at her daughter’s hand. It was bruised and puffy from IVs and needle sticks. ‘When her father was dying, Debbie told me she never wanted to end up like that. Tied down and force-fed. I keep thinking about that. About what she said…’ Margaret looked up again. ‘What would you do? If this was your wife?’
‘I wouldn’t think about giving up.’
‘Even if she’d told you she didn’t want to end up this way?’
He thought about it for a moment. Then said with conviction, ‘It would be my decision, in the end. No matter what she or anyone else told me. I wouldn’t give up on someone I loved. Ever. Not if there was the smallest chance I could save her.’
His words offered no comfort to Margaret. He didn’t have the right to question her beliefs, her instincts, but she had asked his opinion, and his answer had come from his heart, not his head.
Feeling guilty now, he gave Margaret one last pat on the shoulder and left the cubicle. Nature would most likely take the decision out of their hands. A comatose patient with a systemic infection is already on death’s threshold.
He left the ICU and glumly stepped into the elevator. This was a depressing way to kick off his vacation. First stop, he decided as he stepped off on the lobby level, would be the corner grocery store for a six-pack. An ice-cold beer and an afternoon loading up the sailboat was what he needed right now. It would get his mind off Debbie Haning.
‘Code Blue, SICU. Code Blue, SICU.’
His head snapped up at the announcement over the hospital address system. Debbie, he thought, and dashed for the stairwell.
Her SICU cubicle was already crowded with personnel. He pushed his way in and shot a glance at the monitor. Ventricular fibrillation! Her heart was a quivering bundle of muscles, unable to pump, unable to keep her brain alive.
‘One amp epinephrine going in now!’ one of the nurses called out.
‘Everyone stand back!’ a doctor ordered, placing the defibrillator paddles on the chest.
Jack saw the body give a jolt as the paddles discharged, and saw the line shoot up on the monitor, then sink back to baseline. Still in V fib.
A nurse was performing CPR, her short blond hair flipping up with each pump on the chest. Debbie’s neurologist, Dr Salomon, glanced up as Jack joined him at the bedside.
‘Is the amiodarone in?’ asked Jack.
‘Going in now, but it’s not working.’
Jack glanced at the tracing again. The V fib had gone from coarse to fine. Deteriorating toward a flat line.
‘We’ve shocked her four times,’ said Salomon. ‘Can’t get a rhythm.’
‘Intracardiac epi?’
‘We’re down to Hail Marys. Go ahead!’
The code nurse prepared the syringe of epinephrine and attached a long cardiac needle. Even as Jack took it, he knew that the battle was already over. This procedure would change nothing. But he thought about Bill Haning, waiting to come home to his wife. And he thought about what he had said to Margaret only moments ago.
I wouldn’t give up on someone I loved. Ever. Not if there was the smallest chance I could save her.
He looked down at Debbie, and for one disconcerting moment the image of Emma’s face flashed through his mind. He swallowed hard and said, ‘Hold compressions.’
The nurse lifted her hands from the sternum.
Jack gave the skin a quick swab of Betadine and positioned the tip of the needle beneath the xiphoid process. His own pulse was bounding as he pierced the skin. He advanced the needle into the chest, exerting gentle negative pressure.
A flash of blood told him he was in the heart.
With one squeeze of the plunger, he injected the entire dose of epinephrine and pulled out the needle. ‘Resume compressions,’ he said, and looked up at the monitor. Come on, Debbie. Fight, damn it. Don’t give up on us. Don’t give up on Bill.
The room was silent, everyone’s gaze fixed on the monitor. The tracing flattened, the myocardium dying, cell by cell. No one needed to say a word; the look of defeat was on their faces.
She is so young, thought Jack. Thirty-six years old.
The same age as Emma.
It was Dr Salomon who made the decision. ‘Let’s end it,’ he said quietly. ‘Time of death is eleven-fifteen.’
The nurse administering compressions solemnly stepped away from the body. Under the bright cubicle lights, Debbie’s torso looked like pale plastic. A mannequin. Not the bright and lively woman Jack had met five years ago at a NASA party held under the stars.
Margaret stepped into the cubicle. For a moment she stood in silence, as though not recognizing her own daughter. Dr Salomon placed his hand on her shoulder and said gently, ‘It happened so quickly. There was nothing we could do.’
‘He should have been here,’ said Margaret, her voice breaking.
‘We tried to keep her alive,’ said Dr Salomon. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s Bill I feel sorry for,’ said Margaret, and she took her daughter’s hand and kissed it. ‘He wanted to be here. And now he’ll never forgive himself.’
Jack walked out of the cubicle and sank into a chair in the nurses’ station. Margaret’s words were still ringing in his head. He should have been here. He’ll never forgive himself.
He looked at the phone. And what am I still doing here? he wondered.
He took the Yellow Pages from the ward clerk’s desk, picked up the phone, and dialed.
‘Lone Star Travel,’ a woman answered.
‘I need to get to Cape Canaveral.’
Cape Canaveral
Through the open window of his rental car, Jack inhaled the humid air of Merritt Island and smelled the jungle odors of damp soil and vegetation. The gateway to Kennedy Space Center was a surprisingly rural road slashing through orange groves, past ramshackle doughnut stands and weed-filled junkyards littered with discarded missile parts. Daylight was fading, and up ahead he saw the taillights of hundreds of cars, slowed to a crawl. Traffic was backing up, and soon his car would be trapped in the conga line of tourists searching for parking spots from which to view the morning launch.
There was no point trying to work his way through this mess. Nor did he see the point of trying to make it through the Port Canaveral gate. At this hour, the astronauts were asleep, anyway. He had arrived too late to say good-bye.
He pulled out of traffic, turned the car around, and headed back to Highway AIA. The road to Cocoa
