flashed his plastic ID at the security guard, whose desk blocked the main corridor to the hospital.
“I’ve got to have you sign in, Doc,” the man said. “After nine.”
Harry scribbled his name and destination. The guard glanced at it.
“Alexander Nine,” he said. “You going up there for the Code Ninety-nine?”
At that instant, the overhead page began urgently summoning Dr. Richard Cohen to Alexander 928.
Harry hurried toward the elevators. Something had happened to Maura Hughes, he was thinking. She hadn’t looked that great when he left, but she certainly hadn’t seemed in imminent danger. Then suddenly he remembered that Richard Cohen was a member of the same neurosurgical group as Ben Dunleavy, Evie’s neurosurgeon. Cohen was undoubtedly covering for the night. Gripped by an intense foreboding, Harry kept jabbing at the elevator call button until one of the doors slid open. The ride up to Alexander 9 took an eternity.
Room 928 was halfway down the far arm of the “L.” The nurse’s station and near corridor were deserted. Harryset down the bag from Alphano’s and sprinted down the hallway, his heart pounding in his throat. It took only a moment after he rounded the corner to have his worst fears confirmed. There were half a dozen nurses and med students standing outside room 928, craning to catch a glimpse of the action. Maura Hughes, still restrained in her bed, had been pulled to the far side of the corridor. Standing beside her, stroking her hand, was a young, uniformed policeman.
Harry raced past them all and into the room.
The scene was one he had witnessed or participated in hundreds of times over the years. The monitors, the lines, the crash cart, the defibrillator, the nurses, physicians, and technicians moving grimly from equipment to bedside and back like a platoon of army ants. Only this time, at the center of the controlled chaos, intubated through her nose and being ventilated by a rubber bag, was his wife. The cardiac monitor showed a regular rhythm. Every ten seconds or so, though, her arms extended to the maximum and rotated inward, turning her palms away from her body in an eerily unnatural position.
Decerebrate posturing
. A horrible prognostic sign. Almost certainly, her aneurysm had blown. He moved to the bedside. The nurse, Sue Jilson, was the first to realize he was there.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
The neurosurgical resident who was running the resuscitation looked up.
“This is Dr. Corbett, her husband,” the nurse explained.
“Oh, sorry,” the resident said. “Her aneurysm appears to have ruptured. Dr. Cohen is covering for Dr. Dunleavy. I just got word that he’s on the way up.”
“What happened?” Harry asked. “I left her just a little over an hour ago and she was fine.”
Sue Jilson shook her head.
“About half an hour after you left I went in to medicate Maura. I heard a moan from behind the curtain. When I looked, your wife had vomited and was barely conscious. The initial blood pressure reading I got was three hundredover one-fifty. One pupil was already larger than the other.”
Harry stared down at Evie, his mind unwilling to connect what he was seeing with what he knew of cerebral hemorrhaging. He reached down and gently lifted her eyelids. Both of her pupils were so wide that almost no iris color could be seen. He felt numb, dreamlike. It was already over.
Dr. Richard Cohen rushed into the room. He already knew the patient’s history, he breathlessly told the resident. The resident gave him a capsule summary of the past thirty-eight minutes.
“You’ve done everything right,” Cohen said as he examined the inside of Evie’s eyes with an ophthalmoscope.
He quickly checked her reflexes and response to pain. Then he used the end of his reflex hammer to firmly stroke an arc along the soles of her feet from heel to great toe. The Babinski reflex—the great toe pulling up instead of curling down—was a grave, grave sign that her
“I’ve got to have you sign in, Doc,” the man said. “After nine.”
Harry scribbled his name and destination. The guard glanced at it.
“Alexander Nine,” he said. “You going up there for the Code Ninety-nine?”
At that instant, the overhead page began urgently summoning Dr. Richard Cohen to Alexander 928.
Harry hurried toward the elevators. Something had happened to Maura Hughes, he was thinking. She hadn’t looked that great when he left, but she certainly hadn’t seemed in imminent danger. Then suddenly he remembered that Richard Cohen was a member of the same neurosurgical group as Ben Dunleavy, Evie’s neurosurgeon. Cohen was undoubtedly covering for the night. Gripped by an intense foreboding, Harry kept jabbing at the elevator call button until one of the doors slid open. The ride up to Alexander 9 took an eternity.
Room 928 was halfway down the far arm of the “L.” The nurse’s station and near corridor were deserted. Harryset down the bag from Alphano’s and sprinted down the hallway, his heart pounding in his throat. It took only a moment after he rounded the corner to have his worst fears confirmed. There were half a dozen nurses and med students standing outside room 928, craning to catch a glimpse of the action. Maura Hughes, still restrained in her bed, had been pulled to the far side of the corridor. Standing beside her, stroking her hand, was a young, uniformed policeman.
Harry raced past them all and into the room.
The scene was one he had witnessed or participated in hundreds of times over the years. The monitors, the lines, the crash cart, the defibrillator, the nurses, physicians, and technicians moving grimly from equipment to bedside and back like a platoon of army ants. Only this time, at the center of the controlled chaos, intubated through her nose and being ventilated by a rubber bag, was his wife. The cardiac monitor showed a regular rhythm. Every ten seconds or so, though, her arms extended to the maximum and rotated inward, turning her palms away from her body in an eerily unnatural position.
Decerebrate posturing
. A horrible prognostic sign. Almost certainly, her aneurysm had blown. He moved to the bedside. The nurse, Sue Jilson, was the first to realize he was there.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
The neurosurgical resident who was running the resuscitation looked up.
“This is Dr. Corbett, her husband,” the nurse explained.
“Oh, sorry,” the resident said. “Her aneurysm appears to have ruptured. Dr. Cohen is covering for Dr. Dunleavy. I just got word that he’s on the way up.”
“What happened?” Harry asked. “I left her just a little over an hour ago and she was fine.”
Sue Jilson shook her head.
“About half an hour after you left I went in to medicate Maura. I heard a moan from behind the curtain. When I looked, your wife had vomited and was barely conscious. The initial blood pressure reading I got was three hundredover one-fifty. One pupil was already larger than the other.”
Harry stared down at Evie, his mind unwilling to connect what he was seeing with what he knew of cerebral hemorrhaging. He reached down and gently lifted her eyelids. Both of her pupils were so wide that almost no iris color could be seen. He felt numb, dreamlike. It was already over.
Dr. Richard Cohen rushed into the room. He already knew the patient’s history, he breathlessly told the resident. The resident gave him a capsule summary of the past thirty-eight minutes.
“You’ve done everything right,” Cohen said as he examined the inside of Evie’s eyes with an ophthalmoscope.
He quickly checked her reflexes and response to pain. Then he used the end of his reflex hammer to firmly stroke an arc along the soles of her feet from heel to great toe. The Babinski reflex—the great toe pulling up instead of curling down—was a grave, grave sign that her
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