Graveyard Shift by Melissa Yi

Author:Melissa Yi [Yi, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927341766
Publisher: Windtree Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

Back to work. Mo’ patients, mo’ problems.

Andrea beckoned me over to the black landline before I had a chance to enter some orders. I picked up the receiver, conscious of my own heart banging in my chest. Was it possible Ryan or Tucker would call me through the hospital—

"I’m sorry—" Roxanne’s high voice came through the phone.

My hand clutched the receiver. Roxanne. Nurse frenemy.

My brain kicked in. We didn’t have to stop being friends. In fact, she was apologizing. Maybe she was sorry for blocking me from Patrick's code? No, she was still talking.

"—but could I get some Ativan?"

Oh. Roxanne wanted an order. Ativan was a common benzodiazepine, or sedative. "For you?" I tried to joke.

She half-laughed. "I wish! It would knock me out for the rest of this shift."

It probably would, because she was slender enough to make her Italian grandmother weep, and she probably didn’t take drugs on the regular. Unlike some. I glanced at room 14 in case Lori Goody had somehow bounced back.

"It's not for room 14," said Roxanne, reading my mind over the phone. "Room 13 was going nuts in the CT. They couldn't do her. She was rolling her head back and forth. I had to run up."

Alyssa Taylor thrashed so much that they couldn't scan her brain. Too much artifact. As with a regular photo, if the subject was moving too much, the CT scanner couldn't capture a good image, which meant..."Someone told her what happened to Patrick?"

"No. At least, I didn't. But she was trying to get up, trying to rip off her collar—"

I was already entering the order on SARKET, which processed it, for once. "Two milligrams IV okay? But start at one."

"Perfect."

Radiology hated if patients went bananas in CT. Then if we oversedated patients, they shook their heads while we gave an antidote or, if that failed, had to intubate them because they'd forgotten how to breathe.

I still wondered if Alyssa had overheard or had intuited how Patrick was doing. Although Andrea and I had spoken on the other side of the ER, in low voices, most staff wouldn’t be that circumspect.

First I had to enter my orders and deal with some VIRAL ILLNESS and COUGH, which was exactly as mesmerizing as one could expect.

Next, I tried to talk to Dr. Dupuis, but he was with a patient.

Meanwhile, I picked up a SEIZURE, which sounded like a fun change of pace, but turned out to be a 22-year-old with known epilepsy who hadn't taken his medication for a week, then indulged in a few beers. Nothing for me to do except recommend taking his anti-epileptics, not alcohol, and to draw blood levels for Valproic Acid et al.

When Dr. Dupuis and I convened again, on the ambulatory side, as distant from room 13 as we could get, I pounced on him to whisper about Patrick.

He shook his head. "He didn't make it."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to howl.

No. He was young and healthy.

No. God and Dr. Chia had worked on him.

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