Nathan nods, then reaches out and rubs my upper arm with sympathy.
His touch catches me off guard and stirs an awareness in me—maybe because it’s been more than twenty years since any man other than Alan has touched me with tenderness or intimacy. But this isn’t sexual. That’s not what’s happening here. It’s something else—support and understanding—and I find myself wanting to fall into it.
Then I feel a rush of guilt because I’m accepting comfort from a good-looking man who isn’t my husband and in my heart I’m still Alan’s wife. I may be angry with him for what he did, but I can’t stop loving him. I’ll always love him, despite everything. And I miss him. I wish he were still alive, that none of this had ever happened and we could simply go back to the way things were.
But of course, that’s not possible.
“I should probably go.” I fumble to open the glass door of the exam room.
Nathan follows and escorts Winston and me down the hall to the reception area. I walk past the front desk, then stop in my tracks and turn. “Wait. I need to pay you.”
I realize I’m a bit frazzled.
He holds up a hand. “No. Please don’t worry about it.”
“But it’s a Sunday. You opened the clinic especially for me. I can’t not pay you.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not a problem. Besides, Ruby’s not here, and she’s the one who handles payments. So as you can see, my hands are tied.”
I swallow uneasily. “Okay. Have her send me a bill then?”
He shrugs a shoulder and grins, as if to say he probably won’t.
I let out a breath and take in the features of his face.
He truly is a handsome man. I hadn’t actually noticed before today. I suppose I’ve been walking around in a daze. It’s nice to know something in me is still awake and breathing.
Shaking my head to clear it, I turn to go and lead Winston across the reception area. Nathan follows and holds the door open for us. “Good night, Abbie. Get home safely.”
“I will. And I’ll see you later. Thanks again.”
I lead Winston to the car, and he leaps into the back seat and turns a few circles, tail swishing back and forth, as if something fun and exciting is about to happen. His enthusiasm is infectious.
“What are you so happy about?” I ask, laughing and rubbing his head.
As I get into the driver’s seat and start the car, I realize I’m still smiling. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to believe there might actually be a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and that I’m going to be okay . . . eventually, like Nathan. I just have to keep getting out of bed each day and putting one foot in front of the other. Like all good soldiers must.
Later that night, after Zack and I return home to Halifax and I’m in my pajamas in bed, a text comes in. It’s from Nathan. Hey there. Did you get home safely?
I quickly thumb a reply. Yes, we’re home safe and sound. Thanks for checking on us.
I hit “Send,” then wait to see if he’ll respond. After a few seconds, my phone chimes. A message is waiting. No prob. It was nice to see you today. Glad Winston’s doing well.
I smile and type, It was nice to see you too. You always make me feel better about things.
His reply comes in a moment later. Happy to help. You just have to hang in there, and call if you ever want to talk. I’m a good listener.
I take some time to think about how I should respond. Eventually I text, Thank you. I will.
Sitting up on the pillows, I stare at my phone and wait for his reply. Finally, a message comes in: Have a good night.
I smile again and respond, You too. Sleep well.
We end it at that, and I turn out the light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The following day, I make an appointment to see my family doctor about the dreams I’ve been having, as well as my fatigue. The receptionist asks me to come in that afternoon at four. I thank her and hang up. Then I scrub in for my next surgery.
“Scalpel, please. Skin blade,” I say when things are underway.
The scrub nurse, as she’s done so many times before, places the instrument in my hand.
“Okay to start?” I say to the anesthetist.
“Yes,” she replies. “Patient’s asleep with good paralysis.”
I lean in with the scalpel and steady my hand, preparing to make the first cut. My vision is a bit hazy, so I hesitate.
“Are you okay?” asks Dr. Moore, the junior surgical resident assigned to me this month.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say with a forced air of confidence and proceed with a one-inch cut above the patient’s belly button.
“S retractors and sponge, please,” says Dr. Moore.
He carefully makes his way down to the fascial layer.
