Authors: David Morrell
The nurse slipped a plastic sleeve onto a metal tube. The tube was attached to a box that showed digital temperature readings. She slipped the sleeved tube into Matthew’s mouth. David sensed the anger and skepticism around him.
The box was timed to beep in three minutes.
The silence lengthened. The red numbers on the box kept changing, starting at zero and climbing toward …
The timer beeped.
“Absolutely normal,” a physician said, his tone a mixture of relief and indignation.
Normal?
David thought. Matt
should
have started a temperature!
The doctor in charge of the ward braced his shoulders. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
The physician from the Pediatrics Ward shook his head at David. “Looks like you’re not the medical expert you thought you were.” He didn’t add what David guessed he was thinking—And I was foolish to think you might impossibly be right.
“For what it’s worth,” David said, “you can’t know how glad I am to be wrong.”
“Dad, wrong about what?”
“My imagination got the better of me. Don’t worry. At least, no harm was done. You’re safe.”
“No harm?”
the doctor in charge of the ward said. “Your imagination might have jeopardized his treatment. Your amateur medical practice is about to put you in—”
“Just wait a few more minutes.” David’s momentary doubt was suddenly replaced by a certainty that made him quiver.
“Wait for what? You’ve had all the time you deserve.”
“I just thought of something. If the antibiotics I gave him started to work, if they started to subdue the staph and strep—”
“Which we have absolutely no reason to assume will—”
“Matt’s temperature wouldn’t start to rise when I expected.”
“It won’t rise at all!”
“You don’t understand how strong the infection was.”
“
Was?
You mean how strong you think the infection
might
be.”
“
Will
be. The schedule’s been delayed,” David said. “Give me fifteen minutes more. Just to put me at ease before—”
“You’ve had all the leeway you’ll get!”
“I just took his temperature again,” a nurse said.
The doctor stared toward the numbers on the box.
“His temperature’s up.”
The ensuing events were so rapid the doctor didn’t have time to call the authorities. He and his staff were too busy working.
“My stomach,” Matt said. “It feels worse. I’m going to—”
Matt vomited. Not just vomited. Spewed.
The contents of his stomach shot to the end of the bed.
“My God,” Sarie said.
A nurse scrambled for a plastic basin. Another nurse grabbed for towels to clean away the vomit. Donna rushed to help her.
A doctor lunged for the cart beside the bed. Grabbing the syringes marked
Gentamicin
and
carbenicillin
, he injected them through Matt’s IV line.
“He’s already getting the Vancomycin,” the doctor in charge of the ward said. “With these others, we ought to be able to attack whatever infection he’s got.” He frowned toward David. “How the hell you knew this would happen …”
“The Vancomycin’s the important one. Keep giving it to him.”
“We
have
been! You forced us to inject it on a regular schedule since you gave it to him last night! How did you know … ?”
Matthew vomited again.
Explosively. A white fluid streaked with red.
The nurse holding the plastic basin didn’t catch all of it. Donna and the other nurse kept wiping the vomit from Matthew’s sheets. Sarie rushed to help.
“Blood cultures,” the doctor in charge of the ward said. “The lab. Find out what kind of infection he’s got.”
An assistant was already in motion. Inserting an IV needle into Matthew’s left arm, he filled several vials with blood.
“Staph and strep,” David said. “That’s what the lab’ll tell you.”
The doctor frowned again toward David. “Not likely, since he’s already covered for that. It could be any number of other bacteria. We don’t know
what
the lab’ll tell us. This is all a coincidence. The fever just happened to start when you said it would.”
“Believe what you want. Just save my son!”
Matt vomited again.
“Another basin! Get another basin!” a nurse yelled.
David grabbed for one off a shelf.
The color of Matthew’s skin was alarming, no longer pale but red, speckled with crimson spots: tiny hemorrhages beneath his skin.
With dull swollen eyes, Matt squinted toward the contents of the basin the nurse held. “White?” He groaned. “Why am I vomiting white?”
“That’s the medication we’ve been giving you to coat your stomach.” A doctor tried to sound reassuring but wasn’t successful. “To help prevent ulcers from the chemotherapy.”
