Tess Gerritsen by Jane Rizzoli - Maura Isles 01 - Surgeon

Author:Jane Rizzoli - Maura Isles 01 - Surgeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0345449436
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-12-24T05:00:00+00:00

Catherine sprinted out of Nina Peyton’s room and rounded the corner into the next hallway. Personnel had already crowded into Room 521 and spilled out into the corridor, where a group of wide-eyed medical students stood craning their necks to see the action.

Catherine pushed into the room and called out, over the chaos: “What happened?”

Angela, Mr. Gwadowski’s nurse, said: “He just stopped breathing! There’s no pulse.”

Catherine worked her way to the bedside and saw that another nurse had already clapped a mask over the patient’s face and was bagging oxygen into the lungs. An intern had his hands on the chest, and with each bounce against the sternum he squeezed blood from the heart, forcing it through arteries and veins. Feeding the organs, feeding the brain.

“EKG leads are on!” someone called out.

Catherine’s gaze flew to the monitor. The tracing showed ventricular fibrillation. The chambers of the heart were no longer contracting. Instead, the individual muscles were quivering, and the heart had turned into a flaccid bag.

“Paddles charged?” said Catherine.

“One hundred joules.”

“Do it!”

The nurse placed defibrillator paddles on the chest and yelled, “Everyone back!”

The paddles discharged, sending an electrical jolt through the heart. The man’s torso jerked off the mattress like a cat on a hot griddle.

“Still in V. fib!”

“One milligram epinephrine IV, then shock him again at a hundred,” said Catherine.

The bolus of epinephrine slid through the CVP line.

“Back!”

Another shock from the paddles, another jerk of the torso.

On the monitor, the EKG tracing shot straight up, then collapsed into a trembling line. The last twitches of a fading heart.

Catherine looked down at her patient and thought: How do I revive this withered pile of bones?

“You want—to keep—going?” asked the intern, panting as he pumped. A drop of sweat slid in a glistening line down his cheek.

I didn’t want to code him at all, she thought, and was about to end it when Angela whispered into her ear:

“The son’s here. He’s watching.”

Catherine’s gaze shot to Ivan Gwadowski, standing in the doorway. Now she had no choice. Anything less than a full-out effort, and the son would make sure there was hell to pay.

On the monitor, the line traced the surface of a storm-tossed sea.

“Let’s do it again,” said Catherine. “Two hundred joules this time. Get some blood sent for STAT lytes!”

She heard the code cart drawer rattle open. Blood tubes and a syringe appeared.

“I can’t find a vein!”

“Use the CVP.”

“Stand back!”

Everyone stepped away as the paddles discharged.

Catherine watched the monitor, hoping that the jolt of shock-induced paralysis would jump-start the heart. Instead, the tracing collapsed to barely a ripple.

Another bolus of epinephrine slithered into the CVP line.

The intern, flushed and sweating, resumed pumping on the chest. A fresh pair of hands took over the ambu-bag, squeezing air into the lungs, but it was like trying to blow life into a dried-out husk. Already Catherine could hear the change in the voices around her, the tone of urgency gone, the words flat and automatic. It was merely an exercise now, with defeat inevitable.

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