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She checked her watch, found herself hoping she hadn’t missed the beginning. When she walked into the store, Joy stood in the curtained doorway and said, “Mel! Thank God!”
The panicked look on her face sent Mel rushing to the back room. Leaning forward in the lawn chair, her hand gripping the front of her sweatshirt and breathing shallowly was Connie. Mel kneeled down. “What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I can hardly breathe.”
“Joy, get me a bottle of aspirin. Pain?” she asked Connie.
“My back,” she said.
Mel put a hand between her shoulder blades. “There?”
“Yeah.”
Joy handed her a brand-new aspirin bottle off the shelf and Mel ripped it open, shaking one out into her palm. “Swallow this quickly.” Connie did so and Mel asked,
“Pressure in the chest?”
“Yeah. Oh, yeah.”
Mel got up, grabbed Joy’s hand and pulled her out of the back room. “Run for Doc. Tell him it might be her heart. Hurry.”
Mel went back to Connie. She took her pulse and found it fast and irregular. She had grown clammy and her respirations were rapid and shallow. “Try to relax and breathe slowly. Joy has gone for Doc.”
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
Mel noticed that Connie’s left arm dangled at her side, probably in pain, while she gripped her shirt with her right hand and tried to pull it away from her body, as though to relieve the pressure in her chest. If Mel had speculated on a heart attack for one of these two women, she’d have bet on Joy who was overweight and probably had high cholesterol. Not Connie who was petite and didn’t even smoke.
“I’m not sure,” Mel said. “Let’s wait for Doc. Don’t talk, just stay calm. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
A tense couple of minutes passed before Joy, breathless, came flying through the door with Doc’s medical bag and rushed to Mel’s side. “Here,” she said. “He said try the nitro and get an IV started. He’ll be right here.”
“Okay, then.” She dug around in the bag, found the nitro tablets and shook one out of the bottle. “Connie, hold this under your tongue.”
She did as she was told while Mel got the blood pressure cuff and stethoscope out of the bag. Connie’s pressure was high, but within seconds some of the pain was easing. The nitro might be working. “That better?”
“A little. My arm. I can hardly move my arm.”
“Okay, we’ll take care of that.” She snapped on a pair of gloves. She pulled the rubber strap around Connie’s upper arm and started searching for a good vein, slapping her inner arm with two fingers. She tore open the package containing the IV needle and inserted it slowly. Blood eased up the clear tube and dripped on the floor. Mel then capped it off because she had no tubing or bag of fluid.
A moment later she heard a sound she didn’t recognize and looked out of the back room to see old Doc wheeling a squeaky old gurney into the store. He left it in the store aisle and picked up a bag of Ringer’s solution from its bed, handing it to Mel, while he toted a small portable oxygen canister. He put the cannula around Connie’s neck and into her nostrils while he asked, “What’ve we got?”
As Mel hooked up the tubing to the needle and the Ringer’s to the tube, she said,
“Elevated pressure, diaphoretic, chest, back and arm pain…I gave her an aspirin, and the nitro.”
“Good. How’s that pill working, Connie?”
“A little,” she said.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. Put her on the gurney in the back of the truck, you beside her holding the Ringer’s and monitoring her pressure, and if you think we have to stop for any reason, you bang on the window. The black bag goes with you—you have oxygen, a portable defibrillator in the truck bed, and I want you to draw an eppie and atropine right away, to have ready.” He went back to the gurney, pushed it into the very narrow space in the back room, and lowered it. He shook out and spread a large, heavy wool blanket over the sheet and said, “Okay, Connie.”
Managing the IV bag and tubing, Mel supported Connie under the arm so that she could be transferred from her chair to the lowered gurney. Doc lifted the back slightly so that she wouldn’t be lying flat, then wrapped the blanket around her and strapped her in. He put the oxygen canister on the gurney between Connie’s legs, then said to Mel, “Have Joy hold up the bag of Ringer’s while we get her out of here.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for an ambulance?”
“Not the best idea,” he said while together they lifted the gurney to its former upright position. As they rolled out of the store, Mel once again in control of the IV bag, Doc said, “Joy, as soon as we get out of here I want you to call Valley Hospital and ask them to get a cardiologist to meet us in E.R. Tell Ron to meet us at Valley.” Doc and Mel released the legs on the gurney and slid it in the back of the truck. Doc took off his heavy wool coat and draped it over Connie. As he would have headed for the driver’s door of the truck, Mel grabbed his sleeve.
“Doc, what the hell are we doing?”
“Getting her there as fast as possible,” he said. “In you go. You’re going to be cold.”
“I’ll manage,” she said, climbing into the truck bed beside Connie.
“Don’t bounce out,” Doc said. “I don’t have time to stop and pick you up.”
“Just drive carefully,” she said, already dreading those narrow, curving roads and sheer drops, squeaking by big logging trucks, not to mention the darkness and drop in temperature as they passed through the towering trees.
