Chapter Twelve
Jo
My first year of residency, I was paired with a burned-out third-year resident who spent most of the day with his feet up,
watching football while I drowned under endless pages and phone calls. Most of the time I found him obnoxious and unhelpful.
But whenever disaster struck and a patient we’d previously thought stable suddenly declined, he would appear in the room with
a plan in place and tools in hand before I could think to call him for help.
“How do you always know when they’re about to crash?” I asked, exasperated, after the third time he’d come to the rescue.
“It’s the old Sick, Not Sick spidey-sense,” he said. “I promise. The whole point of residency is to help you grow one too.”
The man who had collapsed in front of the zoo entrances was sick , and not I-walked-around-all-day-in-the-hot-sun-without-eating-or-drinking sick, but maybe-about-to-die sick. I dropped to
my knees in front of the family, slapping two fingers over his carotid before remembering to introduce myself.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Boateng,” I said. His pulse was thready. His breaths shallow. “Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?” When he didn’t respond, I looked up at the woman. “Can you please tell me what happened?”
“Y-you’re a doctor?” the woman sputtered, looking me over, and I barely held back from rolling my eyes because really ? Was now the time for her to be having the revelation that young Black women in fluffy pink skirts can be doctors too ?
“Yes,” I said. The man still wasn’t responding, and I rubbed my knuckles firmly against his sternum. Nothing. Shit. Suddenly I was aware of his children, small, mopheaded, but old enough to understand that something was amiss. Moving automatically,
I eased the man out of the woman’s hold to lay him on the cobblestones.
“What happened right before this? Did he complain of anything? Chest pain? Back pain? Shortness of breath?”
The woman started to shake, overwhelmed by my barrage of questions.
“Nothing, nothing,” she said. “A little aching in his leg. But he was fine. I promise, he was fine, oh my god, Craig—”
“Call 911 right now,” I told her, and she obeyed, whipping out her cell phone. I surveyed my surroundings for onlookers. Most
people kept walking past like nothing was happening, but a few had stopped to stare. Too many others had their phones out,
recording the incident in front of them instead of offering aid. I turned back to the carousel, where I’d left Mal, to find
him nowhere in sight. Bewildered, I whipped around, searching for him... and then jumped when I found him kneeling next
to me, hovering just within my blind spot.
“How can I help?” Mal said. His hands were folded expectantly on his lap, clenched, to keep them from shaking.
“Stay put,” I said.
I pointed to a group of women who were staring down at the scene and whispering among themselves. “You. Go get a defibrillator. It should say AED on it. Ask the staff for help if you’re having trouble.”
To the carousel attendant: “The zoo has got to have a paramedics unit, right? Can you call—”
The thrumming under my fingers stilled altogether, and dread coiled in my stomach. I moved to the man’s chest, placed one
hand on top of the other, and began compressions.
The woman screamed again, the sound sharp as a spike through my eardrum. Someone took the phone from her and was speaking
to the dispatcher—“Yes, we’re in Lincoln Park Zoo, between the Lion and Primate Houses, man collapsed”—but I focused on my
work. The last time I’d done chest compressions was a year ago, in a controlled hospital environment with medications, a swarm
of nurses swirling around me and a stony-faced critical care fellow at the foot of the hospital bed barking out orders. This
time I was alone amongst chaos. I focused on the force of my compressions, the rhythm (to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”), the sensation
of my knees scraping against the cobblestones. You’re not doing it right if it isn’t a workout , our Advanced Cardiac Life Support instructor had said when we were practicing on rubber dummies. If you feel something crunch underneath you, keep going.
“Mal,” I huffed, screening out everyone else around me to focus on the one person I knew I could count on. “I’m going to get
tired soon. I’ll need you to tag me out.”
“Yes,” Mal said, already shuffling to the other side.
I walked him through the compressions—“Deeper than you think. Pick a song to go with, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees is good. No, you don’t have to stop to give him a breath like in the movies”—and he listened attentively, and when the girls finally showed up with the AED, I swapped out with him.
It took what felt like an eternity for an ambulance to come. I corralled a ragtag team of onlookers: a gray-haired, wiry man
who took over communicating with the 911 dispatchers when Craig’s partner could no longer stand to, a woman who identified
herself as a physical therapist who queued up behind Mal to go next on compressions. When the sirens finally wailed in our
ears, I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Story sounds like a pulmonary embolism,” I told one of the paramedics, after we finally stabilized him enough to strap him
to the gurney. “Leg aching, then suddenly went down. Partner says otherwise asymptomatic. Probably four rounds of compressions
before we finally got ROSC. PEA the whole time, so I didn’t shock him.”
The paramedic nodded, jotting down everything on a notepad. His partners had successfully intubated Craig, and I watched them
load him into the van, feeling both relief and a cold sense of dread.
“You in the field?” he observed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a doctor. Internal medicine.”
“Well, good thing you were here,” he said. “Probably saved him.”
I shrugged. My tulle skirts were stuck to my legs and my knees were raw from scraping against the ground. For months after
my graduation, I’d dreaded the inevitable emergency, a flight attendant asking if there were any doctors aboard a plane, a
bee-stung child with a rapidly closing throat collapsing at my feet, and now the time had come and the experience had been
just as awful as I’d expected.
There was some fanfare after that, the gray-haired man hailing a cab for Craig’s family, a round of applause after the ambulance peeled away. The same people who had stared ghoulishly as we pumped Craig’s chest suddenly rushed forward to thank me, and I gave them the same requisite smiles that I gave followers who recognized me from my social media, feeling my facial muscles slacken as the minutes ticked by.
I was tired.
A gentle hand landed on my lower back.
“I think we need to get going now,” Mal said, cutting off a woman who had just asked for my name.
Mal guided me out of the throng, moving quickly, considering the equipment on his back. I followed, exhausted but grateful.
His presence had been a comfort, the way my coresidents had been during codes in the hospital.
We didn’t stop until we were a couple of blocks away in a part of Lincoln Park that didn’t know that I’d just led a resuscitation
effort. Then and only then did Mal drop onto a bench.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. Then: “Is that guy going to be okay?”
I surveyed him. He was appropriately shaken, but surprisingly steady.
“Maybe,” I said again. “But he’s where he needs to be, at least.”
Mal nodded rapidly, not looking at me, then reached out and squeezed my hand. He looked ashen, his face still shining with
a layer of sweat.
“And what about you?” he said.
I chuckled. “I should definitely be asking you that,” I said. “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo.”
Mal nodded, understanding. “I guess I knew that objectively. But seeing it?” He inhaled sharply, then flashed me a shy smile. “You were incredible , Jo. But shit. Is that what you used to do every day?”
“Not every day,” I confessed. I tilted my head. “You did great too.”
Mal shook his head, laughing nervously. Then, arms swinging, he stood.
“Sure. Thanks. Jesus. ” He tilted his head back, let out a slow, whistling breath. Then: “There’s a Jeni’s right there. We might have just saved
a man’s life. Want to get ice cream?”