Terminally Ill

by Melissa Yi

  As soon as we were off the stage, he hissed, “What. The. Fuck?” He had to pause for breath between each syllable, his chest bellowing underneath his eye-hurting jumpsuit.

  “You need Ventolin,” I said. “Let’s get you some. They’ll have it in emerg—” But I paused. I’d never been in the UCH emerg, except as a visitor after Elvis’s first stunt, and I knew he’d refuse to head straight from his triumphant redo to the emergency room.

  He shook his head wildly, wheezing like a tea kettle.

  “El-VIS, El-VIS, El-VIS!”

  “We love you, Elvis!”

  “Elvis lives!”

  “I want to have your baby!”

  “Back up to the floor,” I decided aloud. “They’ll have Ventolin there. They’ll have to call for an order, or you might already have it as a p.r.n., an as-needed order.” I was babbling. Elvis didn’t give a crap. He was gazing at the curtains longingly. I thought of Harry Houdini, collapsing at intermission but rousing himself for his second act. Escape artists would not give up easily.

  “Oh, okay. One more bow,” I said, pushing him on-stage.

  He ran out, waving. Whistles pierced the air. I didn’t have to look at the audience to see that they were on their feet. I could hear them stamping their feet and screaming their lungs out.

  While Elvis milked another 15 seconds of fame, I grabbed my cell phone and called up to the floor. It only took me a few minutes to connect, which felt like forever, and no one could hear me, but I yelled, “This is Dr. Hope Sze, the on-site physician for Elvis Serratore at his fundraiser. He’s having an asthma attack and needs eight puffs of Ventolin and eight puffs of Atrovent back to back times three. We can try puffers first, but he may need two switch to a mask. I’m bringing him up to the floor.”

  The on-site physician bit was stretching it, of course, but it was literally true. I was in the room with him. Fingers crossed that the nurse could hardly hear my name anyway, what with the noise, and would just hear “Doctor” and “Ventolin” and have it ready once we got up.

  I didn’t want to have to rush the stage one more time, but when I peeked out, Tucker and Archer had heaved Elvis onto their shoulders. They paraded him around the stage in a circle, to great acclaim of the crowd, before looping backstage.

  Elvis was flushed and still wheezing, but his eyes shone with a light that I’ve never seen before. This was his calling. He loved this rush more than life itself.

  Dangerous.

  Tucker yelled, “You’re worried about his respiratory status?”

  I nodded and shouted back, “I already warned the floor.”

  Archer must have understood because he headed back to the stage and called, “Elvis is leaving the building. You’ll find more of him on ElvisLives.com, or the next time he performs in Winnipeg.” A few groans mixed in with the cheers, but Archer overrode them with, “The University College Hospital legacy lives on. Please give generously.”

  That quelled them while Tucker and I quickly led Elvis out the back door, before his fans cut him off and started demanding he autograph their boobs.

  In the elevator, Elvis looked even worse. Now I could see that his face and neck were blotchy but pale underneath the red splotches, and when I touched his hand, it was slippery with sweat. His wheezing filled the elevator. He touched the steel wall and shook his head. “This. Is. What. Happened.”

  “What happened?” said Tucker.

  I wasn’t sure Elvis was mentating correctly. People often go off their heads from lack of oxygen. We probably should have dragged him straight to the emerg, pride be damned. Instead, we were trapped in a steel cage with no inhalers, no steroids, no Epi, no Bipap. Nothing.

  If he died in the elevator, it would be my fault.

  The elevator stopped at two more floors, but the people took one look at Elvis and stepped back while we explained, “We have a medical emergency. Please take the next elevator.”

  “God—damn it! I feel—bad—enough!” Elvis ground out. He leaned against the ads plastering the walls. “She wasn’t. Even. Worth. It.”

  Tucker and I exchanged a look. If Elvis collapsed, I’d have to stop the elevator, no matter what floor we were on, and ask for help.

  Finally, the elevator binged for the ninth floor. We dragged him out. He seemed to breathe a little better as soon as the door opened, but he staggered a little on his way out. Tucker steadied him.

