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Leading them to his room, I saw Harley and Amelia were back at the nurses’ station. “Fifteen minutes,” Harley mouthed the words then, “Only two after that.” I nodded. I was grateful she was giving me this much.
My mother gasped when she saw Ronan lying on the bed. I had tried to prepare her but it just wasn’t easy to see your child like this. I was struggling with it as his brother. She walked to the side of the bed and reached out to Ronan then she turned to me. “Can I touch him, Liam?” There was a tremble in her voice.
“Sure Mom,” I replied.
She brushed Ronan’s hair back from his face. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead. Then she straightened and looked at me. “Will he be all right?” She asked, there was a tremble to her words.
“I don’t know yet Mom.” I had to be honest with her. The next few hours would tell us.
“What did he take?”
“They don’t know,” I replied. “He had a needle mark on his arm and symptoms of heroin overdose so they treated him with narcan or naloxone.”
Glancing around the room I could see how shell shocked my family was. Fionn, not good with change or trauma was handling this better than I expected. Ciaran looked ready to cry. He kept looking anywhere but at our brother. My uncle was standing next to my grandfather staring at the floor. “I held him in my arms when he was just a few hours old,” he finally said. “You can’t let him die Liam,” Noah told me.
“We’ll do our best Noah.” I was trying to separate myself as a doctor from the patient lying in the bed. I was trained to do this but it wasn’t easy. He was my baby brother. One of three. I just wanted to answer any questions that they had.
“Can I get out without your badge?” Noah asked. He was struggling with this. I could see his need to escape this room.
“No.”
“Then I’ll stand by the nurses’ station,” he responded.
“I’ll see if Amelia or Harley can let you out.” I walked him out and Amelia took my uncle to the door. Trying to see this from their perspective, my grandfather was eerily quiet and my mother who had given birth to him; watched him grow to a man was fighting tears. She held his hand and kept looking at it then his face. I understood Noah’s reaction. Despondent. We were all despondent at the thought we could lose him.
Ronan’s doctor walked into the room while we were all having this introspective response. Lost in our own thoughts. I knew this guy. Vijay Kalamata was a good doctor. “Liam,” he shook my hand.
“Vijay. Can you tell us anything?”
He looked at everyone in the room. “Hippa,” he replied. “Your brothers’ records list your parents as next of kin. I can only speak with them.”
“The rest of us will go out in the hall,” I said.
“Please let Liam stay,” my mom requested. “I need him and Ronan won’t care.”
Vijay nodded. The others cleared the room and stood by the nurses’ station while Vijay looked through the folder in his hand. “As we suspected what your son took was a dose of heroin laced with animal tranquilizer carfentanil. It isn’t the first case tonight that we’ve seen of this. He’s very lucky he isn’t dead.
“We’re going to keep him sedated until we’re sure the seizures have stopped. He seems stabile at the moment but he’s still critical. His EKG looks good. EEG also looks normal so we don’t think there is long term damage. His kidney’s took a hit. The numbers are dangerously out of the normal range. We’re hoping they will bounce back with fluids. If not, we might try dialysis which can kick-start them into working again.”
“Is this long term damage?” My mother asked.
“I don’t believe so,” Vijay told her. “He seems relatively healthy. No heart or brain damage that a long term heroin user might show signs of. If this was a first time thing, hopefully he won’t do it again.”
Mom nodded. “How long will you keep him sedated?”
“Until we see the drugs are no longer in his system,” Vijay replied. “I want to be sure he doesn’t have more seizures. No more cardiac issues. He was barely breathing when he arrived. Little or no pulse. He’s very lucky his friends dropped him here when they did.”
“Is he in trouble?” She asked.
“There are tapes of his friends dumping him in front of the hospital from the hospital security system but unfortunately no one will do anything. You need to talk to him when we bring him out of the coma,” Vijay said. “This could have ended very badly for him. He needs to get help.”
“We will,” I assured him.
Vijay left us. I laid my hand on Mom’s shoulder and asked her what she wanted me to do. Our fifteen minutes were up. I had to clear everyone out but two people. “Can I stay with him?”
I nodded. “Want me to get Dad?”
“Yes.” She was nodding her head at me but she looked so lost.
