Nurse in Recovery

by Dianne Drake

  “Tell me about it,” Mitch muttered.

  Anna glanced over at Mitch. He was simply standing in the doorway, watching her. Arms folded across his chest, his face stern, or maybe concerned, he was so distant she could physically feel the detachment, and she didn’t want to force him to stay. “You don’t have to be here,” she said to him. “Dad will be along shortly, and Bonsi will take good care of me until then.”

  “I’m fine.” Mitch’s answer was on the abrupt side, and Anna knew he was uncomfortable being back in medical surroundings. This was probably his first time in a hospital since he’d walked out, which gave him a very good reason for being uncomfortable.

  “She taught me everything I know,” Bonsi chimed in. “So you know she’s in the best hands in the hospital.”

  “You really don’t have to stay, Mitch,” Anna continued. “A couple of stitches, an X ray or two and I’ll be as good as…” She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, waving at Bonsi for a gauze pad to dab away the blood on her elbow. “I’ll be as good as new, but new isn’t so great.”

  “So I take it you two would like to be alone?” Bonsi asked, heading to the door. “Let me go see if I can chase down a doctor for you, before you put me on report for dereliction of duty.”

  Mitch stepped all the way in as Bonsi stepped out. “Look. I’ve ruined your shirt,” Anna said, pointing to the brown blotches of dried blood on Mitch’s canary yellow knit shirt.

  “You damn near ruined my day,” he grunted back. Brushing a twig from Anna’s hair, he smiled down at her. “You scared the hell out of me, Anna.”

  She reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze. “Scared the hell out of me, too,” she replied. “But you saved my life, Mitch. I couldn’t have crawled to safety in time, and I don’t think he was going to stop.” The panic was still galloping through her weakened voice, but she choked out, “You were right, and I’m so sorry about…”

  He smiled gently. “Hey, at least this time you’re not accusing me of setting it up just to prove how helpless you are. I say that’s a step in the right direction.”

  “I need more than a step, Mitch. I need a whole lot more.”

  Taking Anna’s hand, he held it tight. “I know.” More than that, he knew he was the one who had to give it to her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “WE’VE got an MVA coming in,” Bonsi said, whipping into Anna’s cubicle. “Some crazy driver ran right into a convenience store a couple of blocks over. The one who almost got you, the cops said. And we’ve got six criticals on the way. So you know the routine, sweetie,” he chirped, handing Anna a couple of Tylenol tablets. “You’re on the bottom of the list now.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She knew the routine. And for the first time in all these months away from the ER she felt the sharp sting of not being a part of it. So far, putting everything she’d always wanted out of her mind had worked pretty well for her. Out of sight, out of mind, therefore it didn’t exist. But suddenly here was a vivid reminder of how much she’d once had, and didn’t have now. Out there, where she should be, where she wanted to be, someone was shouting a dopamine order for the first patient through the doors. Anna’s mind automatically clicked through the assessment. Unstable blood pressure, probably still dropping, required the dopamine to get it back up before the patient crashed. Internal bleeding, maybe?

  “They need to take a look at the belly,” she said to Mitch. “See if it’s rigid or distended.”

  “It’s really tough, isn’t it?” Mitch commented, still holding her hand. “Right now you’re out there with them. Hanging that dopamine, setting up to tap that belly. And you’re with the next patient coming in, the one with massive trauma who’s still got forty minutes left of his golden hour before he crashes, maybe dies. And you miss it so bad it’s a physical ache.”

  He was right. It was. The pain was unbelievable, gut-wrenching, all the way through her. And there was no cure. “Right now I’m in here with no possibility of ever getting out there again,” she snapped. “So can I just go home?”

  “They want to get a shot of your legs and pelvis to make sure nothing’s injured, as your sensory perceptions are still a little dulled.”

  “My sensory perceptions are just fine,” she snapped defensively. And they were. She did have some feeling. “And I’m not hurting.”

  “Precautions,” he said, turning her arm gently until he had a good view of the cut on her elbow. “Pretty deep laceration. I’d say it needs a few stitches.”

  “Just give me some gauze and tape and I’ll take care of it myself. I’m still good for that much.”

