Life Support: Escape to the Country

by Nicki Edwards

  As she took off after the orderly, Emma heard the familiar anguished sound often heard in the emergency department. A raw choking cry. The sound of agony mixed with terror and pain. It would have torn at her heart if she hadn’t heard it countless times before. All that registered was if the man was making noises, at least he was still alive. For now.

  Ten minutes later Emma returned to the main department from x-ray. The noise within the department had increased tenfold. The number of doctors standing guard outside the resuscitation bay also seemed to have doubled. They stood, arms to their sides, waiting for further instructions. Among them would be different surgical teams as well as ICU staff.

  “Emma.”

  She turned and saw Rory, her unit manager, barreling toward her. Irish, redheaded and hot-blooded, if Emma had to choose another brother, she would have chosen him. He was frowning.

  A chill chased up her spine. “What’s up Roar?”

  “Hell needs you in there now. They need an extra pair of hands. I’ll take your patient back to her cubicle.”

  Emma groaned. “Really? Why me?”

  “They need to intubate him. He’s not going to make it but we have to go through the motions until we can find someone who knows who he is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have no idea who he is. He’s got no ID on him. No phone. Nothing. Police are still at the scene, but the car’s a mess. Tiny sports car was found wrapped around a tree down a ditch in the Dandenongs. They’re still checking the car rego and trying to find out who he is.”

  Emma swore softly as she shook her head sadly. “What do the cops think happened?”

  “Not really sure. At this stage they assume he fell asleep at the wheel. The car was smashed head-on into a tree. Could have happened late last night. The car wasn’t spotted until first thing this morning. You know how thick the bush is up there.”

  “Poor bugger.”

  “Get in here now Emma,” Helen yelled. “I need you to bag him.”

  Emma grabbed a pair of gloves from the box on the wall and moved to the head of the bed where she got her first real view of the man on the narrow bed.

  He was undoubtedly once a handsome man, but the impact with the tree had smashed his once smooth face beyond recognition. Sandy blond curls were matted with blood from where he’d scalped himself. His eyes were closed. Tiny shards of glass covered much of his blood-streaked face. His lightly freckled nose was off center and his right cheekbone was most likely shattered, judging by the misshapen face.

  Emma was about to brush away the glass when time stopped.

  She made a strangled sound as her knees gave way. Grabbing the side of the trolley, she made herself stay upright. Bile forced its way up her throat and she knew she was going to be sick.

  “Lleyton.” The name came out in a wavering, high-pitched scream. “Oh my God, it’s Lleyton. It’s Lleyton. It’s my husband. Lleyton—”

  Hands grabbed her as her legs buckled and she collapsed to the ground.

  “RORY!” Helen screamed.

  Emma heard more shouting before she fainted.

  *

  The intensive care waiting room was empty, but it felt cramped, as though the walls were closing in on her. This was the room where families received bad news. Emma knew that because she’d helped doctors deliver bad news to people in rooms like this. She’d held hands and provided tissues and a shoulder to cry on while the doctors gave families the news they never wanted to hear.

  Sorry, the biopsy showed the cancer cells have spread.

  Sorry, the treatment hasn’t worked.

  Sorry, we did everything we could, but he hasn’t made it.

  Emma was used to dealing with trauma patients, but until today they had usually been faceless, nameless strangers. Huddled in the corner, she sat waiting as wave after wave of emotions washed over her. After seeing Lleyton lying on the trolley in the resuscitation bay, she realized she was unprepared for his death. She might not love him anymore but that didn’t mean she wanted him to die.

  The cloying scent of lilies reminded her of a funeral home and made her feel sick again. Patients in intensive care weren’t allowed flowers, but visitors didn’t know, and brought them anyway. Rather than sending them back with the relatives, the flowers were left, forgotten, in the visitors’ lounge until they wilted and died. Sooner or later a cleaner or someone else would throw them away. It was such a waste. In Emma’s opinion, if families felt the need to bring something, they should bring chocolates – for the nursing staff.

