Nurse in Recovery

by Dianne Drake

  “Like a man my size is sitting on my chest.”

  Probably sixty, balding, pudgy, he was the driver who’d slid off the road, causing the initial impact that had started the chain reaction of the five-car pile-up. Scared to death, he wasn’t physically injured except for a few bruises, but in the aftermath of a mild heart attack he was still at risk of more damage.

  She took his vitals, and except for the fact that everything was slightly above normal they were strong. Steady pulse, good blood pressure, normal respirations. “Any history of heart trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Family history?”

  He shrugged. “It’s all my fault,” he choked. “All those people hurt because of me.” He was clasping at his chest, his breathing still a bit ragged. His color was still pallid, too. Luckily, he’d recognized his symptoms when they’d started—pain in his left arm and jaw, pressure in his chest—and chewed an aspirin before help arrived. Even a small dose of a blood thinner, like an aspirin, decreased the risk of death substantially, and the one he’d taken might have saved his life.

  He was another of the unexpected victims coming through her emergency doors—someone else who would be forced to cope with tragedy regardless of job, family, friends, expectations, plans.

  Taking his hand for an instant before he was transferred to Cardiac Care, Anna offered quiet reassurance. “It was an accident. Not your fault.” Easy words, empty reassurances.

  A few more victims straggled in, none in serious condition, none even requiring more than minor treatment, then finally it was over. Anna’s blue cap went back on, along with her purple mittens, and she was out the door…finally!

  “Geez,” she muttered, plunging into the gushing, frigid wind. It was bitterly cold and fighting her every inch of the way. She was an Indiana girl through and through, and in her thirty-one years there’d been plenty of blizzards this bad, or worse. But she hadn’t charged them head on as tired as she was now. And as exhausted as she’d been when leaving the ER, she was twice as exhausted when she finally crossed over to the very last parking aisle, just a few steps away from her brand-new Jeep, an indulgence to celebrate her promotion to charge nurse. It was an extravagance, but practical in weather like this.

  And, yeah, there was a little bit of vanity involved. This was her first new car ever.

  Fumbling in her pockets for her keys, Anna pulled them out, holding tight since the mittens were bulky and awkward and she refused to take them off even for a minute.

  Behind her, a car attempting to maneuver into the parking lot slid into a wide, uncontrolled turn. But Anna didn’t see it, didn’t know that instead of braking the car was headed right at her, because she was busy trying to get the key in the lock. Not an easy thing to do in the snow and the wind, and in mittens. But she did it, she got the key in—at the same instant as the impact.

  “What…?” Anna felt the car hit her and ram her into the side of her Jeep, pinning her there, upright and alert for only that split second. In that instant, her eyes opened wide in bewilderment. It was too fast to understand, too fast to feel. Thankfully, the cold, white blanket of unconsciousness came down to cover her before the realization hit and the pain exploded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “ANNA, wake up.” Sunny’s quiet, familiar voice emerged from the dream. “Open your eyes, Anna, and look at me. Look at me, Anna. Open your eyes for me, sweetie. Let me get a good look at those baby blues.”

  She wanted to open her eyes for Sunny. She tried but they were so slow…so heavy. Can’t open…Not right now. Too tired. Words she thought, maybe words she said. She didn’t know, didn’t care. So much was jumbled up in her head, not making sense, and she couldn’t make it all stop. All the spinning, all the confusion…

  “Anna? Open your eyes. Listen to me, Anna. It’s Sunny.”

  Sunny, I’m trying…

  “Anna, can you hear me?”

  Can’t I just sleep another hour? Then I’ll open them…promise.

  “Come on back to us, sweetie. We need you to come back to us.”

  Coming… The weight of opening her eyes was exhausting, but she had to get back there. They needed her. Another shift to work, more patients. She had to go back. Fighting through the heaviness, Anna did manage to open her eyes a crack, but they wouldn’t focus because of the bright overhead lights. Why were they so bright? Somebody, please, turn them down…

  “Anna?”

  Sunny’s hair. A blurry shock of red. Anna tried to smile at Sunny, but her face hurt. Everything hurt. Well, almost everything. Her left shoulder was really sore, her right shoulder only a little. And her ribs—they hurt so much when she took a breath…

  Omigod, the pain! Not her pain, couldn’t be. Another breath. More pain. Dear God, can’t be me.

