specimens as she crossed a particularly uneven patch of ground covered with a bristly stubble of wild grasses.
Yet somehow, naively perhaps, she hadn’t expected guns.
Chapter 3
His endotracheal tube came out the next morning.
He got the answers to his questions a few hours later.
That’s when the chief of cardiology dropped by to inform him personally that Steele had obstructed the left anterior descending branch of his coronary artery, the supplier of blood to the entire front of his heart.
This came as no surprise. He knew it to be the site most commonly associated with ischemia, or loss of circulation, in a large enough area of cardiac muscle to induce ventricular fibrillation—the state where the chambers stop pumping and the entire organ becomes a quivering useless mass.
“But the balloon restored your perfusion quickly enough that it minimized the permanent damage, Richard, and your all-important ejection fraction remains near normal. You certainly picked the best spot possible to arrest,” the old man assured him.
Yeah, right, thought Steele. How clever of me.
“Such a good outcome is the result of our getting to you so fast, made possible of course by Dr. Betty Clarke’s being so on the ball.”
“Betty who?”
“Your resident, man! The one who resuscitated you and saved your life in the first place.”
Steele spent the rest of the day hurtling between memories and dreams, and they were all of Luana.
Just like at home, he thought. Except here he couldn’t get up and brace himself with a cigarette or knock back one of the increasingly large nightcaps he’d resorted to ever since her death. Instead, he had to lie inside the curtains of that cubicle, enduring his grief without the usual diversions, until the sense of confinement left him feeling suffocated and his heart doing sprint trials, setting off all the alarms again.
The nurses ran in and once more sedated him past remembering, but this time he ended up in a nightmare. Dreaming that he was spread out and shackled, he became a specimen on a slide, squirming under the glare of some unknown inquisitor who tried to dissect him with questions.
Will you stop running now?
I can’t.
Don’t you realize you nearly died?
Of course.
You could still be out of time, yet you care so little
for Chet?
He woke up screaming and pulling on his IV lines while struggling to get out of bed.
When they brought out the restraining belts and threatened to tie him down, he determined simply to stay awake. Sitting there alone, unable to escape his thoughts, for the first time in his life he felt that there might never again be a tomorrow for him. “Physician, heal thyself,” he muttered nervously, wanting to take stock, yet having lost faith long ago in the powers of introspection. After all, as a doctor he grasped from the beginning what had happened to him since Luana died.
Prolonged grief reaction
read the official diagnosis, except naming it and reading about it had never once stopped him from being in its grip for the last eighteen months. Even when he understood, with counseling, that it wasn’t so much the grief, but rather
“a sustained, panic-ridden obsession to
escape the process altogether”
that was at the root of his problem, he simply refined his avoidance techniques. Working extra shifts in ER had been his greatest diversion. Then, while trying to kid himself that he’d covered up the problem and that no one would notice, he declared himself cured and dropped out of therapy.
Of course, the doctor in him continued to understand. He’d launched on a fool’s strategy, he knew—
“serving
only to prolong the patient’s agony, leaving him trapped
forever in the very grief he runs from”
the textbooks had assured him. But like a junkie fleeing before the fearful horrors of withdrawal, he couldn’t stop. As a result, he robbed his work of the joy it had once held for him, turning it instead into a mind-numbing ordeal that left him
Yet somehow, naively perhaps, she hadn’t expected guns.
Chapter 3
His endotracheal tube came out the next morning.
He got the answers to his questions a few hours later.
That’s when the chief of cardiology dropped by to inform him personally that Steele had obstructed the left anterior descending branch of his coronary artery, the supplier of blood to the entire front of his heart.
This came as no surprise. He knew it to be the site most commonly associated with ischemia, or loss of circulation, in a large enough area of cardiac muscle to induce ventricular fibrillation—the state where the chambers stop pumping and the entire organ becomes a quivering useless mass.
“But the balloon restored your perfusion quickly enough that it minimized the permanent damage, Richard, and your all-important ejection fraction remains near normal. You certainly picked the best spot possible to arrest,” the old man assured him.
Yeah, right, thought Steele. How clever of me.
“Such a good outcome is the result of our getting to you so fast, made possible of course by Dr. Betty Clarke’s being so on the ball.”
“Betty who?”
“Your resident, man! The one who resuscitated you and saved your life in the first place.”
Steele spent the rest of the day hurtling between memories and dreams, and they were all of Luana.
Just like at home, he thought. Except here he couldn’t get up and brace himself with a cigarette or knock back one of the increasingly large nightcaps he’d resorted to ever since her death. Instead, he had to lie inside the curtains of that cubicle, enduring his grief without the usual diversions, until the sense of confinement left him feeling suffocated and his heart doing sprint trials, setting off all the alarms again.
The nurses ran in and once more sedated him past remembering, but this time he ended up in a nightmare. Dreaming that he was spread out and shackled, he became a specimen on a slide, squirming under the glare of some unknown inquisitor who tried to dissect him with questions.
Will you stop running now?
I can’t.
Don’t you realize you nearly died?
Of course.
You could still be out of time, yet you care so little
for Chet?
He woke up screaming and pulling on his IV lines while struggling to get out of bed.
When they brought out the restraining belts and threatened to tie him down, he determined simply to stay awake. Sitting there alone, unable to escape his thoughts, for the first time in his life he felt that there might never again be a tomorrow for him. “Physician, heal thyself,” he muttered nervously, wanting to take stock, yet having lost faith long ago in the powers of introspection. After all, as a doctor he grasped from the beginning what had happened to him since Luana died.
Prolonged grief reaction
read the official diagnosis, except naming it and reading about it had never once stopped him from being in its grip for the last eighteen months. Even when he understood, with counseling, that it wasn’t so much the grief, but rather
“a sustained, panic-ridden obsession to
escape the process altogether”
that was at the root of his problem, he simply refined his avoidance techniques. Working extra shifts in ER had been his greatest diversion. Then, while trying to kid himself that he’d covered up the problem and that no one would notice, he declared himself cured and dropped out of therapy.
Of course, the doctor in him continued to understand. He’d launched on a fool’s strategy, he knew—
“serving
only to prolong the patient’s agony, leaving him trapped
forever in the very grief he runs from”
the textbooks had assured him. But like a junkie fleeing before the fearful horrors of withdrawal, he couldn’t stop. As a result, he robbed his work of the joy it had once held for him, turning it instead into a mind-numbing ordeal that left him
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