  The two nurses at the nursing station rose, eyes wide, and I called, “This is Elvis Serratore, the patient in room 9020. He’s having a severe asthma attack. I called ahead about him, for Ventolin and Atrovent. He should have a mask now. Five milligrams of Ventolin and 500 mcg of Atrovent, back to back times three.”

  Elvis stumbled into the nearest chair, in the family room on the other side of the elevators, so Tucker and I got him sat down. No need to force him to his room down the hall. More important to get him healthy.

  “Do you want Epi?” asked a young, black nurse, in a high voice.

  “Maybe,” I said. I’d never given it before, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

  “Magnesium would be better,” said Tucker. “Let’s try to get a lock in while they’re getting the mask ready.”

  I goggled at him. I’ve only done three IV’s in my life: one on a classmate and two for practice in the emerg. The nurses are approximately 3000 times better at it than I am. I would have left it to the experts, but Tucker disappeared into the nursing station and reappeared with a white basket of angiocaths, cotton swabs, and alcohol swabs. He pushed Elvis’s sleeve up past his elbow, a feat in itself since the damn jumpsuit was so tight. He wrapped the blue rubber tourniquet around his upper arm, swabbed his elbow, frowned, palpated and went for the cephalic vein.

  He got it in on the first try. He even expertly secured the line with an Opsite dressing. “Done. Now he can have 80 of Solumedrol and we can get the magnesium ready.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, impressed. He shrugged and smiled. “We don’t have IV techs like they do at richer hospitals. McGill med students get a lot of practice putting these puppies in.”

  For a second, I remembered how the nurses at St. Joe’s didn’t do EKG’s on the eighth floor. It wasn’t a far stretch for them to opt out of IV’s. Next, med students would be changing bedpans and mopping the floors.

  But the expertise sure came in handy in a crisis. I grinned at Tucker. He waggled his eyebrows at me and said, “You should see me doing ultrasound-guided lines.”

  “Looking forward to it.” I turned to Elvis, who was breathing a little better at rest, but not much. Meanwhile, a nurse said, “I need him in his room, for the oxygen.” She’d already magicked up a porter with a wheelchair.

  Elvis climbed into the wheelchair willingly, which just goes to show how horrible he must’ve been feeling.

  Minutes later, he was in bed, chest still heaving, but with a hissing mask attached to his face. On the cardiac monitor, his heart was thumping along at 149. He was breathing above 30, and was only satting at 94 percent, but I thought he was sweating a little less and getting a bit of air into his lung bases when I auscultated with the nurse’s stethoscope.

  The nurse gave me and Tucker a look, raising her voice to be heard above the nebulizers. “Now. Who are you? I’ve seen you as visitors, but not working here.”

  “I’m Dr. Hope Sze,” I began, but Tucker cut in smoothly, “And I’m Dr. John Tucker, at your service, Tanya. We’re both residents at St. Joe’s, but we’ve got training cards for all the McGill hospitals, so we’re covered for UC. I know you’ll be paging his team, and I’m happy to speak to them. In the meantime, we should get 80 mg of Solumedrol ready and 20 g of magnesium at the bedside, just in case the team is on board with the plan.”

  “With 0.3 mg of Epinephrine IM,” I said.

  She pursed her lips, not liking it, but Elvis was obviously not well. She held out her hand for her stethoscope, which I gave to her, and she said, “I’m paging Dr. Blumenfeld.”

  “Please do,” I
said. “We need as many experts on hand as possible.”

  After another long moment, she said, “I’ll get the Solumedrol, magnesium, and Epi,” and left the room.

  Archer cut into the doorway ten seconds later. “How’s he doing?”

  “I’m hoping he’ll do better with some medication,” I said, after a shocked pause when I spotted Lucia just behind him, dressed in a fluorescent pink mini-dress and matching high heels. She might not have officially taken part in the show, but she’d obviously waited in the wings.

  Archer stepped right up to this brother. I thought he was checking out his asthma, but instead he held up his hand and Elvis slapped it in a high five, managing to look slightly cool even though he was still trapped behind a face mask that hissed and emitted clouds of white vapour.

