Free Lie Still by David Farris

paralyzed, and mildly hyperventilated—
    state-of-the-art treatment then. The CAT scan showed a grape-sized blood clot in the deep substance of the brain in front of the thalamus and free blood in the fluid around the brain. Mr. Coles had blown an aneurysm.
    Mimi and I were rounding at seven forty-five or so, struggling to muster the energy needed to appear as if we had spent the weekend in our respective homes reading medical journals, when Dr. Leonard Babcock, one of the more aged neurosurgeons on the faculty, paged her. I heard only a couple of polite conversation fillers and then some nonspecific grunts from Madame Lyle. After hanging up she said, “He said the ER called him with an aneurysm, and would I like the case. Lazy prick.”

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    DAVID FARRIS
    “Dr. Lyle, you are a diversely skilled individual,” I chided her.
    “This morning I can barely walk,” she said and closed her eyes and formed her lips into a kissing posture.
    “You’re bad,” I mumbled.
    We found Mr. Coles in the ER just as the nurse was packing up his belongings to get him shipped off to the ICU. He had two big plastic tubes sticking out of his nose, one on each side. The ventilator was breathing for him through one; his stomach was being drained through the other. Each had blood drying around it. IV fluids were running in both arms; clearish urine was draining from his bladder catheter.
    His wife was there, propped up on an ER stool, draped uncomfortably over the chrome side rail of the gurney, holding one of his hands and brushing back his hair while talking to him quietly. She dabbed a bloody washcloth at his nose. Mimi introduced herself and me. Though the woman’s eyes looked like they had been on fire, she stood and shook both our hands, then rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.
    Mimi looked at the man’s wristband, then said to the woman, “Is it Mrs. Coles?”
    “Roberts. Abbie Roberts, but I am his wife.” I lowered the side rail so his wife could get closer to him. He obviously wasn’t going to be thrashing around.
    “Ms. Roberts, I don’t know how much the Emergency physician has told you . . .”
    She broke in, “That he might have had a stroke . . .” and began a stuttering sniffle.
    “Technically I suppose that’s true, Mrs. Roberts. Has he been in good health before today?”
    “Yes. Jogged almost every day.” I found her a new tissue.
    “Never in the hospital before?”
    “Not since we’ve . . . not since I’ve known him. Thirteen years.”
    “Has he been on any medications?”
    “No. Well, sometimes aspirin.”
    “How much?”

    LIE STILL
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    “Maybe a couple, a few times a week. Could that be what . . .”
    “No, no. Very unlikely.”
    “Because I told him he should be using Tylenol. He said it didn’t work as well.”
    As she spoke Mimi was doing her physical exam. The man was paralyzed with drugs, so there wasn’t much to examine. Even if he had been awake in there, he couldn’t have responded. “Had he been complaining of headaches? In the last few days?”
    “No. He took the aspirin for his knee. He said men were supposed to take aspirin every day anyway. Isn’t that so?”
    Mimi was looking at his pupils with her penlight. “Mrs.
    Roberts, I think we can cut to the chase a bit. It appears, from the presentation, the sudden onset, the location of the bleed, his age, and all, that most likely your husband has ruptured a berry aneurysm, probably at the junction of the internal carotid artery and the anterior communicating artery. That’s the usual spot. We will get a cerebral angiogram, of course . . .”
    “What is that?”
    “. . . to delineate the exact spot of the bleed and try to see the aneurysm.”
    “I’m sorry. What is that?”
    “What?”
    “The cerebral something. A test, I guess.” Mimi was silent. Ms. Roberts repeated herself, “A cerebral angie-something.”
    There was a pause. “Angiogram,” Mimi said, patronizing.
    “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know all