The automatic doors open, and time dilates.
“Three-year-old male . . . respiratory arrest . . . down eighteen minutes . . . no rhythm . . . CPR performed in the field.” The paramedics roll the stretcher into the emergency room, and everyone springs to action. The latent energy in their bones is released in one brilliant, near-acrobatic display. The medics are still performing CPR on the tiny bundle in the stretcher. One guy stands at the head with a tiny ambu bag while another stands at the chest, performing compressions.
“Pool?” Steven asks.
“Bathtub.”
“How long was he in the water?” The doctor’s voice is emotionless. He follows the stretcher into the room.
“The mom says only a minute,” the medic says between compressions. “But he was cold when we got there.”
They transfer the body onto the bed and push the stretcher out of the way. Jo and Steven and Emma work as one graceful unit, attaching wires to the boy’s body, continuing CPR, fetching anything and everything that the doctor calls for. The paramedics are extraneous now, but they have paperwork to fill out.
I have to remind myself to breathe, because every time they inject something into the boy’s line or push air into his lungs or check his always-absent vital signs, I feel like I’m the cold one. The dead one. It could be me on that table. It should be me.
And this goes on for hours. No, minutes. But when you live it, it’ll feel like hours. You’ll beg for it to be hours. You’ll tell yourself that this all took place in a parallel universe where seconds are minutes and minutes are hours. That the doctor and nurses have been trying to revive that little boy for longer than is humanly possible. Because there’s no way that anyone would give up on a child in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn.
“Time of death,” the doctor says, “is ten twenty-nine.” He yanks off his gloves, tosses them to the floor, and walks away.
I can’t stand without the wall, so I lean and wait while the paramedics trade paperwork with Emma. And I watch that body sleeping on the bed, small and still as a doll that I saw once at a garage sale. It was an ugly, plastic, scuffed-up thing that I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting. But beat up as it was, I knew that, at one time, someone had loved it.
After the paramedics leave, the emergency room returns to status quo. Just Steven and Emma and Jo and me, and the nearly empty box of doughnuts. Only now there’s a dead toddler not twelve feet from where I’m leaning. My legs still feel wobbly beneath me.
“I want . . . ,” I say. “May I try CPR?” The words fall out of my mouth and hit the floor. My brain is disconnected. I don’t even remember thinking that I wanted to try to perform CPR on the little boy, but once the words are out there, I know that I need to try.
They look at me as if they’d forgotten I ever existed. Emma covers her tiny cry, and Jo buries her fists in her hips and I know she’s thinking that if she were my mother, she’d tan my hide for staying when she told me to leave. But I don’t care. They don’t understand. I’m supposed to be here, supposed to do this.
“Please?”
Steven shakes his head. “Not a chance,” he says, but there’s a moment of hesitation when he looks from me to the boy with the tube poking out of his mouth and back to me, and I think that maybe I do have a chance.
I’m not sure if I can stand without the wall.
The twelve feet between me and the boy isn’t really twelve feet. It’s a hundred miles, and I’m pretty sure that I can’t span them. Not even if I crawl. Except that I’m walking. One foot in front of the other.
“You’ve let me take vitals before, and I’m already CPR certified. I need to know what it feels like on a real person . . . so that I don’t freeze when it counts.” I’m talking underwater. Words are bubbles that grow from my lips and drift to the surface.
Steven’s face is a mask of ache. He’s a crumbling tower. “That’s a person, Drew.”
“Not anymore,” I whisper, but even I don’t believe it. Watching CPR is one thing. I’ve practiced on dummies and I’ve seen it done in the field on ride-alongs, but I’ve never done it on a real person. Not even when it could have made a difference. “I have to do this.”
My feet shuffle my reluctant body across the floor. I’m floating. I’m in the room. By the bed. I’m not looking. I can’t make me look.
I don’t know what changes Steven’s mind. Maybe it’s the rawness of my voice, the determination I wear over every inch of my skin. Maybe Steven sees more than I give him credit for. I don’t know. Maybe I never will.
