Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Mallory comes to see me at the nurses’ station. “I got all of Jack’s blood and packed it up. It will be going out today.”
I nod my head, and I’m about to say something when I hear commotion in the hallway. “We have a code blue!” I hear one of the nurses yell, and I get up and run down the hall, following the commotion to Evie’s room.
“She was fine this morning,” Janet says, quietly sobbing. “She said she was tired.”
I walk into the room; the machines beep like crazy as her heartbeat gets slower and slower. “Someone page Steve,” I say loudly.
I walk to her. “Hey, Evie,” I say loudly. “Can you hear me, sweetie?”
Nurses come in and start hooking her to the monitor in case she goes into full on cardiac arrest and we have to shock her. Steve comes rushing in. “What’s going on?”
“Her heart beat got under fifty,” I tell him, and he stands beside her.
“Evie, sweetie,” he whispers to her, and she turns her head. “You have to talk to me, okay?”
“I’m tired, Dr. Steve,” she says. “I just want to sleep.”
“I know you do, honey, but you just have to fight a bit more,” he says, and she just closes her eyes. We all look at the monitor to see if her heartbeat gets any lower.
Her beats start to slowly climb, and Steve and I look at each other and then at the nurses who just nod. We walk out to talk to Janet and see that she is sobbing in Shirley’s arms.
She looks at us when we walk out, shaking her head. “No.”
“She’s stable,” I tell her and then look at Shirley, who has her own tears in her eyes. I look at Jack’s room and see that Zack is lying down with Jack while he watches his iPad.
“You have to do something,” Janet says.
“We’ve done everything,” Steve says. “She didn’t respond to the last round of chemo.”
“There has to be something else,” she says, her voice going louder and louder. “There has to be.”
“I’ll see what else can be done,” Steve says, then looks down blinking, and I know he’s blinking away his own tears. They prepare you for the field in medical school, but what they don’t prepare you for is the heartbreaking losses. The times you lose your patient who you’ve not only cared for, but who put their lives in your hands and you failed them. No course can prepare you for that.
Each time I lose a patient, I feel the same hurt the families feel. No matter how much I prepare myself for the end, the result always leaves a permanent mark on my heart.
“I have to call my husband,” Janet says, walking away from Shirley.
“I don’t know how you do this,” Shirley says, and I look down, blinking away the tears that are fighting to come out. “You two really are heroes,” she says, turning around and going to Jack’s room.
“How the fuck is this going to be okay?” Steve asks, looking at me. “There is nothing to be done.”
“Did you speak with Melissa?” I ask him as we turn to walk toward the nurses’ station.
“I did,” he says. “but the family can’t afford five hundred K, and their insurance is stingy as fuck. They delayed treatment for a month while they investigated her case.”
“I’m going to check with the foundation and see if we can help cut costs there,” I tell him, and he just nods.
“They are going to review the chart and bury us in paperwork, and by the time it’s done, it will be too late.” He shakes his head. “A miracle,” he says, walking away from me now. “She needs a miracle.”
I nod my head, and I’m looking down when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I don’t have to turn around to know it’s him; my body knows. I almost feel my shoulder rising to bring his hand up to touch my face. Instead, I turn around. “Are you okay?”
I take a deep breath. “Not even close, but I’m going to have to be.”
“Is she okay?” he asks, and I just look down the hall where Janet paces in front of her daughter’s room on the phone, no doubt talking to her husband.
“I can’t tell you anything,” I tell him and then look down.
He nods his head. Janet comes to us, and Zack sees her. “He’s on his way,” she tells me of her husband. “We had to pull Brock out of his hockey tournament, but ...” she says, wringing the Kleenex in her hand. She turns to look at Zack. “She’s a year older than Jack, and she’s had cancer half her life.”
“Denise,” she says with all the hope in the world, “there has to be something you could do. Something we haven’t tried.”