He jumped in, pretty spry for seventy, and put the truck in gear. He made a wide turn in the street, Mel in the back of the truck, holding the Ringer’s above Connie’s head because there was no IV stand on this old gurney. As they drove out of town, Jack was just returning. But Mel’s attention was focused on Connie. She balanced the bag of Ringer’s on the gurney above Connie’s head, and dug around in Doc’s black bag for syringes and vials, drawing her drugs quickly despite the hectic driving and bouncing. She capped the syringes and took up the IV bag again. Just don’t arrest, Mel kept thinking. Just to be safe, she used one hand to open the portable defibrillator case, having it handy to be switched on if necessary. It was the kind used on commercial airlines; rather than paddles, there were patches that adhered to the chest. Rather than bare Connie to the cold before it became necessary, she decided not to attach the patches to her chest. Then, with one hand over her head, she leaned her body close across Connie’s to keep her warm.
She had to give Doc a lot of credit for fancy driving. He managed to move down the mountain at a pretty fast clip, braking suddenly for the sharp curves and picking up speed for the straightaways while avoiding potholes and bumps. Mel was freezing, but Connie was taking steady breaths and her pulse was even and slower, when from the sheer fright and the ride in the back of the truck, it should probably be racing.
“That Doc,” she said breathlessly into Mel’s ear. “He sure is bossy.”
“Yeah,” Mel said. “Try to rest.”
“Oh, sure,” she whispered.
Mel had to switch the arm that held the Ringer’s several times, she got so sore. And even when she stayed low in the bed of the truck, the wind was chilling her to the bone. May in the mountains, under the shade of huge, towering trees, was not warm. She tried to imagine doing this in winter, and she got colder. Her cheeks were numb, her fingers nearly without feeling.
After just over an hour ride, they pulled into a parking lot in front of a small hospital where two med techs and a nurse stood ready in the parking lot, waiting with their own gurney.
Doc jumped out of the truck. “Take her on my gurney—I’ll get it later.”
“Good,” one said, pulling the gurney holding Connie out of the back of the truck.
“She have any meds?”
“Just an aspirin and a nitro tab. Ringer’s TKO.”
“Gotcha,” he said. “Emergency staff standing by,” and off they went, running with the gurney across the parking lot.
“Let’s go, Melinda,” he said, moving a little more slowly now. Mel began to realize that waiting for emergency transport could have been a tragic mistake—it could have turned that trip into three hours. As she waited with Doc in the emergency room, she learned that Valley Hospital was small but efficient, serving the needs of many small towns. They were capable of labor and delivery, C-sections when the infant and mother were not at major risk, X-rays, ultrasounds, some general surgeries, lab work and outpatient clinic, but if something as serious as emergency heart surgery or major surgery were required, a larger hospital was needed. It was a while before the doctor finally came out. “We’re going to run an angiogram—I think we’re looking at blockages. She’s stable for the moment, but they may be considering bypass surgery as soon as possible. We’ll transport her by helicopter to Redding for that. Has her next of kin been notified?”
“He should be here any minute. We’ll wait for him here.”
Within ten minutes, Connie was wheeled past them and down the hall. Another ten minutes brought Ron with Joy into the emergency room doors. “Where is she? Is she all right?” Right behind them were Ricky and Liz, straight from school.
“They’ve taken her for an angiogram—it’s like an X-ray of blood vessels. Based on what that test tells them, they’ll decide whether or not she needs surgery. Let’s go to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee and I’ll try to explain it to you—then we’ll go see how they’re doing on that test.”
“God, Doc, thank you,” Ron said. “Thank you for getting her help.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank Melinda. She saved Connie’s life.”
Mel’s head jerked toward him in surprise.
“It was her fast action—that aspirin and calling for help—not to mention her ride in the back of my pickup, that I believe allowed us to get her to the hospital so fast.”
It was nine o’clock before Mel and Doc got back to town, and of necessity they both headed for Jack’s, more than a little grateful he had stayed open. And she knew he’d stayed open for them. Doc asked for his whiskey and Mel said, “I think I better have one, too. Maybe something a little smoother than that.”
Jack poured her a Crown Royal. “Long day?” he asked.
“Shew,” Doc said. “We spent most of it waiting for a decision. Connie’s going to have bypass surgery in the morning. We waited around until they transported her to Redding.”
“Why didn’t we just take her to Redding?” Mel asked. Both men laughed. “What? I looked at the map before I even came up here. It’s just over a hundred miles of highway.”
“It’s about a hundred forty, Mel,” Jack said. “Narrow, two-lane, over the mountains. Would take about three hours to cross at best from Eureka. Probably closer to four. Coming from Virgin River—five.”
“Jesus,” she moaned.
“I think Ricky is taking Liz to her mother’s for the night while Ron and Joy will make the long drive to Redding to spend the night at Connie’s bedside. They’re a little on the nervous side,” Doc said.
“No doubt,” Jack said. “I saw you flying out of town. I couldn’t tell who you had in the back—I just saw Mel hanging on for dear life.”
Doc took a sip. “She came in kinda handy.”
“What would you have done without a little help?” she asked him.
“I probably would’ve thrown Joy back there. But who knows if we’d have gotten that far. You know how great one little aspirin is for a heart attack?”
