chapter 2
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
and down. He was out, his eyes blank at the ceiling. The
nurse at my elbow was hooking up the ports of my catheter,
pushing one of the blunt syringes of epinephrine. We were
all staring at the monitor above the bed, the long horizontal
drift of asystole. As the second amp of atropine ran in, the
lines all leapt to life, frantic peaks filling the screen.
“V-fib,” a nurse said quietly.
“Paddles,” Sasha replied in the same voice, taking the
offered handgrips of the defibrillator from the nurse as she
spoke. “Clear,” she said quietly, and thumbed the button.
John Mongay’s body rose from the mattress, hung for
a moment, collapsed. On the screen we saw scrambled
green light settle for a moment, a rhythm emerge. Then the
peaked lines consolidated into a high picket fence.
“V-tach,” said the nurse, and turned up the power on the
defibrillator.
“Clear,” said Sasha. The body arched and fell again.
It went on for twelve more minutes, Mo