Chapter 26
I ’ve been sitting in my office all morning, dealing with the Janet Johnson nightmare.
After our meeting last week, something wasn’t sitting right with me.
I’ve looked over her files and after getting a few texts from Grace this morning stating that Janet did absolutely zero teaching and that her not fucking up sooner was an act of God, I know it’s going to be a very long few weeks going forward as we get this all teased out and settled.
But that hasn’t been my real issue.
My real issue has been resisting the urge to be on the floor because that’s where Grace is.
I’ve been hoping she’d seek me out. Come to my office just to see me or kiss me or anything really.
She hasn’t, I didn’t expect her to, I know she’s busy—I just hoped.
But that hope, my inability to get her off my mind, it’s consuming.
I don’t know how much longer I can play this game.
The one where I pretend to be casual when I’m anything but.
All I know is that I’d be insane not to fight tooth and nail for her.
To prove to her just how perfect, how meant to be, we are.
It’s words I never thought I’d say, but now can’t seem to stop.
I don’t want another woman because she’s not her.
I think when you realize that, you know it’s the real deal, so yeah.
Now the fuck what do I do?
My phone starts ringing at the exact second my beeper goes off, startling me out of my reverie. I grab my phone first, answering it as I read my beeper.
“Fritz,” I answer, but whoever is calling me gets drowned out by the loud overhead announcement of rapid response team to labor and delivery nurses’ station. Rapid response team to labor and delivery nurses’ station.
I’m out of my chair and sprinting down the hall before my brain can even catch up with what I’m doing. I have no idea what happened because I don’t have time to read my page or talk on the phone. All I know is that it’s something and whatever it is, it’s not fucking good.
But the moment I turn the corner and take in the scene, it’s like someone is strangling me to the point of cutting off the blood and air to my head.
I’ve never seen Grace have a seizure and it isn’t until this moment that I understand what true, violent, soul-gripping fear feels like.
Dread spirals through me, a vise shredding me from within as I sprint down the hall, shoving people out of the way and not caring one bit.
“Grace.” My voice isn’t my own. My body either as I drop down to the ground near her head.
They managed to slide something under her to protect her head and position her on her left side as she seizes, her body jerking in a rhythmic motion.
Her eyes are open, fixed, and unfocused.
Blood drips to the mat from the corner of her blue lips.
I can’t look away. I can barely move.
My breaths are sharp, short, ragged.
I’m scrambling to make sense of this. Of Grace having a tonic-clonic seizure.
Knowing it’s my fault. I pushed her too hard.
Allowed her to work too many hours. Encouraged her to have a drink last night.
Took her to a concert where the strobe lights might have overloaded her system and then brought her home so late knowing she was getting up so early today.
The need to grab her, hold her, help her consumes me, but I know better than to touch her.
“Ativan, 4mg IM on board,” someone announces.
“Come on, Grace,” I rasp but medications administered intramuscularly can take minutes to take effect, not seconds. She’s still going. Her body rigid, her limbs spastic. “How long has she been seizing?”
“A little more than a minute. We need to move her to the ED.”
“While she’s seizing?” I bark at whoever just said that.
“We don’t have stronger benzos or other anticonvulsants up here, doctor,” the nurse informs me. “She needs an IV and to have her airway secured. We typically give mag sulfate for seizures and that’s not what she needs.”
Fuck. They’re right. This is labor and delivery. Not the ICU or the ED or even a med/surg floor. Typically our patients are healthy and if they’re not, there are only certain medications we can give them for fear of hurting the fetus or having it pass through breast milk.
Just then the rapid response team—also known as the code team—come hurtling down the floor, practically tossing me aside. Drew and Margot are on the team today, their eyes briefly touching mine before they get to work on Grace.
Margot starts a line in no-time flat even with Grace’s seizure still going strong.
The respiratory therapist manages her airway and just as Margot slowly pushes IV Dilantin Grace stops seizing.
Relief rattles my bones as her body sags down onto the mat they have her on.
She’s still unconscious, not even yet in a postictal state.
