Hyllis Family 06 - Sisters

by Laurence Dahners

  “Oh, sorry, no,” Seri said getting up and stepping over to their patient.

  Kazy snorted, “You just thought I needed a little more exercise? I know I’m small and puny looking, but that also means a little bit of this” she grunted with another compression, “goes a long way.”

  “I’m so sorry. I was just sitting there pitying myself for being such a miserable failure. I lost track of time.” Seri leaned her head down next to the man’s chest.

  Swinging down off the table, Kazy said, “I’m going to stop for a moment so you’re not trying to hit a moving target.” She turned to Rrica, “If by some chance Seri doesn’t succeed, you’re up next.”

  Seri put her head right on the man’s chest, directly over his heart so that the short distance would allow her to deliver maximum force. Then she clapped the heart from every direction at once.

  It completely stopped twitching!

  Then it produced an apparently normal contraction.

  And another. Seri leaned away from the man’s chest, staring at it.

  It contracted a third time. Kazy leaped into the air, punching her fist upward. Seri had goosebumps again. She saw Rrica smiling.

  A look of hope spread over Vyrda’s face.

  Seri sent her ghirit back into the man’s chest. With dismay, she recognized that the muscle neighboring the part that’d had its circulation cut off was different. It was twitching irregularly—out of sync with the contractions of the rest of the heart.

  On the next contraction, the irregular contractions spread from the injured area to the rest of the heart.

  The words, “Oh God!” exploded out of Kazy.

  Seri sensed—though she couldn’t see because her eyes were focused on the man’s chest—the others ending their celebration and surging in around her.

  Kazy said, “Do it again!” But she sounded disheartened.

  Seri clapped it again. This time the heart only beat four times before dissolving into fibrillation again.

  The next time there was only one good contraction.

  And the time after that… And the time after that… And the time after that…

  Sick to her stomach, Seri looked up at Kazy. Kazy looked as dismayed as Seri felt. But when she spoke, her voice was firm. “Okay, Rrica, start those compressions again. The rest of us are going to go look at the books for a few minutes.”

  When they stepped out from behind the curtain, Seri suddenly remembered the lady who felt she was going blind. Her eyes immediately went to the little table. “The last patient, she’s gone!”

  Vyrda said, “The one that was waiting at the eye exam table?”

  Seri nodded, “She said she was going blind.”

  Vyrda nodded in return, “I told her to wait downstairs. That we had a very sick patient and we’d get back to her when we could.”

  Then they were deep into searching through any books that seemed like they might say something about cardiac arrest. Books which Seri found contained enormous amounts of information. So much information it was hard to find pieces that might apply. None of the bits of information Seri found seemed applicable to their situation.

  Whenever she found something addressing the treatment of ventricular fibrillation, it admonished her to administer epinephrine and an electrical shock, neither of which they had available.

  After a while, she looked up and found Vyrda and Kazy staring bleakly into space. Seri said, “We’re not going to find an answer, are we?”

  Vyrda’s face crumpled.

  Kazy slowly shook her head.

  They went back out and Seri once again tried clapping the heart from all directions and poking and snapping it in every location they could think of.

  Nothing worked…

  Jadyn, getting back from her afternoon off, stepped in the door and said, “You guys know there’s a patient still waiting downstairs?” Her brow wrinkled at the sight of Rrica doing chest compressions. “What’re you doing?!”

  “Trying to save this man’s life,” Kazy answered abruptly. She turned to Rrica, “My turn again.”

  Saying, “I’ll explain,” Seri pulled Jadyn back into the clinic’s alcove and pulled out the book she’d found most helpful. She continued, “The man had a heart attack while he was here in the clinic. His coronary artery—one of the arteries that supply the heart itself—was mostly clogged but that’d just been causing chest pain till now. While Vyrda was talking to him it blocked off completely. Then he went into what’s called ‘ventricular fibrillation’ where the heart muscle contracts all out of rhythm and doesn’t move any blood. We’ve been pumping his chest to move his blood for him… for… for what seems like forever, keeping him alive while we’ve tried everything we can think of to restore his rhythm, but nothing’s working.”