  It was the pain that brought her around, heightened Anna’s awareness. Pain so excruciating…Panic! “I…can’t…breathe,” she choked, trying to grab the air around her with her hands and pull it to her face. “Please…help…me!”

  “Anna, you’re fine. Calm down.” Sunny’s voice again. It sounded so funny, though. Like through a hiss…Is that an oxygen mask on my face? She’d never worn one for real. Only for training. Why was she wearing one now? This isn’t training, is it?

  Can’t remember.

  Can’t focus.

  And she was cold…so cold. “Blanket?” she asked, but she didn’t hear her voice actually say the word. All she heard were orders being shouted all around her. “Labs, CT scan, OR…” That’s right. Now she remembered. She was working triage.

  But why is it so cold? “Turn up the heat,” she struggled to say. “Get some blankets on the patient, stat.” Stat—immediate, right away, pronto. She needed those blankets pronto. “Stat,” she echoed faintly.

  “We’re warming you, sweetie,” Sunny said. “As much as we can. It’ll take a little while before you feel it, but we’re doing everything we can. You were out there for quite a while before we could get you free. And you’re going to have to go to OR pretty soon, so we can’t bring your body temperature back up all the way since they’d have to take it right back down.” Sunny said something else that sounded vaguely like going into shock again, but Anna wasn’t sure about that. Who was going to surgery pretty soon? One of her patients? Dear Lord, no! Had she missed something in Triage? Had she made a mistake?

  “Who?” she choked. “Did I miss someone?”

  Sunny’s tears splashed down on Anna’s arm. She felt them, and tried fixing her eyes on her friend’s face to see if she was crying. But the light—so bright. And Sunny didn’t cry, at least not on duty. “I need to go home,” she managed. “Get some sleep. Hospital policy…So tired.”

  “You’ll sleep in a few minutes, sweetie,” Sunny said. “And when you wake up…”

  Why was Sunny holding her hand? Not right. Something’s not right. That’s what she did when— “Tell me,” Anna interrupted, suddenly grasping that she should be feeling a sense of urgency, but unable to find it under the thick blanket of lethargy over her. She was the patient here, not the nurse. “What’s wrong with me, Sunny?” Anna cried.

  “Some lady in the parking lot lost control of her car on the ice and hit you, sweetie, but Dr Ambrose is getting ready to take you upstairs to surgery in a few minutes.”

  Dr Phillip Ambrose? Chief of neurosurgery? No, not him. He never worked nights except in an emergency. “Sunny?”

  “Right here, sweetie.”

  Sunny’s face was finally coming into focus. So were those of a couple other nurses and Bonsi. Was he crying, too? “I was getting into my car and—” Anna stopped abruptly. “My car! Damaged?”

  Sunny tried to nod, and her trickle of tears turned into choking sobs. Covering her face with her hands, she turned and ran from the room, leaving Dr Ambrose to respond in her place. “You’ve got more important things to worry about than your car, Anna. We’re sending you upstairs for a few more tests, then on to surgery, and we’ll know more later.”

>   Know more about what? She didn’t feel that bad. Her mind was clearing up a little. So, what more did they need to know? “Why the tests?” she asked.

  Dr Ambrose, a distinguished African-American with soft eyes and softer hands, took both Anna’s hands in his. His face contorted into a look Anna recognized, one she hated when she saw it offered to other patients. One from which she always tried to look away.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered, her lips beginning to tremble. Her hands trembled, too. And she tried to jiggle the body parts that didn’t hurt at all, only to discover why there was no pain.

  As the avalanche of her own medical knowledge slammed into her, Anna began assessing her damage the way she would assess the damage to any other patient. Movement above the waist normal. Movement below the waist…

  The brutal shock seized Anna as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

  Paralyzed!

