for a moment. You clamp the
paddles down on the patient’s ribs. “Everyone clear?” Everyone has moved back two feet from the bed. You check
your own legs, arch your back. “Clear?” You push the button. The patient spasms, then lies limp again. The pattern
on the screen is unchanged. The other resident shakes her
head. You call over your shoulder, “Three hundred,” and
shock again. The body twitches again. An unpleasant smell
rises from the bed.
The pattern on the screen subsides, back to the long lazy
wave. Still no pulse. You start compressing again. “Epi,”
you call out. “Atropine.” There is another flutter of activity on the screen, but before you can shock, it goes flat
again, almost flat, perhaps there is a suggestion of a ragged
rhythm there, fine sawteeth. “Clear,” you call again, and
everybody draws back. “Three sixty,” you remember to say
over your shoulder, and when the answering call comes
back you shock again, knowing this is futile. But the patient
is dead and there is no harm in trying. As the body slumps
again, there is a palpable slackening of the noise level in
the room, and even though you go on another ten minutes,
pushing on the chest until your shoulders are burning and
your breath is short, and a total of ten milligrams of epinephrine has gone in