chapter 2
fiction
T
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
HE REST OF THE NIGHT was anticlimactic. There was a note to write
(there is always a note to write), for
which we had to puzzle some time
over the strips churned out by the
telemetry system, the notes scribbled on a paper towel
recording what drugs had been given when, the values called over the phone from Core Lab and written in
black marker on the leg of a nurse’s scrubs. There was
the call to the family: I had to temper my enthusiasm as
I searched for words to use when calling from the CCU
at 2:35 in the morning. It was the son who answered. He
took the news well enough, asked if I thought they needed
to come now. I assured him
his father was stable. I assured him everything was under control; I had anticipated
MR. MONGAY HAD
the code, I realized, when I
CODED, CODED
moved him to the CCU. He
BEAUTIFULLY, AND
was in the safest possible
HE HAD SURVIVED.
place. “In the morning then,”
WE HAD DONE
the son said quietly.
EVERYTHING RIGHT.
“In the morning,” I agreed,
and turned to the call room
at last, where I spent perhaps forty-five minutes on
my back, replaying the code
against the springs of the empty bunk above me, until my pager went off again and this time it was the ER.
And then around five, another code on 4 West, where we
found a man bleeding from a ruptured arterial graft and
I had to put yet another catheter in yet another groin,
and this time there were fourteen nurses in the room,