  Lucia hovered by the foot of his bed, uncertain. Elvis’s eyes fixed on her and his wheezing kick back into fourth gear, confirming my suspicions.

  Lucia whispered, “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I think so,” I said back, in a normal voice, “But I also think he’d be better off if we all told the truth about what happened on Hallowe’en. When Elvis was in the elevator, he said a few things.”

  Tucker opened his mouth to remind me that Elvis hadn’t exactly been copus mentus, but I pinned him with a look at he shut it down.

  Lucia backed toward the door, shaking her head.

  “What did I say? I don’t remember Hallowe’en,” said Elvis, his voice muffled from the mask.

  “I don’t think you meant to hurt these guys,” I said to Lucia, indicating the Serratore brothers, “but we should talk about you and Elvis—”

  She bolted.

  Chapter 29

  “Lucia!” I yelled. “Lucia, I need to talk to you.” I said to Tucker, “You got this, right?” meaning Elvis and keeping his asthma at bay.

  He nodded.

  I sprinted down the hall after Lucia. She’d kicked off her heels so that she could run faster in her bare feet, with her stilettos and her purse clutched in her hands.

  She overshot the stairs and hesitated at the elevators outside the nursing station, knowing I’d catch up to her within seconds, before any elevator made its ponderous way up.

  I caught her arm and said, “I just want to talk.”

  A petite blonde nurse was staring at us. She was about two seconds away from calling security.

  I said, “We’re okay. Right, Lucia?”

  She lowered her eyes. Her whole body shuddered. She was breathing fast, from the run, and tears seemed to glitter from under her false eyelashes, but then she nodded once.

  I towed Lucia into the family room across from the nursing station, the same room where Elvis had crashed before we got him back to 9020. It was a teeny room with a couch on the left side of the room, a TV on the right side of the room, and a coffee table in between littered with outdated magazines. Not going to win any design awards, but it was blessedly empty and sort of private. I kept clasping her arm.

  “Lucia, I figured out happened with Elvis on Hallowe’en,” I said, holding her eyes. “He’s allergic to bananas, which cross-reacts with a number of other compounds. I think neither of you knew he was also allergic to latex when you hooked up just before his first stunt.”

  Lucia swiped her eyes. She licked her lips, straightened her spine, and told me, “Bullshit.”

  I preferred to call it bluffing. I kept a hold of her arm and said quietly, “Is that what you told Hugo?”

  She stood up. I stood up with her, but she was already yelling, “What do you know about Hugo?”

  “He found out about you and Elvis,” I said.

  Her neck flushed. She spat out, “That motherfucker. When did he have a chance to tell you? Did he send you a—” Her eyes narrowed. She studied me for a second.

  I felt my own cheeks heat up. She was probably half a foot taller than me, and her pink acrylic nails alone should probably registered as weapons, but I figured she was unlikely to attack me right across from the nursing station with a nurse eyeballing our every move.

  I slowly migrated toward the doorway, blocking her exit, while I stayed mum. Silence is powerful, they told us in medical school. You can sometimes learn more by listening than by bombarding patients with questions.

  Archer had last seen Hugo at the hospital Saturday afternoon and heard from him in the evening. We’d found his remains on Tuesday. Lucia had obviously met up with Hugo sometime after the show, before he’d had a chance to contact anyone, including Archer with his “important information.” Maybe I could use that. “He said he had important information,” I said, neglecting to mention he’d wanted to hand the info to someone else.

  She shook her head. “Is that why you wanted to go looking for him on Tuesday? Did you know already, and you were dragging me along for fun?” She snorted. “You little cunt.”

  I flinched. I’ve never liked the c-word. Her eyes glittered in triumph, so I squared my shoulders and raised my voice. “I thought it was a good idea to get the police involved,” I said, not exactly lying. In general, I prefer to involve the boys and girls in blue. “Like I said, I don’t think you meant to hurt Elvis the first time. And I’m a doctor. I like that you used a condom. But didn’t you notice that he was short of breath and red in the face afterward?”

  She laughed, low and ugly, and I realized how stupid that sounded. “You show me a guy who isn’t.”

