Chapter Twenty #3
“Bullshit,” Brandon sputters. Alan doesn’t flinch. “Bullshit. You guys are trying to drag me out. That’s why you’ve got security here with you. That’s why you’re—”
Alan huffs, a sound that comes from deep within.
“You’re not being dragged out, you’re being put on leave during the course of the investigation. The security is just protocol.” His mouth twists with something between sympathy and disgust. “It’s done, Brandon. I’m sorry. Go home.”
I have never known what it meant to watch a person wilt before my eyes, and the part of me that once had affection for Brandon wants to comfort him.
Our friendship may have fallen apart in the last few years, but this was an area where we shared an understanding.
Taking away Brandon’s access to the catheterization lab is like stripping him of his identity.
Of who he has wanted to be for the last thirty years, what he has worked tirelessly toward for over twenty.
And not just that. It’s that Brandon is clearly unwell, and Alan either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
The door to the lab bursts open again. This time it’s Haoran, looking a bit frazzled with his scrubs half tucked into his waistband.
“Sorry I’m late, I was on drop-off duty today,” he announces. Then he notices Brandon. I watch in real time as he takes in our colleague’s appearance. “Oh. Hey. I thought you wouldn’t be in today…”
Brandon’s face crumples and he pushes past Haoran and out the door. I take a quick glance into my room—no patient on the table, no expectant trainee waiting for me—then go after him.
It’s easy to catch up. Despite having several inches of height on me, he’s slow. I step around him, cut him off.
“Brandon,” I say.
The look he gives me is vicious, and I wince.
“Come to laugh at me, have you?” he spits.
“No, of course not.” I approach him like he’s a wounded animal—slowly, shoulders hunched, hands up. “I just want to know if you’re okay. You look like you’ve been…struggling.”
I don’t realize how much of an understatement it is until I say it out loud.
And not just physically—although his appearance now is alarming—but mentally too.
The Brandon Pendersen I know is a cocky asshole, sure, but what interventionist isn’t?
He’s also kind, charismatic, and occasionally sweet.
All that is gone now. The man in front of me is his husk.
Brandon seems to realize this too. He looks down at his hands, stares at the thin skin, the liver spots, the blue veins like he’s seeing them for the first time.
“I don’t know what happened,” he croaks.
“It was a routine diagnostic angiogram. Big artery. Easy target. It’s like I was locked in place, but my needle just kept going.
” He drops his face into his hands, and I don’t realize he’s sobbing until fat tears begin to leak between his fingers.
“I almost killed him, Sean. And I don’t understand how it happened. ”
My stomach drops with horror, and I clap a hand over my mouth as I put two and two together. Why Brandon is on leave. Why Alan Agarwhal showed up in person to enforce it.
Danger is a hazard of our job. Most of the time we save people, but a misplaced wire, a needle stuck too deep, a valve deployed in just the wrong spot—they can be life altering or ending for our patients.
But we can usually gauge the risk and offer our patients guidance for their expectations.
Things happen, and we don’t have time to dwell on them, because the next patient will be on the table in fifteen minutes.
But there are “never events,” mistakes that even our least experienced trainees cannot afford to make. This was clearly one of them.
“Brandon,” I say quietly. “You’re not well. You need to get help. Go see a doctor, figure out what is going on.”
Brandon’s right eye widens more than his left.
“I know,” he says. “I know, I know, I know, but. I can’t. I can’t—”
I step closer, reach for him.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” I ask slowly. “Why can’t you?”
The next half second passes in slow motion. It starts with his shoulders, their steady slouch, and the rest of his body follows, chin dropping into chest, lips dropping into chin. His eyes are the last to go, rolling back in a tight swivel.
I move before I can think. Brandon’s weight is full and dead and sends me crumpling to the floor. I land hard, but I barely feel the impact; my fingers scrabble on his carotid for a pulse before my brain can fully process what is happening.
And then it does, and I begin to scream.
“Help!” Under my fingertips, I feel the steady thrum of his pulse: slow, thready, but there. I roll Brandon onto his back and the horror overcomes me. It’s like I’m looking at his corpse.
Pamela is the first around the corner.
“What’s going on, Sean— Holy shit.”
I don’t have time to wonder whether she, too, is seeing what I see now—that Brandon has probably been far gone for a while and that we just didn’t notice.
“Get the crash cart and have someone call a code,” I instruct, and Pamela, a consummate professional, puts aside her horror to comply.