“If you’re alone,” Steven says mechanically, “compressions are the most important part of CPR. You have to keep the blood circulating.” I’ve heard all this before. Compressions at a rate of one hundred per minute. Sing “Stayin’ Alive” to keep the rhythm. Then Steven says, “Go on and put the heel of your palm between its nipples.”
Steven doesn’t refer to the child as a he, but he is a he. A he with black hair and black eyebrows and brown eyes and blue skin. Little, little, little. Too little. Too late.
“Nipple line,” Steven repeats. I glance back at Jo and Emma for help, but they busy themselves avoiding me and Steven.
I obey. Memories batter the wall I’ve built up against them. I don’t want to touch the dead baby he, but I do. His skin—it’s not like they say in movies. It’s a raw porterhouse. Cold and damp and so, so dead.
“With a child this young, you can use one or two hands,” Steven says. “Compressions should be about one-third to one-half the depth of the chest, or two inches in this case.” Steven’s voice is monotone and steady as if we’re discussing the proper procedure for changing a car’s oil.
“Yeah,” I say. My voice breaks.
“Go ahead and press down.”
Pushing is difficult. The boy resists. I lean into it, putting my weight behind my hands.
Push.
One and two and three and four.
I mumble the words to “Stayin’ Alive” under my breath, almost laughing at the lunacy of using disco to stave off death.
And five and six and seven and eight.
Vomit oozes out of the boy’s mouth, foamy and gray. There are some carrots and maybe some squash. It’s all squashed.
“If you had a partner, they’d be at the head, bagging the patient.” Steven’s still lecturing, but I’m not listening. He’s not human anymore. He’s dead eyed and automatic, and guilt gnaws at me for getting us both into this.
The song sticks in my brain; I keep repeating the same words. They can’t bring the boy back, but maybe they can shield me from the horror of this moment. Under my hand, his ribs crack and splinter. I stop, stumble backward into the wall. The boy sits up and sings along.
I throw up in the trash. Some lasagna, water, pretzels. I make an inventory of everything I’ve eaten over the last couple of days and look for it at the bottom of the bin.
“Drew?” Steven rubs my back and I force myself not to flinch.
“I’m fine.”
“I should never have agreed to that.”
Jo can’t ignore me anymore. Her shallow well has refilled, or it’s deeper than I thought. She hisses at Steven and then says, “Drew, are you—”
“I’m fine!” I scream, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Where’s my baby?” a woman wails through the window at the admitting desk. “Where’s my Emilio?”
Emma rushes off to intercept the parents, and Jo says, “I’ll get Dr. Gelbwasser.” Steven ushers me out of the room and closes the white drape behind us. I’m sure he’s regretting his decision to let me practice CPR on the boy, but he doesn’t seem to suffer for dead Emilio as he does for Rusty. Maybe he sees something of himself in my burned boy the way I see pieces of Cady in Emilio. Maybe hell is seeing the lost loved painted over the faces of the strangers we meet.
“Emilio,” I say. The mother is too young for this kind of pain. She’s rabid, clawing and kicking and screeching at Emma. Her world is b
ehind that sheet—shattered and broken—and she will spend the rest of her life trying to piece it back together.
“She’s going to want to see him, isn’t she?” I ask.
Steven nods. “The hardest thing is for a parent to lose a child.”
I slowly back away. “Unless it’s the other way around,” I say. And then I run.
When I was young, I ran because my bones hurt.
I was ten, and the doctors said that it was a growth spurt, that I’d get over it. Moving helped, so I ran anywhere and everywhere that I could. My dad called me the Man in Motion. Running became my obsession. I thought I could outrun the pains of growing.
Maybe if I run fast enough now, I can outrun the dead boy on the gurney. Outrun my thundering heart and his tiny baby hands and my own hurt. Everything hurts. But I realize that I’m not running from the boy. I’m running from the memories. From the guilt. No matter how far or how fast I run, I won’t ever escape this pain.
When I reach the ICU, I stop. Beads of sweat collect in my eyebrows and run down the sides of my nose, tickling my face. I hadn’t meant to come here. I’ve been avoiding this place, yet here I am.