“But it’s streaked with … red.” Matt gasped. “Am I throwing up
blood?
”
No one dared to answer.
David handed the nurse the empty basin, hurrying to remove the one Matt had filled. The exchange occurred just in time. Matt vomited again.
A doctor pivoted toward one of Matthew’s IV stands, pressing buttons on a pump, increasing the flow of saline solution into Matt’s body. “He’s losing too much fluid. We’ve got to keep him hydrated.”
Urgent voices overlapped.
“Blood pressure.”
“Check it again.”
“What’s his temp now?”
The nurse who was helping Donna and Sarie clean the vomit from the sheets quickly reached for the computerized thermometer. At once she realized she couldn’t put anything into Matthew’s mouth. She groped into a pocket of her uniform, pulled out a standard thermometer, shook it, and wedged it under Matthew’s right armpit.
Just then, the smell and sound unmistakable, Matthew’s bowels let go.
David’s arms and legs rippled with hot and cold rushes. His lungs heaved, making his mind spin. No, please. Not now. I can’t have another attack. Matt needs me.
Added to his symptoms was a dizzying sense of déjà vu. In theory, he was witnessing these terrifying events for the first time, and yet he saw the chaos around him in double focus, as if this was the second time he’d been here. Each horror was occurring after he sensed it would. He’d seen it all before, endured it all before. From an impossible perspective, forty years from now on his deathbed, he relived hell.
Even before Matthew’s bowels lost control, David reacted as if they already had. He grabbed towels off a shelf and raised Matthew’s sheets. When what he expected to happen did happen, he experienced another eerie shift in time, not from the future into the present, but from the present into the past. For while he used a towel to wipe the excrement from Matthew, he couldn’t ignore that what he did now for his fifteen-year-old son was exactly what he’d been accustomed to doing when his son was newly born. David’s soul almost burst with love as he performed without disgust this most intimate of acts.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You’ve no idea how glad I am to help you. I’ll do anything to get you through this, to make you feel better. In fact, if there’s a God, I started to do that, to help you, last night.”
Matt’s red face dotted with crimson formed a weak smile, almost the boyish grin David had seen on Matt in better times.
“I love you, son.” David’s throat ached so much it strangled him. He threw a soiled towel into a trash container and used another to continue wiping excrement from Matthew’s hips.
“His temperature’s up again.” The nurse read a Celsius number, which David knew from experience was the Fahrenheit equivalent of a hundred and five.
More overlapping voices.
“Get that temp down.”
“Ice. Wet towels.”
“Compazine. Settle his nausea.”
“Increase his saline IV. More fluid.”
“Blood pressure?”
“A hundred and thirty over ninety.”
“A little high.”
“But not alarming. Easily explained.”
“Yes, the trauma of his vomiting.”
David threw a second soiled towel into a waste container. “You’re right,” he told the doctors. “A hundred and thirty over ninety isn’t a problem. His blood pressure won’t go any higher. But it’ll go lower.”
“What?”
David glanced toward a swirling clock on the wall. Somehow, more than an hour had passed. It was now 4:12.
“It’ll go
lower
,” David said. “I predicted the septic shock would hit at four-thirty-six. But the Vancomycin I gave him changed the schedule. His temperature rose five minutes later than I expected. So the shock will hit—”
“Five minutes later?” the doctor David had argued with at noon asked. “God help me, I almost believe you.”
“Four-forty-one? Less than a half an hour from now? Is that what you’re saying?” The doctor in charge of the ward stepped close. “For the record, I want to hear this. How low will his blood pressure drop?”
“Forty over twenty.”
“Down from a hundred and thirty over ninety? In less than thirty minutes! Improbable!”
“How I pray you’re right.”
The doctor studied Matthew. “His vomiting’s under control. His bowels have stopped voiding. I think we’ve checked whatever’s wrong with him.”
David leaned against the wall. “With due respect, you’re mistaken. But just in case, will you phone Intensive Care? Tell them you might have to send down—”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“They’d want a reason, and I can’t give them one! They don’t just jump into action because an anxious father has hunches!”