  July

  “I’m not going to let some stranger come into my home on the pretext of fixing me. What you’ve been doing is fine, and what’s not already fixed isn’t going to be fixed.” She was angry today, as she’d been every day for the past six months but, damn it, it was her life, what was left of it anyway. And they didn’t get it. None of them did. “For months, all you’ve done is tell me what’s best for me, what I can do, what I can’t. And I’m sick of it. Now that I’m home, I’m in charge of my life, and that goes for hiring the people who will take care of me. And this Mitch whatever his name is…I don’t want him. I don’t want anybody else!”

  Anna spun her wheelchair around to face the window, then folded her arms defiantly across her chest. “My legs may not work anymore, but the rest of me does, and that includes the part that’s perfectly capable of making decisions. And my decision today is that I want to be left alone.” They all meant well—her father, Sunny, Lanli Liu, her physical therapist and second-best friend—but she was tired of their well-meant intentions, and pretty much tired of them, with their expressions of sympathy on the edge of every glance and gaze. Then there was the way they were always treading on eggshells, and, oh, how they trod ever so lightly around her. On days like this, when she was bitchy as all get out, they should have yelled back at her, defended themselves, told her to shut up then walked away. Heaven knew, she would have, but they never did. And she hated that. Hated everything, most of all what she was doing to the people who loved her, to the people she loved.

  “I don’t mean to be like this…so disagreeable,” she said, her voice softening, “but I just want to be included in my life. Except for this thing…” she slapped the wheels of her chair “…I’m the same person I was before the accident, and that person resents being treated like a baby.”

  “But you’re not the same person, Anna, and that’s the problem.” Lanli paced back and forth in the dining room turned makeshift exercise room, then stopped. Her back to Anna, she gripped the waist-high therapy table and blew out a sharp-edged huff of irritation. Anna’s slow and unsteady progress over months of physical therapy came with exhausting and usually unwilling effort, and it was taking its toll everywhere. These last few weeks, Anna’s irritability level had increased about a hundred percent, and her willingness to work had decreased likewise. “Look, I know you’re frustrated…” She spun around to face Anna, extending her hand, palm side out, to stop Anna from arguing. “And before you tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be you, you’re right, I don’t. But most of the people I work with do know firsthand, which gives me some pretty good insight. So maybe you’re tired of being treated like a baby, but when you act like one, what do you expect?”

  “I expect to be left alone. That’s what.” Anna backed away from the window, rolled into a small magazine table in her path, then punched it with her fist, sending it skidding across the hardwood floor until it hit the wall, crashed and fell over. The damned hardwood floor—before she’d even made the last payment on her barely trodden-on plush carpet, her dad had ripped it out to facilitate her wheelchair, and she hated the bare wood. Hated the ramp at the front door. Hated the handrails in the bathroom. “I expect to get on with my life as it is, thank you. And I expect people to quit nagging me.”

  “You need upper-body strength, Anna, if you ever intend to haul yourself up on crutches, which I think you can. And Mitch will be better for you than I am, since all we seem to do is fight and I’m not getting through to you anymore. I’ll stay on for some of the basics, but he’s a sports rehab doctor—at least he used to be, he’s taking a break right now—and he’ll have some special insights I don’t. I hope so, anyway, because I’ve got to tell you, Anna, what I’m trying to do for you isn’t working, and I’m getting frustrated, too. Real frustrated.” Lanli picked up the small table and carried it back to its place. “If you expect to get on with your life, you’ll have to learn how to take care of yourself, and apparently I’m the not the right person to teach you how. And Mitch…” Lanli smiled, a wicked glint coming to her dark eyes. “Well, he has a special touch.”

  “So when that sports rehab burnout doctor and his special touch teach me to get up on crutches, then what? Will I run a marathon, maybe go skiing?” Anna snapped. “Or can I go back to my job? You know, the one where I’m on my feet ten or twelve hours a day.”

  Lanli grabbed the wheelchair handles and spun Anna around to face her. “What you’ll do on crutches is make yourself a little more independent. You’ll be able to get your own butt out of that wheelchair, maybe even perform simple tasks around the house. And, no, no marathon. And, no, not your old job. But there’s a place for you in nursing if you want it—once you get rid of that god-awful attitude.”

