Chapter 10 #2
“She was just found in her office unresponsive. She had a coffee cup with her. They think she ingested something. I don’t know how they figured it out or how someone would’ve been able to mess with her coffee. She wasn’t even really much of a coffee person.”
“Isn’t, goddammit, Rafe. She isn’t, not she wasn’t. She’s not gone,” I said. I needed to believe it, to make him believe it too.
He just nodded, and we took turns sitting in the single plastic chair while we waited.
“If she comes out of this, I’ll do anything,” I said.
“Give up meat and go vegan? Become a priest?” Rafe teased.
“I doubt they’d have me in holy orders, but I could be a tofu eating celibate if I had to.”
“Yeah, for about a week. What would be the temptation that took you down? Meatball subs or women?”
“Lexi, for damn sure,” I said ruefully.
“I’d give anything for her to pull through this,” Rafe said suddenly.
“Anything? Me, too.”
“I’d give her up to you. I wouldn’t even hesitate if that was the cost,” Rafe said.
“So would I. Or I’d just let her go. Let her live her life without me, without you. Never see her again as long as she was okay, as long as it was what she wanted.”
“Exactly.”
“It won’t work, will it? Offering God or the universe anything down to our lives—it won’t buy her a minute,” I said grimly .
Rafe clapped me on the back. I think it was meant to be comforting, but we just weren’t the hugging type.
I stood and paced, let him have the chair. It seemed to go on forever. At last, someone came in, a guy with an LPN tag.
“The toxicology report is back, and the patient is being set up in ICU now. Dr. Cavanaugh will be in to speak with you in a few minutes,” he said.
“Thank you,” Rafe said.
I couldn’t speak for a minute. Then I looked at him.
“ICU?” I said.
“At least she’s still alive.”
“Yeah,” I said faintly. “Anything that she might survive. Did she, has she been awake?” I said.
“No. They even gave her Narcan to try and bring her around. But since that didn’t work, they said it probably wasn’t an opioid.
When they asked me on the phone what she was taking, and I said nothing, I told them it might be that.
I knew Watts had a couple convictions for pushing Vicodin and fentanyl and shit like that. ”
“That makes sense. It’s good that you knew that, that you could tell them.”
“It didn’t work,” he said miserably, as if he’d failed at CPR or something. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“You did everything you could. We just have to hope she’ll be okay.”
The doctor came in, a tiny redheaded woman with an iPad.
“So, it looks like acute overdose of a powerful sedative. That would explain why the opioid antagonist wasn’t successful.
Her respiration is slow, but her oximetry is decent.
I’m going to keep her in ICU until she regains consciousness, normally within forty-eight hours, and then we’ll assess where she is. ”
“She’s going to wake up though?” I said.
“I can’t make guarantees, but she will most likely come out of the coma, yes. At that point we determine if she was without oxygen and for how long. Any length of time is damaging to brain function, and we won’t know if she’s lost until she’s responsive.”
“Thank you,” Rafe said.
“I’ll check in on her tonight to see if there’s any progress. Go up to the nineteenth floor and they’ll fill you in on the regulations.”
She left and we wandered out to the elevator.
“She’s not going to die,” Rafe said, his voice hollow with shock.
We were silent as we listened to the visiting restrictions and learned that we’d have to sleep in the waiting room. It didn’t make sense for us both to stay—we could switch off, sleep at home, could schedule a way to go to work. But we stayed anyway.
For two days we slept in short snatches, ate out of vending machines, shuffled silently into Lexi’s ICU cubicle, a cold glass box of sorts with a bed and a lot of noisy monitors and one chair. Only Janet from her workplace came to visit—no other friends, certainly no family if she’d ever had one.
Right after sunset the second night, while I had gone to see if they’d refilled the spicy hot barbecue chips slot in the snack machine on the seventh floor, she woke up.
I wasn’t there, but Rafe was. When I returned, bitching about the snack offerings, the cubicle was full of nurses and doctors.
Rafe beckoned me from the corner. His eyes were red .
“Oh God,” I said, searching his face for a clue. Had she flat lined? Coded?
He shook his head, “Awake,” he managed.
I gripped his arm, “She woke up!”
He nodded. I started to pull him out of the cubicle to give them room to check her, but I heard her say my name. Over the din of voices and the beeps and noises of the machines, I knew her voice, though it was gravelly and low.
“Leo?”
“I’m here!” I said, probably shouting, probably too loud for the small room. I didn’t fight my way through the crowd—I wasn’t stupid enough to get in the way of medical professionals doing their job. But I knew she wanted me there, that she knew now that we were both sitting vigil for her.
“What did she do?” I asked Rafe as we sat in the waiting room, anxious for a chance to visit her after she’d been assessed.
“She kind of moaned, and I was holding her hand and talking to her—she moved her fingers a little. I went to let go, like maybe me holding her hand was uncomfortable with that damn oxygen thing on her finger, but she said ‘no’ like she didn’t want me to let go.
Then I said her name and she said mine. I hit the nurse call button and that was it. ”
We breathed relief and waited. It was hours later. He had fallen asleep, and my phone battery was low.
“You can see her now for a few minutes before they transfer her down to twelve,” the nurse’s aide said.
“Thank you,” I told her, jostling Rafe to wake him.
Lexi looked like shit. I went to one side of her bed and Rafe crowded in against the IV pole and the heart monitor on the other side.
“Hey, girl,” I said. “Welcome back. Don’t ever take a nap like that on us again. ”
“You won, Lexi,” Rafe said, “You did it. You scared the living shit out of me.”
He scrubbed at his eyes. She tried to lift her hand toward his face, but it dropped weakly on the blanket.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice barely a rasp.
“No. No, no, don’t be sorry,” Rafe said, gathering her hand in both of his. “We’re just glad you’re awake. If they’d let us, we’d carry you out of here right now. We can’t wait to have you home.”
“Yeah, we still have to make those empanadas. Which means you’re going to have to figure out how to use the deep fryer. No lie, it freaks me out,” I said.
“You’re a fireman,” she said with a wheezy laugh. She was smiling. It felt so good to see her smile, but her weakness, the gray pallor to her lips were like a punch to the gut.
“You’re about to bust out of here to a better room. I hear they have TV and more than one chair. Maybe they’ll even give you breakfast in the morning,” I said.