  Emma felt a trickle of sweat run down between her shoulder blades. She lifted her scrub top away from where it clung to her skin. Why was it always so stuffy in hospitals? And the smell. Even the lilies couldn’t cover it. Why had she never noticed it before?

  She slumped down on the uncomfortable couch and stared at the six matching chairs opposite her. They were arranged in a straight line and she noted the scratches in the beige paintwork where the chairs had scraped against the wall. A small lamp in the corner was supposed to soften the room and provide an ambient atmosphere, but the overhead fluorescent lights ruined that idea. A low-line laminate coffee table was shoved into the corner. On it sat a pile of outdated magazines, a Gideon’s Bible and a box of tissues. She’d already emptied half the box and was still clutching a balled-up wad of used tissues. Cups of coffee appeared as if by magic as the hospital chaplain periodically stopped by to check on her, but they remained undrunk on the table, and a thin skin of milk had formed on the surface of each one.

  It had been six hours and Lleyton was still in theater.

  After she’d recovered from her faint, Emma had felt like a fraud when they’d asked her to sign the consent papers for the surgery needed to save her husband’s life. They asked her, because as far as everyone knew, she was his next of kin. His wife. There was no way she was going to admit they were separated, about to get a divorce.

  Thankfully, Rory had stepped in and saved Emma further pain by contacting Lleyton’s parents. They were flying back from Queensland. Emma dreaded their arrival. Her eyes flicked up to the clock on the wall. Two o’clock. Where had time gone? How long had she been sitting there waiting? Hadn’t it been just after seven o’clock that morning when the paramedics had brought him in?

  The image of Lleyton, broken and helpless, flashed across her mind again without warning and she stifled another sob. Surely he couldn’t die.

  A short, plump nurse with silver hair stopped at the doorway. Emma jumped up, placing a calming hand to her churning stomach. The older nurse’s weathered face held a sad expression. Emma knew that face. The “bad news” face she called it. She’d used it herself.

  Emma felt paralyzed, yet with an effort she forced herself to stay standing. Tenting her hands in front of her chest like a prayer, she stared at the other nurse.

  “Is he—?” she stammered.

  The woman didn’t smile. “He’s made it through surgery and he’ll be back here shortly. Ten minutes or so.”

  “I want to be in the room when he gets back.”

  “I’m sorry, you can’t. It’s against protocol. When he’s sorted we’ll come and get you.”

  “Please.”

  The nurse raised her eyebrows, then sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.” Spinning on her orthotics, she left Emma alone again. She returned moments later. “You can come in, but you have to stand and watch. You’re not there to help, okay?”

  Emma nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She mouthed her thanks.

  “Come on then.”

  Emma squared her shoulders. “What about Lleyton’s parents? They should be arriving soon. Someone should be here for them.”

  “I’ll call pastoral services.”

  Emma nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”

  On shaky legs, she followed the other nurse into the intensive care unit. It was different from the emergency department, which was constantly full of rushing movement and vibrant color, of sounds and of peo
ple. Here the atmosphere was calmer, more controlled. And there wasn’t a visitor in sight.

  Machines beeped and pinged around her as they passed the main nurses’ desk and headed toward the one empty room in the unit. A nurse in scrubs was inside, checking equipment and getting ready for Lleyton’s arrival back from surgery.

  “Jenni, this is Dr. Chirnside’s wife, Emma.”

  Jenni appraised her, taking in Emma’s scrubs and nametag.

  “She works downstairs in ED. She knows she has to sit in the corner and watch,” the older nurse explained.

  Jenni nodded and greeted Emma. “I’m sorry about your husband.” Her warm voice brought instant calm to Emma’s racing mind.

  “Thank you. And thank you for letting me stay.”

  “Just don’t get in the way.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Five minutes later, they wheeled Lleyton into the unit. Watching them, an ache formed in the back of Emma’s throat. Two nurses, a surgeon, and a woman Emma presumed was the anesthetist accompanied Lleyton. They were all dressed in matching sets of pale blue theater scrubs and wore bright-colored bandanas over their hair. Their facemasks hung loosely around their necks, revealing pale faces with dark shadows under their eyes. No one smiled. Words were spoken in hushed tones and once again, Emma noted how different everything was from the emergency department.

