Free Patient One by Leonard Goldberg

children, she had only one living parent—and that, if something happened to him, there was no backup and she would be all alone in the world. Just the thought of it had to frighten her. But David was stuck, and he knew it. There was no way he could abandon the President—or any other sick patient, for that matter.
    Warren stepped over and studied the expression on David’s face. “Is there a problem?”
    “No,” David answered curtly. “No problem.”
    “Then our next step is to set up the endoscopic equipment,” Warren said. “How do we go about doing that?”
    “We don’t,” David told him. “We wait for Dr. Bell. It’s his show.”
    Warren was about to ask another question about the procedure but held his tongue.
    The Secretary of State and his wife were being wheeled on gurneys into nearby rooms. They were a handsome African American couple with light skin and silver-gray hair. Both looked very ill. Coming in behind them was the Russian president and his wife and two security guards. Ivana Suslev was in a wheelchair, her head drooped onto her chest and her blond hair in disarray.
    When the corridor was finally cleared, Warren came back to David and kept his voice low. “With the drugs the President will receive for his endoscopy, how long will he be out of commission?”
    “An hour and a half, maybe two hours,” David estimated.
    “Well, we won’t have to worry about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment then.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s the part of the Constitution that transfers presidential powers to the Vice President.”
    “On second thought,” David backtracked quickly, “it might be best to check with the anesthesiologist. The President could be down a lot longer if something complicated is found.”
    “Who will be the anesthesiologist?”
    David shrugged. “That will be up to Dr. Bell.”
    “We’ll have to have him—”
    “Will!” the President shouted from inside his room. “Will!”
    Warren spun around on his heels and hurried into the suite, with David a step behind. The President had propped himself up on an elbow and was vomiting red blood into a small basin. He was retching so hard his body was bouncing off the mattress. He threw up again and again, then dropped back on his pillow exhausted.
    “You’d better get that endoscopy fellow in here,” Merrill said weakly.
    “He’s on his way, Mr. President.” Warren’s eyes went to the cardiac monitor. The President’s blood pressure was 92/60, his pulse was 104 beats per minute. And he looked pale now. Warren turned to David and asked very quickly, “Do you have any suggestions?”
    David studied the monitors, then glanced over to the basin that was brimming with blood. The President had filled the basin twice, and that alone amounted to nearly a quart of blood. One more massive hemorrhage could kill him , David thought, as he desperately searched his mind for an answer to the dilemma. Then he remembered back to a patient with erosive gastritis who was bleeding and wouldn’t stop. Quickly David gazed over to a bucket of crushed ice on a night table. It was sitting next to a pitcher of water. He dashed across the room and poured the water into the bucket of ice chips, then swirled the slush until it was freezing cold. “Mr. President, I’m going to rinse your stomach with ice water through the tube in your nose. The name for the procedure is ‘lavage.’”
    Merrill swallowed back another wave of nausea. “What good will that do?”
    “Very cold liquids will cause the blood vessels to constrict, and that might slow down the bleeding,” David explained. “I think it’s worth trying.”
    Merrill nodded quickly. “Do it.”
    David hurried over and filled a 50cc syringe with ice water, then attached it to the end of the nasogastric tube. Over and over, he lavaged the stomach with water so cold it burned his fingertips. At first, the gastric juice David retrieved was colored deep red. Then it turned light red, and finally