AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A code blue is not a gentle process. CPR is violent. It’s an assault. Bad things happen to patients in an often vain attempt to save lives. Of the people who go into cardiac arrest in the hospital, most don’t live and of those who do, many have a permanent neurologic disability and few live meaningful lives. It’s awful, but I have to make peace with that. I can’t feel guilty this time for allowing a patient to die.
People come running into the room, bringing the crash cart. Natalia takes over with chest compressions. I’ve mustered tears and am visibly upset.
“What happened, Meghan?”
“I gave another patient’s insulin to her by mistake,” I admit, breathing heavily, knowing that after she’s dead, there will be an autopsy. They’ll find the insulin in her system. Lying would only make things worse; it would make me look guilty. But being honest will go a long way in the future. There will be leniency. The fallout won’t be as bad because there are systems in place to protect nurses who make genuine mistakes, so long as they tell the truth.
I say when and how much was given. I admit to having miscalculated the dose too, to moving a decimal point, and the room becomes instantly frenzied. Organized chaos, everyone cramped into a small space, so hyperfocused on their own task, but working toward the same goal.
Only I have a different objective.
They want her to live.
I need her to die, and she does.
The time of death is called. People step back and let their breath out at once. Someone turns off the machines and they fall silent. An ease descends on the room like fog, a brief moment of inactivity before everyone drifts away, back to whatever they were doing before Caitlin went into cardiac arrest.
I stand there, motionless for a while as people leave and others come in to express their condolences and ask if I’m okay, as if the loss is mine, as if I’m bereaved.
Alone in the room with her, I try telling myself this is just another patient, any other patient who died. But the reality of what I’ve done starts to sink in and consume me until I’m sure I see her heart beat through the thin bedsheet, an almost negligible rise, the barely audible thump-thump, thump-thump, and I have to pull the sheet back to see that she is dead, that she’s really dead, pressing my fingers to the carotid to feel for a pulse, her skin paling now, cold to the touch and something like a silicone cake mold.
She’s dead. She is really dead.
Someone steps in to tell me that the charge nurse wants to speak with me. I knew this was coming—it was inevitable—and that it will be the first of many conversations in the coming days, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling overcome with dread.
“What happened, Meghan?” she asks when I go to her, and I fall apart, I lose myself completely. I sob, sputtering some version of the truth.
She’s consoling. “It was an honest mistake, and the fact that you owned up to what happened will go far. But, Meghan,” she says before I leave, “I’d get a lawyer just in case.”
I leave her office, taking off for a nearby fire escape, which no one ever uses. When I come to it, I press my hands against the panic bar, rushing through the steel door and into the stairwell. I climb up, walking at first and then running up the steps, taking them two at a time so that I’m breathless, my legs filling with lactic acid by the time I reach the top, where I stop, bending at the waist, putting my hands on my knees. I turn and drop down on the stairs, gasping, wheezing, tasting my lunch in my mouth—sour now, saliva mixing with stomach acid—rising up my throat, collecting inside my cheeks and under my tongue. I fight the urge to be sick. It takes effort, conscious thought. I close my eyes; I breathe in though my nose, holding the air in my lungs, exhaling through my mouth. Again and again. I lean my head against the wall, grateful that it’s cold against my face. My entire body starts to shake, an unrelenting convulsion like an epileptic fit. I’m hot and sweating but cold at the same time, like all the times I’ve woken up with night sweats, soaked in my own sweat but cold and shaking from the drying moisture on my clothing, sheets and skin.
I can’t let anyone see me like this.
I can’t let Sienna see me like this.
With unsteady hands, I reach into the pocket of my scrubs to find my phone. I stare at the image of Sienna for a long time, and then I type a text for her, Hey. I think carefully through my next words because Sienna is astute and she knows me better than anyone.
I think I’m coming down with something. Do you want to see if you can sleep at Gianna’s tonight? I don’t want to get you sick.
It’s so unlike me, to pass Sienna off on a friend, to suggest she invite herself to sleep over at someone else’s place. If Sienna had suggested something like this, I’d have said absolutely not, that it’s rude.
But I can’t see her right now. I can’t look at her after what I’ve done.
Sick how? she asks.
I don’t know. Stomach flu maybe. Just text Gianna, ok? Let me know what she says.
This is weird, Mom. I can’t just invite myself to her house.
I know. I’m sorry. But you have the ACT next week and the winter dance next weekend. You can’t be getting sick. Do you want me to text her mom and see if it’s ok?
No. That’s embarrassing. I’m not five.
Ok. Then text her.
I set my phone on the stairs beside me. Eventually I’ll have to get up. Eventually I’ll have to leave. There are things to do before I can go home for the night, my only saving grace that it’s after seven now and the night shift has come in; the day shift is leaving.
It only takes a minute and then Sienna texts back to let me know that she will be sleeping at Gianna’s, and I’m relieved. I need Sienna gone. I need the apartment to myself. I need to think, to fall apart, to worry, to cry, all in private. I don’t bother asking if Gianna’s parents will be home, which generally I would. Normally I’m a stickler for things like that, always insisting that I get confirmation of a parent’s whereabouts before I’ll let Sienna stay with a friend overnight. I was sixteen once; I know what sixteen-year-olds do when left alone for any extended time. But tonight that’s the least of my concerns.