  At least she hadn’t denied getting hot and heavy with Elvis. “Right. So maybe he seemed a little sweaty, a little wheezy afterward, and you figured he was just, ah, impressed by your skill…”

  “I know he was. That other girlfriend of his, the hippie? She didn’t even wax.”

  Clearly a felony for a stripper. Sorry, exotic dancer. “And you left him to get dressed and ready for the show. How soon before did you…”

  “Blow him?” Now that she’d confessed this much, she seemed to enjoy it. Her shoulders seemed to elevate and broaden, and she dropped herself into the couch, stretching out her legs, which even I had to admit looked pretty silken and shapely. “Maybe an hour before. Maybe even two hours. Hard to say.”

  I cleared my throat. “Did he seem wheezy or agitated afterward?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I remember him using his puffer. Does that count?”

  “Probably. He has asthma anyway, which can get triggered by colds, or allergies, or even anxiety.” She made a face, reminding me that I was slipping into doctor speak, so I tried to level down. “Did he have a rash? Was he scratching?”

  “Well, he didn’t have a rash when he dropped trou. I can tell you that.” She licked her lips, which made me uncomfortable, so I tried to concentrate on her heavily mascara-ed eyes. “Even if he was scratching away, I would’ve thought it was the costume. I don’t really know the guy, and I was busy setting up for the stunt. He caught me while I loading stuff in the truck, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t, really, so I breezed past that part. “You brought the condom?”

  She shrugged. “I was a Girl Scout. I come prepared.” She chuckled at her own joke.

  Ugh. I switched gears. “I guess it was just bad luck that Hugo caught you.”

  She sniffed. “He did it on purpose. He’s always following me around.”

  “So he blackmailed you? Just you, not Elvis?”

  She rolled her eyes and crossed her legs the other way, almost like Sharon Stone in that movie Tucker would know, but I’d only heard about by reputation. I refused to check if she was wearing panties. Lucia said, “I can’t speak for the Escape King, but he definitely blackmailed me.”

  “With a video?”

  She nodded warily.

  “That’s illegal. You could have brought him to the police.”

  She snorted and didn’t bother answering.

  “So you decided to take matters in your own hands,” I stated.

  She inspected her nails. She had a single rhinestone pressed into the back of each one. “Always do.” />
  “You skipped out on work and met him at his place on Saturday night. And you took care of him.”

  Her head snapped up. “I just wanted the video. That was it.”

  “Did he give it to you?”

  Her upper lip curled. “Not without some trade.”

  I figured that meant more sex, or money, or both. But I needed to know what happened to Hugo. My heart banged in my chest. I tried to swallow, even though my throat felt bone dry.

  “I gave it to him. He deleted the video in front of me. I was so happy, I almost hugged the bastard. Then he told me he’d sent it to some remote back-up sites and he’d need some ‘ongoing trade’ to keep him from sending it to Archer.”

  I heard a strangled noise behind me and shifted my head to the left. Sure enough, Archer had frozen about two steps short of the doorway. Lucia’s view of him was blocked by the wall, and maybe by me.

  “So you took matters into your own hands again,” I said.

  She all but batted her eyes at me. “That was an accident. I was trying to sweeten the deal, mellow him up with a little chemical romance, you know? And we went for it, but he was used to 25c, not 25i.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I assumed it was drugs. And I didn’t buy the accident angle. But I just listened. I heard the elevator bing and more footsteps arrive.

  “I told him to go slow, but you think he listened to me? That big hog. He was down for the count, and I can’t say I was sorry. I was a little surprised not to hear from him for the next few days, but I figured he had other things on his mind.”

  “Like finding his phone?” I asked softly.

  She stood up again. This time, she didn’t have her claws out, but I felt the menace, like she was a dog with her ears drawn back and her teeth bared. I said, “You took his phone, right? After he passed out? To make sure that the video was gone. That’s what I would have done.”

  I backed up then, into the hallway, where Archer stood, still shell-shocked, with two security guards flanking him, and let them handle her.

  Chapter 30

  By the time I got back to Elvis’s room, he was almost back to normal, satting 95 percent on room air, after just the Ventolin, Atrovent, and Solumedrol. Tucker had held off on the Epi and Magnesium.