  Seri suggested Jadyn read about fibrillation in the book she’d given her while Seri searched for other references that might deal with fibrillation.

  They were still fruitlessly searching through the indexes of various books when Kazy came back into the alcove. “Unless you guys have had some brilliant ideas; we’re going to have to give up.”

  “Give up?!” Seri asked. “How can we possibly do that? His brain’s still alive, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Kazy said, looking desolate. “I’ve checked it with my ghirit and his brain tissue still seems nearly normal. Which only tells us we’re doing a good job of CPR. From what I’ve read, when the ancients did CPR for a long time their patients often suffered brain injury or death. Probably because they couldn’t tell whether they were pumping enough blood to the brain. At least, with our ghirits, we can tell we’re doing it right.” She shrugged, “We may be good at CPR, but we can’t do it forever and he can’t live without a heart that works by itself.”

  Looking aghast, Jadyn said, “His family’s waiting downstairs, right? Have you told them what’s going on?”

  Kazy shrugged again, looking wretched. She hoarsely said, “What would we tell them?”

  “The truth! You may not want to give them bad news, but they deserve to know. Tell them he’s had a heart attack and his heart stopped beating. That you’ve been keeping him alive by squeezing his chest, hoping his heart’ll start itself again, but that it isn’t doing it.”

  Kazy stared at Jadyn for a moment, then spoke firmly, “You’re right. I’ll talk to Vyrda.”

  Seri followed Kazy out into the main clinic room. Vyrda was standing next to Rrica as the young woman labored at chest compressions. She was saying, “You must be exhausted. I’ll take a turn at the compressions.”

  Kazy said, “No, let Jadyn do it for a while. She should learn how to do it.” She eyed Vyrda. You’ve got to talk to the family.”

  Vyrda’s eyes widened in horror. “No! Talking to families about death… it’s the worst thing in all of healing! Besides, I have no idea what I could possibly tell them about what happened and what’s been going on!”

  “Yeah,” Kazy said, momentarily looking as depressed as Vyrda did. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. But Jadyn says, no matter how much we don’t want to talk to them, they have a right to know. I agree with her.”

  “Go ahead then,” Vyrda said, chin high, anger seeping into her tone. “You do it. Find out what it’s like.”

  As they were talking, Seri was guiding Jadyn over to Rrica and explaining the chest compressions. She had Jadyn send in her ghirit to see how the blood was moving out of the man’s heart each time Rrica compressed the chest. Rrica told Jadyn she’d have to push hard, over and over and that she’d get tired quickly. She finished by saying, “Don’t be ashamed to ask to switch off with someone else.”

  As Rrica was getting down off the gurney and Jadyn was getting up, Seri turned her attention back to Kazy and Vyrda. Kazy had her arms around Vyrda and her head next to the bigger woman’s. Despite Vyrda’s larger size, it was obvious to Kazy was consoling her. She said, “I’d talk to them if I could. But you know they don’t want to hear from a fourteen-year-old. They want to hear fro
m someone with wisdom. Someone like you. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  Vyrda produced a sobbing chuckle, “Someone who looks like they know what they’re doing. You’ve been doing more for poor Mr. Milner than I have.”

  “Only because I’d just been reading about fibrillation of the heart last week,” Kazy said consolingly. “I’ll go down with you when you talk to them. If any of them that get hysterical I can calm them and give them some peace.”

  Vyrda looked over at where Jadyn was laboring over their patient. “Okay,” she said sounding deeply depressed, “I guess we’d better stop doing CPR. They wouldn’t understand what we’re doing.”

  Kazy looked that way as well. “I think we should keep doing it. That way they’ll see we’ve been doing our very utmost.”

  Vyrda gave her a wide-eyed look, “They’ll think we’re attacking him! Hurting him. They’ll probably think CPR’s the reason he’s dead!”

  Calmly, Kazy said, “We’ll have them feel the pulse at his wrist. Almost everyone knows that dead people don’t have a pulse. They’ll be able to feel how CPR’s giving him a pulse. Besides, I’ll be able to influence them that way.”

  “I thought you didn’t change people unless they wanted to be changed.”

