Page 5 of Forever Fighting
I totally do. Damn.
A million questions shoot my way, and I explain how she’s a rule-out MI waiting on troponins, but her X-ray was clear, her vitals stable, and her EKG showed sinus tachycardia with no ST-segment changes that would indicate a heart attack.
“Let’s get her intubated,” Jack Kincaid, Wren’s husband and the chief physician in the ER, states. “Are the labs back, and do we have a shockable rhythm?”
“Checking labs now,” one of the nurses tells him. “Electrolytes are normal, but troponin is 0.12.”
“Pulseless V-tach on the monitor,” I call out.
“Push epi and stand by with Amiodarone. Charge to two hundred,” Jack orders. “Clear.”
Everyone steps back, and Jack applies the paddles to the patient’s chest and shocks her.
“Rhythm?” Jack throws at me.
I study the monitor. “Sinus brady at fifty-two.”
“Nice. And on the first try. Let’s make it the only one, but no more beta blockers until we get her out of bradycardia. Let the cath lab know that we’re bringing them up a hot one. Whatever her EKG showed on admission, she’s definitely having an MI now.”
Great. And up until now, it had been an easy shift.
We continue to medically code my patient, gradually dragging her back from the jaws of death. Once we stabilize her, Ihelp bring her up to the cath lab so they can unblock her coronary arteries that are causing the heart attack. As crazy as this sounds, it’s all pretty standard procedure.
After I get her there and the cath team takes over, I head to the cafeteria to grab Wren her sundae and get one for myself. I don’t do it with every code. Certainly not with traumas. But every now and then, you need a little ice cream to remind you that not everything in this world is as fucked and scary as it seems here in the ER.
“Ah, you’re back,” my mother, Margot, the chief nurse, greets me, eyeing my sundae.
“Thank you!” Wren calls out as she swoops by me and grabs hers from my hand.
“Thank you!” I call back, then turn to my mom as I dollop the first bite of vanilla with caramel sauce into my mouth. “What’s up?”
“How would you like to go home early today?”
I snort a laugh and nearly choke on my ice cream. “Is that a rhetorical question, Mother Dearest?”
“We have two extra nurses on shift between three and seven, and you’re on day five in a row. Go home.”
“Really?” My eyes brighten, and I twist my wrist to check my watch. It’s just after three in the afternoon. I could do laundry and even make Adam dinner, which in my world consists of boiling water and adding pasta to it, but whatever. It still counts.
“Yes. Go home.”
“Ah! Thank you. I love you.” I give my mom a wet, sticky kiss that she grimaces at and wipes away.
“You’ve earned it. Oh, by the way, Rina told me her wedding invitation arrived.” A dazzling smile lights my mother’s face, and a giddy excitement fills my belly.
“Oh yay. Did she like it?”
“She loved it. You picked beautiful ones. Only seven more weeks to your big day.”
I do a small happy dance. “Seven more weeks. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I blow my mother a kiss and eat my sundae as I head into the locker room to grab my stuff. I’m too excited to leave to bother with changing, the taste of early freedom—and caramel—on my lips, so instead, I grab my bag of stuff and head out the door.
I call Adam, but it goes straight to voicemail. He’s likely in a meeting or something. I jog up the steps for the train and see it already here at the platform. Crap. I don’t want to miss it. I hightail it up the last steps and bolt for the doors as they start to close. I shove my way through, pushing the doors and managing to get on just in time.
Phew. And look at this, there’s even a seat for me.
Totally my lucky day. My patient survived, I ate a delicious sundae, I got out of work early—something that rarely, if ever, happens—and I caught the train instead of having to wait for the next one.
I pop my AirPods into my ears and bop my head the entire way home, including switching trains to the green line and walking the three blocks to my apartment. The door shuts behind me, and I do a twirl as the song ends and I remove my AirPods. Only the music hasn’t stopped. It’s still going. But it’s not Sabrina singing to me, it’s freaking Harry Styles.