“Suture, please,” I say as I prepare the first of two anchors for the laparoscopy port. Deftly cutting a small opening into the delicate tissue, I dissect deeper and reach the peritoneum. “Hasson trocar, please. Gas on. Camera off standby, please. Let’s have a look.”
I slide the camera through the Hasson into the abdominal cavity. The liver looks ratty and lumpy. Probably advanced cirrhosis. “Damn, I wasn’t expecting this.”
The gallbladder is distended and swollen and looks like it’s ripe and ready to pop. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
I add a couple of extra ports and use graspers to grab the gallbladder, but it’s plastered against the liver and small bowel.
I pause for a moment.
Dr. Moore can read my mind. “We’re going to have to open?”
“Not sure,” I say, dissecting a bit more, only to realize I’ve torn into a small pumping bleeder. The spray covers the camera lens.
“Damn! Take out the camera, and clean the lens. I’ll need clips quickly.”
With a clean lens and a few clips, I finally manage to stop the bleeder. “Let’s convert to open.”
We remove the laparoscopy equipment, and I make a large standard incision below the right lower rib cage. At least we’ll be able to see.
All the while, I feel a fog rolling into my head, growing denser by the second. I want to lie down and take a power nap, but I can’t possibly surrender to that temptation when I have an anesthetized patient lying with an open abdomen on the table in front of me.
I fight through the haze and squeeze my eyes shut every few seconds, then open them wide and blink hard to stay focused.
“Are you okay, Doctor?” one of the nurses asks. She sounds a bit concerned.
Dr. Moore glances up from an artery he’s clamping and waits for me to respond.
“My eyes are a bit dry,” I explain, even though there’s a tingling sensation in my brain, like some sort of electric impulse, and it’s making me uneasy because I’ve never felt anything like this before and now’s not a good time for a headache, when I’m holding a patient’s life in my hands.
Relief floods through me when I finally clip off the cystic artery and cystic duct and painstakingly dissect the gallbladder off the liver bed. Everything looks dry, so we start closing as nurses count sponges and instruments.
“Double-stranded PDS to close fascia, please.”
This is it. I’m on the homestretch now as I close the wound. I just need to stay awake for another half hour or so, and then I can go collapse somewhere.
“Stapler to Dr. Moore and two pickups to me, please.”
Suddenly, alarms start going off. I glance at the monitor. The patient’s BP is dropping fast, and his pulse is racing ever faster.
Adrenaline sparks in my veins, which is not unusual at a time like this, but today it causes my knees to buckle. The surgical instruments fall from my hands, and I go down hard with a tremendous thump on the floor.
My eyes are closed, but in my mind, I’m conscious of the sounds and activity around me. The surgical team takes charge of the situation and moves around the table.
“I got this,” the resident says, while a nurse runs for the door and calls
for help.
Machines are beeping everywhere. All I want to do is scramble to my feet and save the patient’s life—or at least supervise the resident—but I can’t move. My body refuses to respond to my brain’s commands. In my head, I’m screaming, Get up! But I’m paralyzed.
A nurse, Corinne, crouches beside me, finds the pulse at my neck, and drags me away from the table to give others room to work. She rolls me onto my back and speaks close to my face. “Dr. MacIntyre, can you hear me? You fainted. Hello!”
I know I fainted! But I’m awake now! I just can’t move. Please, make sure the patient is okay. Check the arterial clips. He’s probably bleeding!
I’m thinking these things in my brain, but I can’t get my mouth or vocal cords to work.
The anesthetist works with the resident, who is barking instructions to the nurses. “We got a pumper at the liver edge. Clamp, please. Suction! I can’t see!”
It’s driving me mad that I can’t do anything to help, and I don’t understand what’s happening to me.
Is this real? Am I dreaming again?
Or am I dead?
A gurney bursts through the doors to the OR.
Corinne says to whoever is pushing it, “She passed out. She’s unconscious.”
I’m not unconscious! I hear everything you’re saying!
