Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
A NNIE
Beanie Boy and I are racing each other up the steps to our apartment when the sound of my work phone ringing fills my ears.
I get in just in time to answer it before it goes to voicemail.
“Hello?” I huff out, winded from the sprinting up the steps.
“Annie? It’s Janie, are you able to come back in?” she says, her voice shaky.
“Sure,” I answer, heading to my bedroom to change into scrubs again because, from the tone of her voice, I need to get there quickly. “What’s going on?”
“We have multiple incoming from a fire at a senior housing complex downtown. We were able to divert a few of the more minor injuries to other hospitals but we have several patients coming in, including three critical—a four-year-old and his grandmother with smoke inhalation and…” she hesitates.
“Janie? What is it?” I ask .
“The other is a firefighter,” she answers solemnly.
I grab my keys and wallet, race to my door and pull it shut behind me, then head down the stairs to my car. “I’ll be right there. Is it… is it him?” I manage to get out.
“I don’t know, but it sounds bad.”
Five minutes later, I pull into the ER parking lot and run inside to help.
Janie and the hospital nursing supervisor have a few volunteers from the ICU and medical floors upstairs to help take care of our other patients so our seasoned ER nurses can focus on the critical incoming.
The pediatric patient and the elderly woman are already here, both being attended to by some of our best staff.
I find Janie since she’s the charge nurse and ask her where she wants me.
Since I have burn-care experience from the ER I worked at down near Columbus, Janie asks if I can alternate between the elderly patient and her grandson to be sure everything is running smoothly. She’ll focus on the injured firefighter when they arrive.
I agree and quickly jump into my assignment.
JACK
When I come to, I’m in the back of an ambulance with a medic I know from Station Two and Fitz. Fitz is by my side hanging IV fluids and a high-flow oxygen mask is over my face. I try to talk.
“Jack, don’t talk, buddy. You’ve got blisters in the back of your throat and swelling back there. You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke. We… we need to not do anything that will irritate your airway more,” Fitz says.
I nod. Shit, it hurts to even breathe right now, and my throat feels so damn raw. I can hear myself wheezing, and I know that it’s a bad sign.
Fitz looks at me and I can tell he knows where my thinking has gone, understands the unspoken question I’m asking.
“It’s bad, Jack. I’m thinking you’re going to have to go on a ventilator to breathe for you until we know you’re out of the woods. I got the okay from the ER to give you a little morphine in your IV to help with the pain and ease the trouble breathing, okay?” Fitz asks.
I shake my head vehemently.
If Annie is there when I get to the ER, I want to see her before I go under, if I can. If I can’t, I need to tell someone to get the journal to her.
“Not… yet…” I wheeze out.
He looks at me for a few seconds, then nods in agreement.
Just getting those few words out exhausts me, so I close my eyes and wait as we speed the rest of the way to the ER.
I don’t open my eyes again until I’m rushed through the ambulance bay doors and into the Trauma Room. When I get in there, I’m glad to see Janie is one of my nurses, but she audibly gasps when she sees it’s me.
I’m quickly examined by the ER doctor, and he tells Janie to page anesthesia to intubate my airway, saying there’s too much swelling for him to do it safely.
She picks up the phone in the room and tells the operator to page anesthesia.
The hospital-wide announcement pierces the air with, “Anesthesia stat, emergency room. Anesthesia stat, emergency room. Anesthesia stat, emergency room.”
I know it’s bad when they triple page like that, but if I didn’t know it by that, I know it for sure when Janie quietly tells the ER medic in the room, “Go get Annie. Now. ”
Less than three minutes later, the anesthesiologist is in the room and he’s quickly preparing medications so he can put a tube down my throat to prevent the swelling from closing off my airway. I’m wheezing badly now and it’s getting harder to breathe, so the ER nurse has me on a continuous breathing treatment to help while we wait for the tube.
Seconds later, my brother Ben rushes into the room, and no one tries to stop him. Probably another bad sign . He grabs my hand and holds it. I look at him, my best friend for my entire life, and wheeze out, “Love you… Ben. Give… journal… Annie.”
He nods and tells me he loves me, then steps back to give them room to work.
Just as the anesthesiologist injects the medication to put me out, she’s there. Like a vision in the doorway… Annie.
I don’t honestly know if she’s truly there, or if it’s the drugs.
Or maybe I’m dying, because a second or two later everything fades away.
ANNIE
I’m on my way back down to the ER with one of the nurses after I helped her transport the elderly burn patient up to the burn unit. After hearing the triple page hailing anesthesia to the ER a few minutes ago, we started jogging back down there as fast as we can anyway with the unruly cot to manage.
As we come around the corner to the main part of the ER, Josh, our new medic, is coming out of the pediatric room. When he sees me, he heads in my direction.
“Annie, Janie sent me to tell you to get to the Trauma Room. She said now,” Josh says. He’s new since Jack and I ended, so he doesn’t know this makes my stomach drop.
I let go of the cot and run down the hall. As I enter the doorway of the trauma room, I’m momentarily stilled. It’s not the smell of smoke in the room, or the wheezing sound that stuns me. It’s that, lying on the cot, looking right at me, is the man I love.
He holds my eyes for several seconds, and just as I will my muscles to move toward him, his eyes close and his jaw goes slack.
Everything that happens after that is a blur. I know the anesthesiologist gets the breathing tube in. The respiratory therapist connects him to a machine to breathe for him and, at some point, Ben pulls me over to where he stands and tries to comfort me as I stare silently at Jack.
Eventually, someone brings me a chair and some water.
Sitting in the ER Trauma Room, I listen to the beeping of the heart monitor and the whooshing of the machine breathing for the man I’ve been too afraid to give another chance.
And now…? Now I’m afraid that chance is gone.