Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Author:Vincent Lam [Lam, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2009-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

AFTERWARDS

DOCTOR SRI WATCHED THE AMBULANCE CREW wheel in the big, motionless man. In resuscitation bay 3, the form wrapped in the blanket was lifted upward by a circle of hands, each grasping the orange cloth. The medics and nurses asked and answered each other at the same time. This heavy form in the bright blanket rose off the ambulance gurney, floated for a moment, and then settled on the hospital stretcher. Around the silent man, a choir of beeping monitors and electronic alarms rang out a desperate melody. Lines and cables spilled over each other, into him and onto the floor.

“What’s the story?” asked Sri.

Zoltan the paramedic said, “Unwitnessed collapse in a hair salon. He was in back. Found in vee-fib. Shocked three times, tubed, epi times three, atropine times two. En route, total six shocks—no response.”

“Time down?”

“Call at fourteen-oh-five…now twenty-five minutes down.”

“All right.” Sri placed his stethoscope on the man’s chest—no heart sounds. The eyeballs were beginning to dry and stick to the open lids, and the pupils were a fixed size. The hands were a lacy blue web, which spread up the arms to the purple face. Sri felt relaxed, almost placid.

“Twenty-five minutes down?” said Sri. He felt calm because it was too late to make a difference.

“Yeah. Traffic.”

“Fine. Bolus Amio three hundred. Pads, and get ready to shock.” Hands reached for drug boxes, for the paddles. The monitor’s frantic line jumped up and down. Bouncing, bouncing, and wild. Ventricular fibrillation, the heart’s desperate spasm.

“Amio in,” called out a nurse.

Sri held the paddles in front of himself.

“Charging to three-sixty,” said Sri. His thumbs flicked the red button on each paddle. The counter climbed: two-fifty, three hundred, three-sixty. “I’m clear.” He placed the paddles on the chest. “You’re clear.” He looked up and down the stretcher to see that everyone had stepped back. “Everyone’s clear.” Sri leaned down hard over the paddles. His thumbs found the big orange buttons. With a quiet beep of the defibrillator, the man’s body jumped in a moment and softly rustled the sheets in falling back into them. Sri always thought there was a noise in that jumping—like a little bang or a snap. Afterwards, he wondered if he had imagined it, and then he couldn’t be sure.

“Continue CPR,” said Sri.

Zoltan, whose shoulders were broader than his planted feet, compressed the chest. With his hands overlapped and a closed-mouth smile, he pumped the chest casually, flexed at the elbows. Most people lock their elbows and lunge from the waist to achieve enough force. Zoltan pumped with a delicate stroking motion that pushed the silent man audibly down, down into the stretcher.

“Good output,” said Sri. His gloved hand felt for a pulse on the groin of this human shape in the nest of sheets and wires. The blood not clotted yet, but not warm either. At the requisite intervals, Sri ordered injections, shocked the human form, and re-examined. On the monitor, the dancing line became a lazy wave. Sri wrote in the chart.

It was fourteen-fifty when Sri said, “Hold compression.

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