I’m still listening to what’s going on above me . . . the resident is focused . . . alarms are still screaming . . .
I’m as limp as a rag doll, but I feel every movement, every hand on my body as they lift me onto the gurney, extend the wheels, and roll me out of the OR. My heart thunders in my chest. I want to tell them what’s going on—that I’m still here—but I can’t. I’m trapped inside this physical shell that won’t move.
One of my colleagues—Jack Bradley, an ER doc—helps push the gurney somewhere. I don’t know where they’re taking me.
“She collapsed in the middle of a surgery?” he asks with disbelief.
“Yes,” Corinne replies. “She just passed out without any warning. Went down like a ton of bricks.”
“Did she complain of chest pains or anything beforehand?”
“No, but she said her eyes were dry. She was squeezing them open and shut as if she was having trouble seeing.”
The gurney swings around and comes to a halt. All I can do is lie there like a corpse while they place an oxygen mask over my face and wrap a blood pressure cuff around my arm.
“All right—stat glucometer, and let’s get a twelve-lead EKG, put her on O2, and get her on a heart monitor. We’ll need a full lab panel and a pregnancy test. Abbie, can you hear me? It’s me, Jack.”
He lifts my eyelids and shines a penlight at my pupils.
Inside my head, I’m screaming and shouting, desperate for someone to hear me and understand that I’m conscious! I fight for the strength to move—please, just a finger or toe—but it’s no use.
And I don’t need a pregnancy test, for Christ’s sake! I had a hysterectomy, not to mention the fact that I haven’t been sexually active in months.
Then something happens. I manage to push through the physical resistance. My hand is limp, but I can lift my wrist, then my fingers. My plea for help finally escapes my lips, though it comes out as a low, weak, pathetic-sounding moan.
“She’s waking up,” Corinne says.
My eyes flutter open, and the first thing I see is Jack leaning over me. He’s a young ER doc, known for his passion for surfing. “Can you hear me, Abbie?”
I nod my head and take in a deep breath as my muscles begin to work again. I lift both hands, wiggle my fingers, and try to sit up.
Jack eases me back down, which is just as well because I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. All I want to do is go to sleep.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks.
I know the routine, so I answer everything he’s about to ask me. “Yes, you’re Jack Bradley, and my name is Abbie MacIntyre.” I swallow heavily and fight for the strength to continue. My voice is weak, and I can’t speak very fast. “It’s Monday morning, and I just collapsed in the OR. But I’m okay now.”
“Let me be the judge of that. Can you tell me if you had any symptoms beforehand? Dizziness? Chest pains? Corinne said you were blinking, as if you were having trouble focusing. You said your eyes were dry?”
I lay my open palm on my forehead. “Yes, but that wasn’t the real problem. I felt sleepy, and I was trying to stay awake. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, taking frequent naps in the day. I have an appointment to see my doctor about it this afternoon. But I’m not pregnant. I had a hysterectomy years ago.”
“Okay. Good to know. How long has this been going on?” Jack asks.
I try to think. “Since my accident, I guess. I thought the fatigue was stress related, but lately I’ve been having some strange dreams that are more like hallucinations, and this is the second time I’ve passed out—although I didn’t actually pass out just now. I was completely conscious and awake. I could hear everything that was going on around me. I just couldn’t move my body or open my eyes or speak. It was total paralysis.”
“Okay . . .” Jack stalls for a few seconds while he mulls over everything. “And this started happening after your accident?”
“Yes.”
He turns to one of the other nurses. “Let’s get someone down here from neuro. Tell them who the patient is, that it’s Dr. MacIntyre.”
“Really . . . ,” I say, “I don’t want any special treatment . . .”
The nurse goes to a phone to make the call, and Jack touches my arm. “You’re not on anything, are you? Any medications? Alcohol? Illicit drugs? I need to know.”
I shake my head.
“Then tell me more about how you felt in the seconds just before you collapsed. Describe the experience to me.”