  Jenni disconnected Lleyton from the bag valve mask and attached the tubing to the ventilator she had already set up in the room. The machine alarmed and Emma clenched and unclenched her fists as she willed Jenni to press the button to silence it. Everyone was still for a moment, watching the machine. Soon two green waveforms chased their way across the screen and they visibly relaxed. The machine was doing its job – breathing for Lleyton. Keeping him alive.

  Emma tuned in and out as the anesthetist and surgeon talked to the intensive care doctors. She overheard snippets of their conversation and didn’t like what she was hearing, so instead she focused on the nurses as Jenni took handover from the theater nurse, untangling lines at the same time. Everything within Emma wanted to get up and help but she sat on her hands and watched.

  “Emma?” The wrinkles on the surgeon’s face drooped, reminding Emma of sagging power lines. His eyes were tired and unsmiling. “I’m Rick Knight, one of the team who operated on your husband.”

  “The knight in shining armor,” Emma said, forcing a smile.

  Her joke fell flat and she instantly regretted opening her mouth. Rick’s body language indicated he was about to deliver bad news. Lots of it. Emma held her breath.

  “I don’t have to tell you the next day or so will be crucial.”

  Goosebumps exploded across her arms and she rubbed vigorously at them, feeling suddenly chilled to her core. “Is he going to make it?” Surely he would? After all, they’d just done surgery, fixed the things inside Lleyton which were broken. Hadn’t they?

  Rick cleared his throat. “Lleyton’s brain is—”

  Emma’s eyes widened. No. She’d seen the monitoring wires coming from Lleyton’s skull and knew what they meant. Intracranial pressure monitoring. If he had a brain injury … She shuddered. She would not let her mind go down that path.

  “There’s a lot of swelling. We won’t know until it goes down.”

  “Won’t know what? Whether he’ll ever be normal again?” She caught the expression on Rick’s face and once more wished she could swallow her words.

  “That’s not how we like to put it,” Rick said kindly.

  “What are his chances?”

  “As I said, until the swelling goes down, we simply have no idea.”

  She ran her hands through her hair. It would be a long night. Thoughts raced. Should she call her parents? Or perhaps her sister-in-law? Kate was an ICU nurse and would be able to answer all of Emma’s questions. How were Mary-Margaret and Win going to cope seeing Lleyton like this?

  Rick touched her shoulder, ending her racing thoughts. “We will all be praying he recovers.”

  A tear spilled down Emma’s cheek and she brushed it away with the back of her hand. It sounded like it would take more than prayers for him to pull through. “Thank you Dr. Knight. I know you’ve done everything you can for him.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.” Shoulders hunched, he shuffled out of the room leaving Emma with a hollow feeling inside her stomach and a heaviness in her heart.

  Jenni stood at a large desk positioned at the end of Lleyton’s bed. She unfolded a large sheet of paper and recorded Lleyton’s vital signs. Emma waited for her turn to approach the bed even though what she really wanted to do was flee from the place and never come back. Pretend this day had never happened.

  She shouldn’t be here. Lleyton shouldn’t be here.

  Jenni finally looked up from her paperwork. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten you were here. Go on, touch him. Hold his hand. The sedation is cranked right up, but you never know, he might be able to hear you.”

  If he’s not already brain dead. Emma’s stomach curled on itself before she stuffed the thought back down.

  She approached the bed with a sense of trepidation. They had positioned Lleyton on his back and his tall, muscular body lay immobile on the air mattress. A blue hospital gown covered his upper body. It had slipped off one shoulder and she gently tugged it back into place, careful not to dislodge any of the monitoring leads attached to his pale body. With his face swollen and bruised, his eyes puffy and closed, his head shaven, he was practically unrecognizable. She squeezed her own eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath. He looked far worse than he had when he’d arrived in ED.