  “Pupils not reactive,” someone across the hall yelled. “Take him on down stat for a CAT scan.”

  “You’re good for a whole lot more, if you want to be.” Mitch said, instinctively looking across the hall. “Which you don’t, yet. So how about I stitch you up while we’re waiting?” He grinned. “Haven’t done it for a while, so it’ll be good to stay in practice.”

  “He’s not breathing,” someone else yelled from the cubicle next to Anna’s. “Need to intubate him. Give me a 7.5 tube and call respiratory therapy, stat.”

  “I thought you were through with the doctor thing.” She shut her eyes, didn’t want to look, didn’t want to hear. Mostly, she didn’t want to feel. It wasn’t the physical pain she was trying to block out now—sometimes that was the only thing reminding her she was still alive. She wanted to shut out the emotional devastation, especially right now, when the patient in the cubicle next to her was being intubated so someone could artificially ventilate him, and the one across the hall was being sent down for a head scan.

  She couldn’t stand not knowing, not being there.

  “Mercy stitches, that’s all,” Mitch said. “The ER’s pretty socked in right now, and I’m betting after they finally do get you to X ray, and who knows how long that’ll be, it’ll still be another couple of hours after that before they send the med student around to do the honors of the needlework.”

  “Geez,” Anna groaned. “Med student. I forgot.” Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord to take me away before the med students get to me.

  “So whose guinea pig do you want to be? Your choice.”

  “What kind of suture?” Anna asked.

  Mitch arched his eyebrows suggestively. “Afraid I’ll do something that won’t leave your elbow all nice and kissable for your fiancé? Speaking of which, you want me to call him or something?”

  “He’s in surgery,” she mumbled, even though she didn’t know that was the case. Easy excuse…easy for a whole lot of unresolved issues.

  “Alrighty, then, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Hey,” she called as Mitch stepped into the hall. “Have you got privileges here in the hospital? I don’t recall ever hearing your name before.”

  “Loose privileges, still good since, technically, I own the practice I walked away from.”

  “Heart rate one-sixty, thready. BP eighty over forty. Oxygen saturation down to eighty-nine.” Anna listened to the vitals being called out next door. “BP down to seventy over thirty…sixty-five over…” Someone was crashing over there, getting ready to die. “V-tach…V-fib…Call the code.” His heart had failed now, it was quivering like jelly instead of beating and pumping blood. No breathing, organs would soon start shutting down. Mentally, Anna started counting the seconds until the code team arrived. Five, ten…then they were on it. Quick, efficient. CPR started, IVs in, intubation accomplished. “Get a blood gas, stat!”

  Anna caught herself smiling. In a code blue, everything was stat—right away. Like anybody with a day’s ER experience didn’t know that. So somebody over there was brand-new, or playing for effect. And playing for effect in an ER just didn’t cut it, not in her ER anyway. Probably a newbie resident, just rotating in for the first time. What an introduction to the life.

  Mitch stepped back into the cubicle. “I rustled up some suture. You don’t mind if I use a whalebone needle, do you?” h
e joked, referring to a centuries-old suture technique. He was gloved, masked, gowned, like a real doctor, something that surprised Anna. Sure, knowing he was a doc was one thing, but actually seeing it firsthand—how could he do this, step right back into his role, then step out again once the last stitch was placed? Didn’t it tear him up inside?

  “Whalebone’s good. But only if you use catgut suture instead of nylon. I want you to be totally authentic to the period.” It felt good to laugh a little. Mitch had a nice way about him, knowing how to lighten up a sullen mood and brighten a bad moment.

  “Fresh out of catgut. Guess I’ll have to stay modern.” Mitch opened a plastic bottle of sterile water and poured it over Anna’s wound. “You’re going to get antibiotics,” he said. “A little too much of the road left in your laceration.” When the cut appeared clean, he took a close look then broke out the Betadine scrub—a disinfectant—and swabbed the brown stuff all over the entire elbow area. Next he rinsed it away, re-inspected and re-swabbed it again. “Now a little shot of Xylocaine to deaden the area.”