I pause. “Okay, but first, can you tell me what’s going on with the gallbladder patient? Is he okay?”
“We’ll check on that for you.” Jack makes eye contact with another nurse, who leaves the room.
I take a deep breath and think back to how I felt just before I collapsed.
“I was tired,” I tell him, “but that’s nothing new. Like I said, I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. But then I felt a tingling sensation in my head. I thought it would pass and that I was going to make it through the rest of the surgery, but then the patient’s blood pressure dropped, and alarms started going off. I felt a rush of adrenaline, and that’s when my knees gave out, and I couldn’t hold on to the instruments. My whole body just wilted. It was like all my limbs turned to spaghetti, and that’s why I fell. But like I said, I was conscious the whole time. I was fully aware of everything that was happening in the room. I could hear the resident and the anesthetist taking over, and then I felt myself being lifted onto the gurney. I heard Corinne tell you that I was blinking a lot and that I said my eyes were dry.”
Jack frowns at me. “Was it like . . . an out-of-body experience?”
Of all the doctors I know, only Jack would ask that question.
“No, I was very much inside my body, and my eyes were closed, so I couldn’t actually see anything, and yet I could see it in my mind. It was like I was trapped, and I wanted to break free from the paralysis, but I couldn’t.”
He nods at me. “You say your knees buckled when you felt the panic from the alarms going off?”
“Yes.”
A nurse returns with news about my patient in the OR. “Everything’s fine,” she says. “They’re just closing up now.”
“Thank God.”
Jack glances toward the door to the trauma room and pats my arm. “I’ll be right back. Just stay put, okay?”
Even though I have plenty to do in the hospital and another surgery scheduled in an hour, I don’t put up a fight because all I want to do is sleep. As soon as Jack is gone, I close my eyes and fall into a fitful slumber in which I dream that I’m skiing fast down a snow-covered mountain, unable to slow down because it’s too steep. I’m terr
ified I’m going to plummet to my death.
Then suddenly I’m being chased by a mugger in a city neighborhood. I dash into an alley, search for a place to hide, but there’s nowhere to conceal myself, so I just keep running, leaping over bags of garbage . . .
Someone touches my shoulder and shakes me hard. I wake with a gasp.
The head of neurology is standing over me, watching me intently. I’m surprised to see him, and I worry that I might have been moaning or talking in my sleep, none of which is terribly professional.
At least this time, I know I was dreaming. I have no illusions that I was actually skiing down a snowy mountain or running from a thief who wanted to hurt me.
I try to sit up, but I feel weak and groggy. “Dr. Tremblay . . . how long was I out?”
“About ten minutes,” he tells me. “How are you feeling now?”
“Rotten,” I reply, leaning up on my elbows. Then I decide it would be best to rest my head on the pillow before adding, “And exhausted. Like my body is made of lead. I’m just so tired.”
He ponders that and nods with understanding. “Dr. Bradley told me what happened. He described your symptoms to me, but I’d like to hear it from you. Can you tell me everything you remember, leading up to the moment you collapsed? And anything else you think is relevant about your health.”
“Of course.” I explain my fainting episode again and the level of awareness I had, along with the strange dreams I’ve had at home over the past few weeks. And my car accident.
Dr. Tremblay listens attentively.
I also mention that I’ve put on a few pounds.
When I’m finished telling him everything, he asks, “Are you aware that you were dreaming just now?”
“Yes. Was I moaning? Or tossing and turning?”
“No, but your eyelids were fluttering. You’ve been in a state of REM since the moment I entered the room.”
He raises an eyebrow, and I understand why he’s telling me this—because we both know it’s not normal to enter the REM phase so quickly after drifting off. It should take anywhere from eighty to a hundred minutes.
“So . . . what do you think is going on?” I ask him, and I feel inadequate because I don’t know the answer myself. I’m a physician. Shouldn’t I know what’s wrong with me?
A Curve in the Road Page 17