“She’s epileptic, right?” Margot questions as they work to get Grace strapped onto a board and then up onto a gurney, an oxygen mask now over her mouth and nose.
“Yes. But she hasn’t had a seizure in years. She’s only on PRN (as needed) rescue meds.”
“Okay. Let’s move,” Drew commands once she’s secured and everyone starts toward the elevator at quick-pace, including me. “Do we know what caused this? Any drug or alcohol use I should be aware of?”
I shake my head. “Some alcohol last night. No drugs.” We step onto the elevator, pressing the button for the emergency department. “She’s been working a lot of hours. Not sleeping as much as she should have. We went to a concert last night and she’s here today on only a few hours of rest—”
My sentence abruptly cuts off as Grace starts seizing again, her face crashing into the railing of the gurney, creating a gash on her temple. “Dammit,” Drew hisses. “Roll her now.”
The team rolls her back onto her side to protect her body and airway.
My hands dive into my hair, gripping the roots while my heart and stomach plummet into my feet. I can’t watch this. I can’t watch her like this and stand here and do nothing. My vision blurs as the monitor alarm blares loudly, her heart rate shoots up along with her blood pressure.
Margot curses under her breath. “One minute fifty-two seconds between seizures. We need to start a Dilantin drip. IV push might not have been enough. She already got four Ativan IM. I’m switching over and pushing five of Diazepam IV now.”
“Is that enough?” I snap. “Why doesn’t she already have a drip going? Why is she seizing again?”
Everyone ignores me and I’m going out of my fucking mind right now.
It’s like all medical knowledge I’ve ever accrued is gone. Right out of my head. All I can see is Grace. Is her body jerking. Is her complete loss of basic functions. She has no control and I feel just as powerless.
Out of control and fucking powerless.
It’s not who I am. I’m always composed. Never one to panic, even in the diciest of situations or the scariest of surgeries or the most complicated of deliveries. Never. But this is Grace. My Grace.
“We need stat labs,” Drew interjects just as the doors to the ED open and we race out. “I need to know what I’m working with.”
“On it,” Margot replies. “You want the standard panel? Anything else with it?”
“A blood gas. Let’s also add some glucose to her bag when we get it up. First labs though, Margot. I want someone to sprint them down to the lab themselves and wait while they run them. We’re not missing anything.”
“You hear that, Bonnie?” Margot questions the nurse on her side. “That’s you. You’re on point for labs.”
“Got it,” Bonnie, who has been documenting the event, says.
“Oxygen levels are holding steady,” the respiratory therapist states. “Her heart rate and BP are leveling out too.”
They push Grace through the doors of the trauma room just as she stops seizing for a second time. “Alright, seizure stopped,” Drew announces, noting the time. “Let’s make sure it’s her last. Is there anyone we should call?”
“I’ll do it,” I tell them. “I’m her attending.”
And her roommate and her best friend’s brother and her lover, but no one really knows that last part.
Few know she’s living with me, though Drew and Margot do.
I run my fingers through her hair, staring down at her sweet face, pale as a sheet, her lips caked in blood and saliva.
Her eyes now closed, her body limp and lifeless.
Not even caring about who’s in the room or people talking, I lean down and press my lips to her forehead.
It’s in this moment that I realize the true destructive power of love.
The crushing, brutalizing agony of loving someone more than you love yourself.
The fear and ache and torment that you’ll lose them far before you’re ready to.
I’d give my life for this woman and here she lies, unconscious and bleeding, and I can’t save her from this.
It’s an affliction, a disorder, a condition of the human body. One she’s lived with nearly her entire life. One that acts like an earthquake. Unpredictable. Devastating. Soul-rattling for those who survive it with her.
It just goes to show you how no one is ever safe. How love isn’t enough protection when we need it to be.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her sweaty flesh. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
I kiss her, press my forehead to hers, and then leave the trauma room, ambling out into the hallway just beyond, letting them continue to work to make sure my girl is okay.