  “I won’t be changing them. I’ll just be helping them understand… and easing their pain.”

  Seri’d taken the man’s wrist when Kazy said you could feel a pulse during CPR. She searched fruitlessly for the pulse for a moment, then remembered she could use her ghirit to find the artery. When she placed her fingers right over the vessel, she could indeed feel a pulse, though it wasn’t as strong as the one at her own wrist.

  Kazy stepped over, “You can feel a pulse, right?” When Seri nodded, Kazy said, “Jadyn, stop compressions for a moment.” Once Jadyn had stopped, Kazy turned back to Seri, “The pulses are gone?”

  Seri nodded again.

  Kazy said, “Jadyn, start back up. Seri, be ready to show the family how to find the pulse if they want to feel it.” With a sigh, she turned to Vyrda, “Ready?”

  Voice full of dread, Vyrda said, “Yeah. Just let me dry my eyes. I must look dreadful.”

  “No,” Kazy said taking Vyrda’s elbow and steering her toward the door. “Come see them as you are. They need to know how hard you’ve been trying. They should see how much you care.”

  Once they’d left the clinic, Seri leaned close and said, “Jadyn, take a break. I’ll use my telekinesis to pump his blood for a while so—if the family does decide to come have a look for themselves—you’ll be fresh when they get here.”

  Jadyn stopped but gave Seri a distressed look. “I’ve been listening to his mind. He’s on the verge of waking up. I think he’d wake up if we pumped a little harder. These chest compressions hurt so that’d be miserable!”

  Seri was busy pushing blood from the ventricles out into the arteries, but couldn’t help wondering whether Kazy’d also used her telepathy to know how close the man was to consciousness. She said slowly, “I think we shouldn’t pump too hard while the Milner family’s here. It’d be horrible for them if he woke up in pain from what we’re doing, then we had to let him go.” After a pause for more thought, she said, “Actually, it’d be horrible for him to wake up, live through the pain of the compressions, and then for us to tell him we can’t keep him alive and we’re about to let him die.”

  A stricken look on her face, Jadyn nodded.

  Rrica asked, “Should we really bring them up here? I don’t think it’ll be a kindness for them to see him at the edge of death if we don’t think there’s any way to bring him back. It’s going to be awful for them when we let him go.”

  An agonized shriek came from the dining room downstairs.

  Seri said sadly, “I think it’s going to be awful no matter what.”

