Free Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller by Eleanor Sullivan

around the corner, spewing fumes. I reluctantly slid out from the curb and headed home.
     
     

SEVEN
    Friday, 10 August, 0713 Hours
    I HEARD THE PAGE announcing the code as I stepped off the elevator. I ran through the double doors to ICU and followed Laura, who was heading toward Huey’s room with the crash cart, hoping Huey had just pulled a lead off his chest.
    I was wrong.
    Huey lay still, his prosthesis uselessly hooked on the IV tubing and his amputated arm wrenched loose from its straps. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. A thought shot through my mind—if Huey died now, he’d be spared. Then the adrenaline kicked in and I shifted into automatic.
    Oxygen hissed into his nose through a cannula but his chest didn’t move.
    “Huey,” I said loudly. “Wake up!”
    No response.
    “Come on, Huey, wake up!” I shook him. I checked his carotid pulse. It was weak and fluttery.
    Respiratory arrest.
    I pulled on gloves, grabbed the reversal kit hanging on the PCA pump, pulled out the syringe of Narcan, and drew up two doses. I noticed that the foil covering was off the rubber end of the access port on his IV line that we use to inject additional medications, and that it was discolored from the other drugs Huey had been getting. I cleaned the port with an alcohol wipe that Laura tossed me and stabbed the needle in, pushing in the drug that should reverse the effects of excessive narcotics.
    “Wake up, Huey, come on, come on, wake up!” I shook him again. His body felt flimsy and his good arm flopped on the bed until I let go.
    A minute had passed.
    I injected the second dose of Narcan and waited, watching the monitor. Uneven lines jerked across the screen, the alarm screaming.
    “No respirations?” Laura asked.
    I shook my head, then yanked Huey’s head back, slid an oral airway through his mouth and down his throat, grabbed the Ambu bag off the wall, hooked it up to the oxygen flow valve, and slapped the bag over his nose and mouth. I cranked the oxygen flow meter up as high as it would go—to fifteen liters— and began squeezing the bag, trying to push the hundred percent oxygen into his lungs.
    His chest resisted.
    I squeezed harder, pushing in as much oxygen as I could.
    Tim came in, quickly surveying the scene. “V-tach,” he said, glancing at the erratic rhythm on the monitor.
    Huey’s heart was in ventricular tachycardia.
    Laura pulled Huey’s hospital gown loose from his body and bunched it up under his chin. She took over bagging him as I slapped the florescent-orange jelly pads on his chest, one on his sternum, the other over his left nipple, and put the defibrillator paddles over them firmly on his bony chest.
    “Go directly to 360 joules,” I told Tim, “since he’s in V-tach.”
    Tim nodded and set the defibrillator charge for the first jolt.
    “Stand clear!” I yelled.
    Pressing hard on the paddles, I pushed both discharge buttons simultaneously. I let up and looked at the monitor.
    A single line bounded wildly up and down across the screen, its shrieking the only sound in the room.
    “360 again,” I ordered.
    “360 joules,” Tim responded.
    “Stand clear!” I shocked Huey a second time.
    No change.
    A third jolt.
    Nothing.
    An anesthesiologist rushed in to intubate Huey. Laura moved to the head of the bed to assist, pulling an intubation tray off the code cart. She tore it open and tossed the equipment onto the bed while the anesthesiologist squeezed between the head of the bed and the wall. As the anesthesiologist called for equipment, Laura handed it to him.
    The doctor struggled to get the tube down Huey’s throat and into his barrel chest distended by pulmonary emphysema. “What’s his 02?” he asked, glancing toward Huey’s hand where the pulse oximeter should have been clipped to a finger to record oxygen levels in the blood. The finger clip lay on the sheet.
    “His clip’s off,” I told the doctor.
    “BP? Pulse?”
    Tim wrapped a blood pressure cuff around