On shaky legs with trembling hands—my hands never fucking tremble—I first call upstairs and tell them we need the floor covered by any resident, attending, fellow, or even med student.
Then I call Oliver because I don’t know her parents’ number and they’re in Australia.
“Hey,” he answers, picking up on the second ring. My body vibrates with relief at the sound of my brother’s voice. Not just for Grace. But for me too and suddenly I hate that I’ve been holding back telling him how I feel about her. I fall against the wall, pressing my entire weight into it.
“I’m in the ED with Grace. She had two seizures back-to-back.
They seem to have her stabilized now, but I—” I choke, emotion taking over in ways it never has before with me.
Not even when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Not even when it came back. “Fuck, Oliver. I don’t know how to reach her parents.
I don’t know who to call. I just know I won’t make it if she’s not okay. ”
He clears his throat. Then he’s silent. Finally, he says, “We’re on our way.” And he hangs up. I tipped my hand. I let it out there for him because he needs to know.
But Grace doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me. She told me as much last night. She also asked that I keep this thing between us a secret.
Do I care? I’m not so sure anymore. Today was a game-changer for me.
My love for her is overpowering but I wouldn’t risk changing it for the easy route.
Tucking my phone back into my pocket, I march back into the trauma room. Grace’s position hasn’t moved, but her eyes are now open.
“She’s postictal,” Margot informs me, checking Grace’s lines.
“She opened her eyes about a minute ago, which is a fantastic sign. She’s still non-responsive, and TMI the reason I changed her to a gown is because she peed her scrub pants and underwear, but that’s sorta how it goes with seizures.
She’ll likely be out of it for a while and we’re going to keep her on the Dilantin and Diazepam drips, but I expect she’ll be up and bitching you out in no time. ”
I blink, blowing out a breath. “How long will she have to stay in here?”
Margot shakes her head. Her dark curls all over the place as they spring out of her bun.
“I have a room for her down the hall. Drew wants to keep her here in the ED for a while, just in case. I don’t think he trusts the floor to do its due diligence with her.
That or he’s afraid of dealing with Oliver and Rina.
And you, it seems.” She winks at me. “Want to help me move her?”
I shift to the left side of the bed, staring down at Grace. The bed unlocks with a loud click and then Margot is walking, pushing the large gurney with her. I help, adjusting some of the weight for myself.
“How long have you been a thing?”
I smirk. “Not that long.”
“But you love her.”
My smirk grows at the self-assured way Margot said that.
“I have for a while, yeah.”
“I didn’t trust a lot or well until Drew came along. Sometimes it just takes the right person to realign your thinking. Think about Rina with Brecken. She and I were hard set on the anti-love train. Clearly that didn’t work out so well for us.”
We walk down the hall, passing room after room until we reach the end.
It’s quiet back here, almost secluded for such a busy part of the hospital.
We enter the room and lock the gurney into place.
In a flash, Margot is gone only to return just as quickly with a warm blanket that she places over Grace.
“I don’t think Grace sees it quite that way between us yet.”
Margot stares at me, a contemplative tilt to her head.
“I saw the way you looked at her from almost day one. You fell, and you fell hard. It’s why I’ve been pushing her to hook up with you, which it seems like she has.
She might just need some extra time to catch up to where you’ve already been.
For her, this is new. For you, it’s not.
Remember that. Take good care of her, Doctor.
Page me if she doesn’t come around within the next thirty minutes. ”
And with that Margot leaves, going to take care of her other patients.
I lower the bedside rail on the side facing me, drop into a chair, and scoot it until I’m pressed against the gurney.
My head finds the miserably hard mattress beside where her head is resting, my hand in her hair as I cup the back of her head.
In addition to changing Grace into a gown and cleaning her up, she also dressed the wound on her head that she got from smacking it on the gurney. I kiss it gently; grateful it didn’t require stitches. Then I close my eyes.
I stay like this for I don’t even know how long. Silent. Grace still. My only reassurance coming from the monitor sprouting her vitals and the steady rhythm of her breathing.
That is until Oliver walks in.