“Then I’ll phone them myself.”
“You don’t have authority.”
“But what if I’m right?”
“Intensive Care is
always
ready!”
David stroked Matthew’s feverish forehead. “So. With no other options, I guess we have to wait. Son, I know this is all confusing. Trust me?”
“You, Dad?” Matt grinned sickly. “When didn’t I trust you?”
“When I told you not to ride your skateboard down a hill toward traffic.”
Matthew breathed. “I could stop that skateboard on a dime.”
“You listened, though. We never had to find out. So listen again. If something bad happens to you in the next half hour, don’t be afraid.”
“I won’t need to?”
“You’ll want to. But I’ll be here to hold your hand. Depend on it. I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“Of course. You’re my dad.”
“Just don’t be afraid. That’s your job, the most important way you can help.”
“Hang tough, right?”
“Yeah. Hang tough.” David turned so Matthew wouldn’t see him crying.
“It’s four-thirty-six.” A doctor turned toward David.
“Temp?” another doctor asked.
“Slightly down. A point above normal,” a nurse said.
“Blood pressure?”
“Down. A hundred and twenty over eighty.”
“Perfect.”
“Not for him. He tends to run a little lower,” the nurse said.
“The difference is too slight to be bothered about.”
“Oh, there’ll be a difference,” David said.
“But your deadline’s come and gone,” another doctor said. “I told you, the first time was just a coincidence. He just happened to spike a fever when you said he would.”
“And I told
you
, the Vancomycin I gave him delayed the schedule.”
“I’ve had enough of this. We controlled his infection.”
“No!”
“Everything’s back to normal,” the doctor said. “Now I’ve got rounds to make.”
“Well, maybe we ought to …” The doctor from the Pediatrics Ward cleared his throat. “It wouldn’t hurt. Just wait a few more minutes.”
“And reinforce this man’s delusion?”
“He’s been right so far.”
“Coincidence!”
“Just in case, though.”
“Something’s happening,” a nurse said.
“What?”
“His pressure’s down to a hundred.”
“
Now
will you believe me?” David asked.
“Check it again,” a doctor said.
“Down to ninety.”
“No.”
“I told you,” David said.
“Eighty.”
Matt vomited again.
“No!”
“Don’t wait,” David said. “Give him the dopamine.”
“Dopamine? How did you know that’s the drug we’d use to—”
“Raise his pressure? You wouldn’t believe me! Give him the—!”
“Seventy.”
“Do it!” David yelled.
“Can’t you see we already are?”
Matt’s body shuddered, convulsing.
“Sixty.”
An intern injected the contents of a syringe into one of Matt’s IV lines.
David exhaled. Panicked, he slumped against a wall.
“And now we wait,” he said. “And pray.”
In David’s nightmare, Matthew’s plummeting blood pressure had not responded to the dopamine. The pressure had bottomed at forty over twenty, almost as low as it can get and still allow the body to maintain vital functions. Repeated injections of dopamine hadn’t raised the pressure.
David had watched a frantic nurse crank up the end of Matthew’s bed, raising his feet, helping his blood to circulate, trying to compensate for the devastating decrease in arterial pressure.
David had watched the doctor in charge of the ward phone Intensive Care. David, Donna, Sarie, a nurse, and a doctor had rushed Matthew’s bed down hallways, into an elevator. Two floors below, they’d scurried with the bed down other hallways, into the ward that made the Emergency Ward seem primitive. As the document David had signed when Matt went into the Bone Marrow Ward so vividly put it,
You have a life-threatening disease. Within a year, you will surely die unless you receive exceptional treatment. A bone marrow transplant has serious risks, including infection.
And, David mentally added, they don’t rush you down to Intensive Care just to try out the machines.
In David’s nightmare, higher doses of dopamine finally raised Matthew’s blood pressure to a barely acceptable level of eighty over sixty. A team of trauma specialists waited in Intensive Care, and as soon as he arrived, the team snapped instantly into motion. David recalled no fewer than eight IV stands with two pumps on each injecting fluids and medications into his son.