  “I know what Xylocaine’s for,” she snapped, shutting her eyes. Doctors were notoriously deadly with needles, and, in her opinion, nurses always much better. They got more practice. Mitch’s jab under the skin was surprisingly gentle, though. In fact, she was still gritting her teeth for the bite when she heard him toss the spent syringe on the bedside surgical try.

  “I’m impressed,” she commented. “And you got it in the right arm.”

  “Left arm, technically. Brush up on your anatomy, Nurse,” he teased. “Oh, and I know what you nurses think about our needle techniques. But let me assure you, all my techniques are still in tip-top shape.”

  “Guess you’ve never been on the receiving end of one of your needles, and I mean your in the entire professional sense, not the personal one since, I’ll have to admit, you weren’t too bad—for a doctor.” Anna laughed. “But I’m reserving final judgment until after the stitches are in.”

  “He’s converted,” someone shouted. The heart of the man who had been coding moments earlier now beat with a normal rhythm. Even though she wasn’t part of the code, Anna breathed a sigh of relief and said a quick prayer of thanks. She always did that when they pulled someone through.

  “So hold still,” Mitch warned, preparing to close Anna’s wound. He put on a pair of magnifying goggles and fresh latex gloves. “If you move, I may end up sewing something shut you don’t want sewed shut—something like your mouth.”

  “You’ve got a needle in your hand, Doc, and it’s aiming right at me. You really think I’d be crazy enough to move while you’re armed?” And she didn’t move, not for the next twenty minutes as Mitch placed ten tiny stitches. It was a precise, tidy little procedure, throughout which Mitch concentrated, occasionally explaining what he was doing, more from habit than Anna’s need to know, since she did know. When he was finished, he surveyed his handiwork, wrapped it in a bandage, then snapped off his gloves and tossed them into the trash.

  “Since I haven’t worked in an ER in…oh, about eight years or so, maybe you could tell me. What’s the going rate for something like this? How much should I charge you?”

  “Does that include your bill for saving my life?” she asked, not even bothering to look at her bandage. She’d watched him, every little stitch and knot, and he was good. Polished. Professional. And it was only now striking her that medicine had lost one fine doctor the day Mitch had left it.

  “No. The stitches are gonna cost you, but lifesaving’s free. And I’ve decided as payment I want one complete day of your full and total co-operation—you’ll do anything I tell you to do. Without protest.”

  “That’s an awfully big price for something so simple as a few stitches, don’t you think?”

  He winked. “Next time, negotiate your price up front. Now, let me go see if I can hurry those X rays along.”

  “So he was good?” Lanli asked, taking away Anna’s glass of iced tea, the one Anna had been too tired to drink. “Mitch. Putting in your stitches. He’s got just the greatest bedside manner, doesn’t he?”

  “I didn’t notice,” Anna lied. But she had, and his bedside manner was wonderful. Patience, humor, genuine concern, topped with great skill. The total package.

  “Yeah, right. No one’s ever not noticed his bedside manner before.”

  “It was busy in there,” Anna argued. “Hectic. I was distracted.”

  “You were being stubborn. Still are. Is it time for a pill?”

  “Extra strength,” Anna replied. “A couple of them.” The real aches and pains were finally setting in deep now that a full day had passed, all the little hurts turning into great big ones. She’d refused prescription pain meds. Been there, done that with the drugs, and fighting her way out of that purple haze wasn’t fun. She’d never been addicted, but for the first time in her professional life she’d gained an understanding of how that could happen to someone. A convenient bedside pump during her recovery for starters. Just pull the little rubber tab, they’d told her, and let the morphine drip. Sure, it was a measured dose, only so much allowed every four or six hours, but all the same its dispensing was up to the patient. Then there was the bedtime sleeping pill mixed in with the pain medication, just to make her sleep better. When you hurt it became easy to say yes, then tell yourself that tomorrow you’d cut back. But come tomorrow you still hurt, so one more day of acquiescence and you decided to quit on yet another tomorrow. So now her drug of choice was a simple Tylenol—extra strength if necessary—and that was it, along with the few days’ worth of antibiotics to ward off infection from the road dirt.