There’s a space between the doors, and I peer through. The ICU is quiet and dark. One nurse sits, watching the monitors.
Rusty’s still in there, beating and breathing and fighting.
There’s no way for me to sneak in without opening the doors, but my need to see Rusty eclipses my fear. I need to know that someone in this hospital is going to be all right. Sometimes I wish I were Patient F so that I could move through the walls and no one would know.
I am not Patient F, and I cannot move through walls, so I wait. Eventually, the nurse gets up and heads toward the bathroom, muttering about something under her breath. I don’t have the time to wonder what’s on her mind. As soon as she’s gone, I open the double doors and slip inside.
I feel like a cat burglar, walking on tiptoes, creeping along as quietly as I can to avoid detection. There should be another nurse around here somewhere, but I don’t see anybody else in the hall, and I sneak into Rusty McHale’s room.
The moment I’m in Rusty’s room, I know what the nurse was muttering about. It was about him. Rusty. His moans are a rip current that pulls me under, tumbles me, and tries to drown me. They ebb and fade and rise again, a cacophonous symphony of pain, pain, pain. Maybe the nurse didn’t go to the bathroom after all. Maybe she just needed to escape this awful place and this awful noise, the way my own brain is telling me to flee.
Only I don’t. I can’t. Not twice in one night.
Rusty’s room is nothing like Lexi’s or Trevor’s. There’s nothing of the boy here. No photos or flowers or balloons. There are machines. There are two chairs. There is a sink. On the wall across from the door, there is a window with the blinds pulled low. And in the bed, there is a boy on fire. His right arm and chest are wrapped with bandages, and I can’t see his legs under the blankets, but they’re elevated so that he forms a human V.
He finds no peace in sleep. His pain ages him. Steals into his dreams. He can’t fight this pain, because it’s intangible. All he can do is try to survive it.
The nurse’s shuffling footsteps scratch across the floor, and I duck down beside the bed, putting Rusty between the nurse and me. It’s lonely down here, and I wish that I’d brought some music, but I suppose that if Rusty can’t escape his pain, neither should I.
Still, I need to fill the silence.
“My parents died,” I hear myself saying all of a sudden. “My parents and my little sister, Cady.” My voice is a whisper, and I’m not sure Rusty can hear me, but part of me hopes he can, that maybe my voice will help him forget his pain, if only for a moment. “Right here in this hospital, they all died.”
Time tries to drag me back to that night, to that second, but Rusty anchors me here. His nightmares keep me safe.
“I huddled in a corner, forgotten, all cut up and dirty and half-dead. I watched Death take my whole family. One by one. First she took my dad. Then my baby sister. Then my mom.” Walking through the memories is like walking over hot coals. The faster I do it, the less it hurts. But less is relative.
“Dad was the worst. Cut up and broken, his head split like an egg. He was dead as the medics brought him through the doors. Cady went next. Her little body lost too much blood. I maybe could have saved her if I—” My voice breaks, but I can’t stop. “Mom held on the longest. She was always the fighter in the family. But in the end, Death took her, too.”
Rusty’s moans crescendo, and I hear the nurse get up from her chair and head our way. I burrow deeper into my hiding spot, make myself as small as I can, wishing for invisibility.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” the nurse says. She’s standing at Rusty’s other side, her clean white sneakers peeking beneath the bed. “Your morphine is turned up as high as it can go. Just try to sleep.” Her voice is worn out, thin. Rusty is dragging her to the edge. She stands there for just a moment longer and then leaves. I hear her feet slowly padding back the way she came.
“Death would have taken me, too,” I whisper once Rusty’s moaning has faded—more likely from exhaustion than relief. “But she was late. And now I live here, hiding from Death, trying my best to keep her from catching me.” I reach for his unburned hand. It’s soft, and his fingers are long like a piano player’s. My own look clumsy and stubby in comparison.
“Just hold on,” I tell him. “One day soon, you’ll get out of here, you’ll leave, and you won’t remember this pain.”