  They heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Soberly, Jadyn said, “I’d better start doing compressions again.”

  ~~~

  In the event, it was horrible. Though, not as bad as Seri thought it would’ve been if Kazy and Jadyn hadn’t been there to take the edge off the grief pouring out of the man’s wife and son. They weren’t taken completely by surprise. The man had been having chest pain for months and they’d brought him in because they thought something was wrong with his heart.

  The family didn’t accuse the healers of causing his death as Seri’d feared, but she couldn’t help wondering whether Kazy’d used her talent to divert their attention from that possibility. She also wondered whether that was ethical. Knowing the rights and wrongs of telepathy’s really hard, she thought.

  After a while, the son asked if they could stop the compressions to see how Milner would do without them. Seri showed him how to take his father’s wrist and feel the pulse, then the compressions were stopped. The son sat for a minute, trying different locations on his father’s wrist. “I don’t feel a pulse now, but maybe what I was feeling before was his whole body shaking from all that shoving on his chest.”

  Kazy nodded solemnly, then said, “But, he was pink when we were doing the compressions. Can you see how he’s turning a bluish-grey?”

  “Yes, yes!” The son said, alarmed. “Start them again!”

  They did, and the man gradually pinked back up. After a while, the patient’s son asked if he could do the compressions himself for a while.

  As Kazy coached the son in doing the compressions, Seri turned to Vyrda and whispered, “What should we do about the poor woman who’s waiting downstairs? She thinks she’s going blind.”

  Vyrda tiredly whispered back, “Despite this agony,” she waved at the distraught little family trying to come to grips with the death of its patriarch, “life goes on, doesn’t it? There’re other patients to be cared for, even while we’re in the throes of trying and failing this poor man.” She sighed, “Let’s go see her. I could use a break from this anguish.”

  As they started down the stairs, Vyrda quietly said, “Normally I hate to talk to people who’re losing their sight. It’s sad how having a patient who’s dying puts that in perspective.” She sighed, “Of course, it’s been easier to talk to people who’re going blind now that we can actually cure some of them.”

  As they stepped out into the dining room, Seri wondered whether Vyrda was thinking of bringing the blind woman back upstairs in the face of what was happening up there.

  When they arrived, Vyrda simply began by introducing herself and asking the lady’s name which proved to be ‘Thompson.’ Then she said, “I’m so sorry you’ve had to wait so long. Our other patient’s mortally ill.”

  Ms. Thompson said, “I could tell. I decided if you were working that hard to save the poor man’s life, at the least I should be willing to wait till you were done.”

  “Thank you for your graciousness,” Vyrda said then turned to Seri. “What did Ms. Thompson tell you about the problem she’s having with her vision?”

  When Seri described the flashes and the curtain coming over Ms. Thompson’s vision from one side Seri could tell that Vyrda was trying to maintain her composure but was dismayed by the symptoms. She slowly said, “That doesn’t sound like a cataract.” She turned to Ms. Thompson and said, “Cataracts are one of the causes of blindness we can treat.” Vyrda turned to give Seri a meaningful glance and said loud enough for the patient to hear, “Let’s both have a look at Ms. Thompson’s eyes. You go first.”

  Seri knew she should lean in close to peer at Thompson’s eyes, though the main thing she was expected to do was to examine Thompson with her ghirit. As she leaned in, she thought, I have no idea what to look for! At the last moment, she remembered that she could at least compare Thompson’s afflicted right eye with her unaffected left eye and look for differences.

  Though Seri wasn’t expecting to find anything, there proved to be substantial differences between the two eyes. She turned back to Vyrda, “It’s as if a thin layer of the inside of her eyeball’s peeled away from the outside layers. It’s just floating away toward the m
iddle”

  Thompson snorted, “As if you could see into my eye.”

  Seri’s heart jumped into her throat. I should know better than to have said something like that where she could hear it!

  Vyrda gently tugged Seri away from Thompson, saying cheerfully, “Ms. Thompson, I’m sure you remember how much better you could see when you were as young as Seri here. But of course, sometimes young people see things that aren’t really there. I’d better have a look myself.” When Vyrda had seated herself, she told the woman to look up, down, to both sides, and make circles with her eyes. She said, “Ah, when I have her look to her left, I can see it too.”

  Vyrda started pressing all around the woman’s eye with her fingers, pushing on the woman’s right eyeball through her eyelid. “Ah, I think that’s moved the membrane almost back where it belongs! Seri, why don’t you have a look?”

  Seri leaned in close and had the woman look to her left as Vyrda had instructed, even though as soon as Seri got close, her ghirit showed her the thin layer that’d peeled loose was back in place. Not quite perfectly, it was still rippled up in a few small areas. Will it stay? Seri wondered. Leaning back away, she said with unfeigned amazement, “Yes, that’s much better.”

  Thompson closed her left eye, then said suspiciously, “I don’t see any better.”

  Vyrda rose from her chair. “If we can keep it in place, it might heal and perhaps you might see again. Maybe all we can hope for is that no more of it’ll peel off. Seri, let’s go back up to the clinic and see if we have the equipment to make it stay.”

  Seri could barely restrain her excitement until they got into the stairwell. Then she started peppering Vyrda with questions about what had happened to the woman’s eye and what equipment they’d need to hold it in place. Vyrda responded to the first question with a side-eyed glance, “I don’t know what happened. We need to see if we can find it in the ophthalmology book.”

  “But what equipment do you think—”

  Vyrda interrupted with a snort, “I don’t know! I don’t know what it is. I don’t know whether it’ll heal. I don’t know whether there’s actually anything that’ll hold it in place.” She reached up and, though she was smiling at Seri’s enthusiasm, gently thumped her on the side of the head, “We have to read!” She shrugged soberly, “And after we read, we’re probably going to have to tell her there’s nothing we can do.”