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Like the seconds ticking away with Savannah staring at him in question because he’d not commented on her assessment.
“I’ll go check her.”
“Thank you.” Relief flickered across her face. Had she thought he wouldn’t?
“Come with me?”
She looked hesitant, then shrugged. “Okay, Dr. Keele.”
He could almost smile at the way she’d let him know she was only going with him because doing so was her duty. Fine, he was only asking in his professional capacity. He’d soon be gone. Asking her to come wasn’t going to hurt a thing.
A pale woman in her early seventies lay in the hospital bed with multiple lines and telemetry wires attached to her frail body. Her gaze went to his the minute he entered the room, as if she wondered what poking and prodding he’d be doing.
“Hello, Mrs. Barton. You already know this, but Dr. Richards, your regular cardiologist, is out of town, so you’re stuck with me. Your nurse has been filling me in. Sounds like you’ve had quite the day. How are you feeling?”
She grimaced. “Like I was kicked in the chest.”
“When did that start?”
“When my defibrillator went off this morning.” The white-haired woman clutched at her thin chest, rubbing across her sternum. “I haven’t felt right since.”
“Dr. Richards had scheduled her to see an electrophysiologist, thinking her defibrillator wasn’t working correctly,” a woman in her early thirties said from the chair next to the hospital bed. “Her appointment was actually scheduled for tomorrow, but then it went off this morning and she passed out. I called for an am
bulance to come get her.”
“You did the right thing,” he assured the concerned woman, obviously the patient’s daughter, then turned back to his patient. “Your heart is weak and your tests show that your defibrillator is going off because your heart keeps going out of rhythm. That’s why you’ve been feeling funny.”
“Why has my rhythm changed?”
“There are lots of things that can do it, but most likely it’s due to the large chunk of damaged cardiac muscle from your heart attack a few years ago. Your body is working hard to try to compensate for that loss, but not doing so well. I’ve looked over what tests you’ve previously had at Chattanooga Memorial and the ones from the emergency room this morning. I’d like to schedule you for a viability test. I think a mechanical heart pump called a LVAD would be of benefit to ease the workload of your heart and increase your ejection fraction.”
“Dr. Richards mentioned that to me at my last office visit, but said we needed to figure out this rhythm thing first.” The woman glanced toward her daughter, then said, “I think my defibrillator is malfunctioning.”
“From the way your rhythm looks, I’d say the defibrillator was doing exactly what it’s supposed to and saving your life.”
The young woman next to the bed stood, took her mother’s hand. “What do we need to do?”
“We’ll get the further testing done and go from there as to our next step.”
When they stepped out of the ICU room, Savannah pinned him. “You think an LVAD is going to solve her problem?”
“Only one of them. I’d bet money she needs a ventricular ablation to correct that rhythm. The sooner the better.”
“You want me to get the tests ordered?”
He nodded. “Once we get that and she’s stable, we’ll talk about transferring her to the heart failure team at Vanderbilt.”
Savannah’s face paled at the mention of where he would be transferring to himself. “Drumming up some business?”
“They are cutting edge when it comes to LVADs.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You should know that I do what’s right for my patient. Always.”
“Just not your girlfriend.”
He frowned. She’d barely spoken to him since their Nashville trip, had gone out of her way to avoid him. The past month hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it. Had even made a point to repeatedly go out with friends, knowing Savannah would catch wind of it and that it would fuel her dislike.