  “Yeah, right…teaching! Those who can’t do, teach.” Anna hissed a contemptuous breath, and her eyes sparked defiance at Lanli. “So tell me. Can I teach Kyle to look at me the way he did before this?” She picked up her right leg, then let it drop. “Really attractive, don’t you think? Something any man would want in his bed. Did you know that, except for an occasional peck on the forehead, he hasn’t even kissed me since this happened? Hasn’t held my hand. Hasn’t even looked me in the eye.”

  Turning back to face the large picture window, Anna’s sigh was mixed with sadness and frustration. She wanted to be part of the beautiful July day outside. She wanted to go out there all by herself and take a walk, be free of the grind that had dictated every minute of every day of her past half-year. But reality kept her anchored not only to her chair, her house, her keepers, but to a big cloud of uncertainty hovering over everything.

  And she wanted desperately to be more than a watcher from the window.

  “There’s nothing wrong with teaching, Anna, and that’s just my point. The old Anna would have been grateful there was still a place for her in nursing—any place at all, because she loved it so much. But you…” She shrugged. “You don’t love nursing enough now to fight your way back into it. And as far as Kyle’s concerned, if he can’t look at you the way he should, like a man who’s in love with you, it’s his problem. Not yours.” Lanli went to stand by her friend, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’ve been dumped a time or two, and it hurts. I really thought he’d be more supportive about this. It’s too bad he can’t.”

  “I haven’t been dumped,” Anna protested. “Kyle’s busy at work, and he hasn’t had enough time to adjust.” The words were utterly unconvincing, even to her ears, because everyone knew that Kyle’s workload was an excuse at a time when he should have been standing by her. He was still adjusting, she’d kept telling herself all those long, lonely nights when his phone calls had had to suffice. And then even those phone calls had grown shorter and shorter, more and more infrequent. “He’ll do better when there’s not so much pressure on him.” She said it, but that didn’t mean she believed it. Not anymore.

  “I know this is difficult for Kyle, too,” Lanli said, “but I’m sorry his insensitivity has to come back to bite you, because you don’t deserve it.”

  “The only thing tha
t’s difficult for that bastard is the few minutes he spends with my Anna once or twice a week,” a deep voice boomed from the hallway. Frank Wells—seventy, tall, stately, bushy gray hair, sad green eyes—strolled into the living room and plopped down into his well-used recliner, the only piece of furniture he hadn’t put into storage when he’d moved in with Anna. “I always said he wasn’t good enough for my daughter, and now the look that comes over him when he visits her makes me want to kill the bum.”

  Anna wouldn’t look at her father. Looking at him would provoke an argument about Kyle she didn’t want to have, an argument that had started months ago and had found a perpetual life. “Be fair, Dad,” she said impassively. “Kyle’s dealing with my situation the best way he can.” That much was true, but there was nothing to say that his best way also had to be good. It wasn’t, but she wouldn’t admit it. Not to them, and not even to herself.

  “He’s dealing with it the best way he can?” Frank laughed bitterly. “Well, so am I, and so are a whole lot of other people who really do care for you, Anna. And you don’t see any of us trying to avoid you like your so-called fiancé is doing, do you?” He sighed wistfully. “You’re a beautiful girl, sweetheart, so much like your mother. And he can’t stand the sight of you. It shows.”

  Anna laced her hands tightly in her lap, shutting her eyes. So like her mother…blond hair to the shoulders, blue eyes, slender frame, delicate hands. Yes, in the mirror, when the reflection stopped at her waist, she did look like her mother. But when the mirror was full length, none of her mother was reflected. Everything turned into a hideous facsimile. These days Anna avoided all mirrors.

  “So when is this Dr Durant supposed to be here?” she asked Lanli, hoping the subject of Kyle Lassiter would take a back seat to the has-been doctor she didn’t want anywhere near her.

  “Who’s Dr Durant?” Frank piped up.

  “He a sports rehab doc who might be able to help Anna build her upper-body strength so she can become functional on crutches. He’s taking some time off from his practice, not doing much of anything lately except a little carpentry around his house, carving bowls and selling them at craft shows.” She smiled. “And he owes me a favor, so I thought, what the heck. He might as well give it a try since no one else can get through that thick skull of hers.” Glancing affectionately at Anna, she added, “So don’t waste this favor, girlfriend, or you’ll be the one owing me.”