  A thin tube came from his nose draining green fluid from his stomach into a clear plastic bag hanging under the bed. Emma smoothed the skin-toned dressing across his nose where it had lifted on one side. Another plastic tube came out of his mouth – the endotracheal tube – and it was attached to more plastic tubing that snaked its way toward the ventilator like a hose. A central venous catheter poked out of the skin on the right side of his neck. Attached to it were half a dozen lines that wound like clear spaghetti across his body to the back of the bed. Behind him, IV pumps and infusions dripped fluids and medications from plastic bags and syringes.

  Jenni suctioned the tube, adjusted transducers and wires and sorted through the spaghetti of plastic leads and lines. How did they keep track of everything?

  Jenni saw her looking. “We’ll keep him comfortable, I promise.”

  Emma nodded as something pinched in her chest. Lleyton would hate this.

  “He’s not going to make it, is he?” As soon as the question was out of her mouth, she wished she’d thought first. She clamped her lips shut. Lleyton might be in a coma, but as Jenni had said, chances were he could still hear her.

  Jenni hesitated. “You heard Dr. Knight. We won’t know much more until tomorrow. The head injury—” She paused and Emma saw the pained expression on her face. “My job is to get him through the night.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry. This is just such a shock.” She inhaled and exhaled. “Lleyton’s a doctor. He wouldn’t want this.” A single sob escaped.

  “Trust me, no one wants this.”

  Chapter 6

  At some point, day became night, but Emma never noticed. Just before nine o’clock the next morning, over twenty-four hours since his accident, the Chirnside family arrived. Emma heard them coming before she saw them. She ducked her head out of Lleyton’s room and groaned quietly. They blew in like a high-pressure weather system – dark and ominous. Emma felt the hairs on her arms rise. Winston and the girls – Lleyton’s three older sisters, Olivia, Laura and Claudia – tailed Mary-Margaret. Mary-Margaret was pale – like a woman who had aged ten years overnight, a woman whose life was irrevocably changed. Winston was stoically silent. No one was crying, which surprised her. She’d expected her mother-in-law to be in hysterics. Instead, they stood side by side, not touching, separated by grief.

  Three men followed in their wake, all neat
ly dressed in near-identical charcoal business suits. No doubt the girls’ husbands were on their respective ways to work when they’d been summoned to attend the hospital. A fourth man, also in a dark suit, followed behind them. Something about him was vaguely familiar, but Emma couldn’t place how she knew him.

  The unit manager stopped them all in their tracks when they tried to barrel into the department.

  “Two at a time and Emma’s in there now. Decide who is going in first and the rest of you can go into the waiting room. And wait there until it’s your turn.”

  The nurse gave no chance for argument and though she was exhausted, Emma was unable to stifle a small smile at the woman’s polite but bossy manner. She whispered a quick prayer for strength before she stepped out of the room and greeted them. She might not get along with her parents-in-law, but deep down they were good people and right now, like her, they would be hurting. For all Win’s gruff exterior and bossy ways, and Mary-Margaret’s domineering and controlling manner, they did love their son.

  “Win. Mary-Margaret. It’s all right, you go in. I’ve been here all night.”

  As soon as they saw her, the men shuffled, awkward and ill at ease. Olivia started crying, which set her sisters off.

  “How is he?” Mary-Margaret asked, ignoring her sniveling daughters.

  Emma gnawed on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from asking why they hadn’t come to see him straight away, even if it had been in the middle of the night. “How about we all go into the waiting room first and chat. I can fill you in on what’s happening.”

  They were standing in the busy central hallway, blocking other people’s paths. Emma didn’t want them to cause a scene in the middle of the unit where curious eyes watched through glass-fronted rooms.

  Mary-Margaret brushed Emma’s hand away. “No, that’s fine. Winston and I will go in and see him first. Emma, you can get the doctor and he can come and speak to us.”

  Emma clamped her lips shut. Typical. No “please” or “thank you” from Mary-Margaret. Emma had expected to see a more human and broken side to her mother-in-law, but the usual dragon was in place, breathing fire and spewing vitriol. Emma ground her teeth together and forced a smile. Her husband was lying in a coma on life support and she did not need any more grief from her mother-in-law.