Rusty squeezes my hand and, shocked, I look up. He’s staring down at me with a desperate look in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” I say. My voice trembles, now that I know he’s listening. “I’m a friend.”
Rusty’s hazel eyes grow wider, then relax. He hasn’t got the strength to fear me. But his grip is still tight. He’s crushing my bones, and I let him. What do I need my fingers for, anyway? If Rusty wants to transfer some of his pain to me, so be it.
We remain there, Rusty on the bed and me on the floor, connected by eyes and skin, gripping each other in the quiet night as if we’re afraid that we’ll go spinning off into the void of the universe if we let go. I wish there were some way to take Rusty away, to build a new world for him, a world where he’s safe.
Reality is so raw, so coarse. It’s like acid, eating away every day at our nerves. I hurt how he hurts, and I would do nearly anything to end his pain.
“Don’t let them take me,” Rusty says. The words form lightly on his lips, and I catch them before they rise like dandelion seeds and float away.
I search Rusty’s wounded eyes, looking for the truth, and I find it: Down under the morphine haze, buried beneath the layers of agony, is fear. Fear of the people who hurt him, fear of death, fear of out there. I couldn’t save Emilio and I couldn’t save my parents or little sister, but maybe I can save Rusty.
It won’t make up for what I’ve failed to do, but it’s a start.
“Okay,” I promise. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Death likes scrambled eggs.
She sits in the corner of the caf talking to a ponytailed doctor who looks like she’s on her way to a soccer game rather than an appendectomy. They’ve been chatting for an hour over cold eggs and plain oatmeal. I wish I knew what they were saying. Reading lips is more difficult than it looks in movies. The only words I make out from Death’s glossy red mouth are “grapes,” “digger,” “pirate,” and “shriven.” Either she’s far more dangerous than I thought, or I suck hard at lip reading.
Rusty’s parents are here too, along with the girl that I saw in the emergency room the night he came in. I don’t try to read their lips. There’s nothing to read. They eat their breakfasts with their heads bowed. Silent. Slow. As if Rusty is already gone. An hour from now, if you ask them what they ate, I doubt they’ll remember.
I’m not working this morning, I’m only pretending to work so that I can keep an eye on Death. Ever since
the night that she failed to take me, I’ve done my best to avoid her by hiding in plain sight. Even when police came, flashing that crappy picture of me from when I was fourteen and had acne and shorter hair, no one knew I was the boy they were searching for because I was smart and gave them no reason to suspect. But now, things have changed. I have to protect Rusty, and that makes the game far more dangerous.
I stayed with him all night, then slipped out when the day nurses arrived. He didn’t say anything more. It wasn’t necessary. Rusty doesn’t want to go, so I’ll make sure that Death doesn’t get her manicured fingernails anywhere near him—even if it means that I have to track her all day.
The thing about Death is that she’s predictable. She eats every morning at seven thirty. Usually alone, but sometimes with her friend. Maybe they play tennis together or belong to the same gym or share an occasional kiss in an unlit hallway when the days at the hospital feel too long to bear. Death never leaves. Death lives here. She’s married to her job.
Arnold sidles up next to me and admires my handiwork. He’s smiling today and singing some rap song that he must have heard on the radio. The tune is catchy, but the words make no sense.
“It’s funny,” Arnold says. “Is that chicken supposed to be angry?” He tilts his head to the side and regards the dry-erase board like it’s a Picasso.
I put away the markers, but I keep one eye on Death. She and her doctor friend are doing more talking than eating, so I should have plenty of time before she leaves.
“The chicken on the left is being nice,” I say. “And the other one, with its wings crossed, is upset.” I tap the board. “Sweet and sour chicken.”
“You are brilliant!” Arnold exclaims, drawing unwanted attention. “I especially like the vegetables wearing bow ties.”
“There’s not much I can do with vegetarian bow-tie pasta.”
“No,” Arnold says, “it’s perfect.” He’s trying too hard. Something about him isn’t quite right. He’s like one of the songs he hums—slightly off. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and work today?”
The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley Page 5