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Chapter Twenty

Brian


Nick immediately stopped breathing. The ventilator had pushed the air into his lungs just before I withdrew it. I'd hoped that his chest would somehow continue to rise and fall even without the machine reminding it to, that perhaps he'd become more self-sustaining without the doctors even realizing it, but his throat restricted and he began choking on oxygen. I knew we had less than a couple minutes to pull this off, to make this work.

Time seemed to stand still. It was as though we were all paused as Leighanne leaped forward, grabbing hold of the foot of the bed and wheeling it quickly toward the door, pulling Nick out into the ward. I helped her, directing the bed from the head, my hands shaking as I gripped the handles. Margo followed.

As we swung Nick - who was now gurgling, his body already getting desperate in its oxygen-deprived state - through the doors and into the ward, a nurse I didn't recognize stepped out of one of the other rooms, and upon seeing Nick, a look of horror crossed over her face. She looked at me, "What in the hell are you --"

"Saving his life," I answered.

Leighanne joined me on my end and pushed the bed quickly around the half-moon nurse's station as the nurse stood there, jaw dropped, eyes wide, speechless and helpless. Nothing could've stopped us at that point.

Not even Carrie, who rushed out of another room and started shouting for us to stop immediately. "Stop! Stop! Who extubated him?" she shrieked, "My God." She looked at the other nurse and in a take-charge voice, she shouted, "Get shots of morphine and lorazepam. Now." She hurried to my side and helped to direct the bed as the other nurse rushed to get the shots from a tall cabinet in the station.

Alarms started going off from the station as doctors were alerted to the situation.

Leighanne rushed ahead and pushed open the door to room ICU-8, and I put all of my weight into shoving the bed forward, toward the room. The ward doors opened and Jane walked in carrying a take-out container from the cafeteria, and her jaw dropped when she saw us trying to manuever Nick's bed into the room. "What do you think you're doing with my son?" she screamed.

Leighanne tugged the bed through the door just as Nick's body started to convulse just a little bit on the bed and I realized that we were fighting a losing battle.

Margo was up and out of the wheel chair on wobbly legs helping us guide Nick into the room. Leighanne swung the end of the bed 'round and we pushed the extra gurney already inside out of the way, and positioned Nick as close as we could to the center of the room.

"What are you doing!" Jane shrieked, her eyes a panic, "What are you doing? I didn't authorize this!"

The other nurse rushed into the room with the two shots and handed them to Carrie. "Nobody authorized this," Carrie said, looking at me, her eyes narrow. "I could lose my career for this," she snapped.

She was prepping the needles.

Nick's body shook.

Nothing was happening. He wasn't waking up. He wasn't getting better, he was getting worse.

He was dying.




Nick


I fell to my knees on the tile floor, my palms smacking down. My throat burned. "Fuck," I choked out. One moment, I'd been walking along, and the next I was down, my brain spinning out of control, oxygen rushing out of my lungs at top speed. I crawled a couple feet, dragging myself forward.

What the hell was happening?

I stared ahead. I could see the door to the ICU ward ahead of me, looming like an oasis in the desert.

Was this what dying felt like? I wondered.

I had to see her one last time.

I'd gotten in the car, I'd driven almost ten miles away from the city on the interstate, when I'd reached a fork in the road. One direction offered the east and the other the west and I'd sat there, facing the split in the road, looking at my options, and I'd idled there, trying to decide what it was that I most wanted to see in the world.

That's when I'd turned back.

There was nothing in the world I wanted to see, I'd realized, except for her.

Now, laying on the floor in the hospital, I pulled myself forward, my palm sticking to the tile... I dragged myself forward. I had no hope of getting up to my feet, the energy was seeping out of me like I'd fallen and shattered open.

Was unpaused me dying? I wondered.

"Margo," I choked out her name, my voice hoarse. I somehow managed to get through the first door to the ICU ward. I felt like I was nine and crawling GI Joe style through my mother's flower beds - a pasttime I'd done and gotten in trouble for a lot when I was a kid...

Was this my life flashing before my eyes? I wondered.

I gasped for air, but no matter how hard I tried, it seemed like nothing was going into my lungs. I wheezed as tears came into my eyes.

This had to be what dying felt like.

It hurt. A lot. I felt like I'd been severely beaten up. I felt like I'd been run over by an eighteen wheeler, I realized.

Oh the irony.

I reached my hand up, toward the door of ICU-8, and watched it tremble... What I wouldn't do for someone to come along and take a hold of it... "Margo," I whispered, and I felt tears streak across my cheeks.

Maybe I should just stay here, I thought. It'd be so much easier to just lie still and give in to it, not to fight it. I stared up at the door, less than ten feet away, looming ahead of me... an impossible goal.

I was starting to get dizzy... the longer I stared up at the door, the blurrier it got, shrouded by the tears and the haze of my mind.

I lay my head down, my cheek pressed to the cool tile and I closed my eyes.

"Please Nick... where are you?"

"I'm here," I hissed, unable to get enough air to replace what I was expelling. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the light that would take me away.

"You promised you'd be there with me! You promised I wouldn't be alone!"

I struggled to look up at ICU-8 again.

"M-mm-margo?"




Brian


I looked at Margo, desperate to hear her say this was what she'd expected, but the look of horror on her face, wide eyes and quivering lower lip told me it was most certainly not what she'd expected.

Carrie pushed around Leighanne to the left side of Nick's body and took his still-restrained arm and slid the first of the needles into his arm. Almost immediately, the shaking stopped.

"What are you doing to him?" I demanded. I looked at his mouth. He was still struggling for air, still getting just the smallest amount to keep him alive.

"Sedation to keep him calm, it'll help with the shaking," she said, holding up one syringe, then she slid the other into his arm, "And morphine to stop the pain." She looked up at me, her eyes teary, "It's painful business, dying."

"He isn't dying," Margo snapped, "He's got to wake up. He's got to. He promised he'd be here, he promised." She grabbed Nick's hand. "Please. You promised, please." She stared into his face.

Jane was sobbing.

"You said you'd be here," Margo pleaded into his ear, "Please. Please. Please, Nick..." Tears were pouring down her face. "Where are you?"

Nick's throat moved with the struggle for air. I wanted to close my eyes, wanted to not witness this, but I felt responsible, I felt obligated to at least see him through. I owed him that much didn't I?

Leighanne grabbed my hand.

Margo's voice trembled as she sobbed, pulling Nick's hand over her eyes. "You promised you'd be there with me! You promised I wouldn't be alone!"

And there we stood... all of us waiting, our breath held, for Nick to keep a promise.