  To his credit, Mitch wasn’t the one who’d offered her something stronger. Maybe he’d guessed, from her stand on alcohol, she wouldn’t indulge. Or maybe he’d guessed because he was getting to know her. Whatever the case, it was one of the residents who’d written the script, someone she’d worked with, someone she’d practically trained. And he was being kind, of course, but Anna didn’t want kind. She wanted control, and what went into her body was one of the few controls she had left. Consequently she was left with a lot of residual aching from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, throbbing with every beat of her heart, and eternally grateful she was lucky enough to feel the pain.

  “How’d it feel, being back there?” Lanli asked, handing the Tylenol caplets to Anna.

  “It felt strange being the patient again. Last time I was pretty much out of it. This time, though…” She hesitated. There weren’t any words to describe the longing she’d felt, the sadness at being just another patient in another cubicle and not the nurse. She shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

  Frank was out back hammering together a deck of sorts, one with a built-in chaise for Anna’s sunbathing pleasure, and the steady pounding, followed by the occasional curse, was somehow reassuring to her. Things were back to normal—her own brand of normal anyway.

  “Look, I’m about ready to collapse. A whole day later and I’m still wiped out. And don’t tell me it’s because I’m out of shape, because that point’s already been rubbed in a time or ten.”

  “You’re lucky those flabby arms got you a few feet away. And you’re even luckier that Mitch was following you.”

  “I told you already, I’m going to be more co-operative from now on,” Anna snapped. “Let Mitch do whatever it is he thinks he can do.” It would take a good ten minutes before the Tylenol took the edge off her pain, but in the meantime her elbow was aching, her back sore, her legs cramping. Twenty-seven hours home from the hospital and there’d been a succession of visitors and phone calls, all meaning well, and all keeping her from sleeping. Mitch had dropped her off at home after the X rays had showed no damage. Then he’d gone. Sunny stopped by, Bonsi called, then called back two more times. Dr Ambrose, her surgeon, called to apologize for not seeing her in the ER. And her dad, bless his heart, had gone to the hardware store during all the commotion and loaded up on two by fours and nails. His way of dealing
with things.

  That was yesterday, then today it started all over again. The same calls, the same How are you feeling? questions, and now Anna really did want to sleep away the rest of the afternoon. Shut out the day, shut out the pain. Most of all shut out the helplessness.

  “It’s not what Mitch thinks he can do, Anna. It’s what you think you can do. And until you get that through your thick skull, it’s not going to make a bit of difference who does what. If you want to get better, you have to be the one to find the motivation. I mean, it’s not going to be handed over to you on a platter, and if that’s what you’re waiting for, don’t waste Mitch’s time.”

  Anna knew there were more words being thrown at her, but they were garbling, and her ability to sort them out was garbling, too. “Time to go…” she mumbled, her eyelids fluttering down. “I’m so tired…” The rest came out in a sigh, then she drifted away to a place where she was still who she’d always been, who she wanted to be. And for a little while Anna was happy again.

  “So where was he yesterday when you were in the emergency room?” Frank asked, scowling at the dozen roses from Kyle. “Where is he now, the day after? Why hasn’t he been here, and I’ll bet he hasn’t even called you, has he?”

  “He had surgery yesterday,” Anna mumbled automatically. Kyle. For the past day and a half she’d actually forgotten him. She had a right to be good and angry about his lack of concern, but she wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t much care that he hadn’t even bothered calling, let alone put in an appearance. He had sent the roses this afternoon, with a very impersonal “so sorry to hear about your accident” scrawled in the florist’s handwriting. No doubt ordered by Kyle’s medical office secretary. Oddly, she couldn’t even find it in her to be angry, or even a little miffed.

  “Sounds like trouble with the future hubby,” Mitch said, watching Anna scuttle down the hall to the bathroom.

  “Not trouble,” she said, wiping Kyle out of her mind. Thinking about her intended—and she was defining that in the loosest sense of the word these days—or the questionable state of their relationship would bog her down emotionally. Right now, she didn’t want to be bogged down by anything other than sitting in a nice hot shower, letting the water work its magic on her aching muscles.