“Hi, ma’am. What seems to be going on tonight?” Chris asked in a soothing voice.
“I just don’t feel right,” she said as she repositioned herself in her chair. “I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up to get ready for work, but you know how it is working nights.”
“Do you have any pain? Or shortness of breath?” Chris asked.
“Not really. I don’t know.” She repositioned herself again.
Chris’s thoughts wandered back to the dinner. Michael was right, of course. There was nothing to worry about. He was certain he wanted more with Mallory, and if she was extending the invitation, she must have felt the same way.
“Mrs. Jones? Let’s get you onto this stretcher, okay? We’ll hold on to you while we move the chair out and put the stretcher in its place,” Michael said.
Chris looked at him with an eyebrow raised wondering why they didn’t just have her take two steps over to the stretcher. Michael’s face was serious as he told his partner to keep the med box handy. A glance at the monitor was all the explanation he needed. Even Chris knew it didn’t look right.
“Okay. My partner is going to start an IV on you. Is it okay if I lift your shirt so I can put some leads on your chest so we can send it over to the hospital before we get going?”
Chris opened his bag and took out the portable oxygen and a mask. She looked like shit, and so did her vital signs. Michael rarely got excited, but the crease in his brow and his tense jaw was enough for Chris to know he was concerned.
“Okay, be very still for me, okay?” Michael said before stepping back.
Chris watched as Michael printed a strip and looked at it. His eyes widened slightly before he handed it over to his partner. He nodded his head toward the elevator, signaling he was ready to pack up and go.
“We need to get going, but I want you to chew and swallow this aspirin, and once we get into the elevator, I’m going to put something cold on your chest, okay?”
She nodded her head in agreement, and once they were in the elevator, Michael passed the strip over for Chris to see. “Acute MI Suspected” was clearly printed across the bottom. Now he knew why the tension. It was rare for the monitor to come outand diagnose a heart attack. Typically, it would say “Abnormal” or something similar. Chris’s thoughts no longer veered to the decision about dinner the next day.
Chris wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the woman somehow looked worse by the time they reached the ambulance and loaded her inside. She wasn’t as restless as she was when they found her, but her face was ridden with anxiety and she was still diaphoretic.
“You guys both staying in the back?” Chris asked, referring to Michael and his partner.
Instead of answering, Michael tossed his keys to Chris’s partner as he opened up the med box and took out a few items. Taking the hint, Chris closed the doors and went around to the driver’s seat. He turned the radio on to keep from paying too much attention to what was going on behind him as he drove to the hospital.
“Chris, pull over!” Michael’s shout jarred his thoughts away from the radio.
He found a spot to pull over. After putting the truck in park, he went around to the back to see if they needed an additional set of hands. When he opened the door, he found Michael’s partner slapping defibrillator pads onto the woman’s chest. He wasn’t surprised, but he was hoping they would have made it to the hospital before she crashed.
“I’ll bag her while you set up to intubate,” Chris offered, climbing into the back.
He grabbed the bag valve mask they kept ready to go, plugged it into the main oxygen, and began squeezing air into her lungs before pausing for Michael’s partner to count out compressions. Once he reached thirty, he squeezed in two more breaths before they all backed away from the patient and waited for Chris to check the monitor.
“I’m going to shock her,” he announced. “All clear?”
After ensuring no one was touching her, Michael pressed a button on the monitor, and they watched while the patient jerked lightly from the electricity. Chris bagged the patient once Michael gave the order to stop compressions but continue to ventilate.
“She’s back to normal sinus rhythm, with a pulse,” Michael said in surprise. “Let’s get going.”
It didn’t take long to drive the rest of the way to the hospital. After parking in the ambulance bay, he went around to the back to open the doors. He couldn’t believe it when the patient made eye-contact. The patient who was now on regular high flow oxygen. The patient who was now breathing on her own and conscious. The same patient who had basically died in the back of the ambulance mere minutes earlier.
“Welcome back, Mrs. Jones,” Chris greeted as he pulled the stretcher out.
“She was breathing on her own and fighting the bag, so I didn’t even attempt to tube her,” Michael said as he climbed out after them.
Impressive. Everyone knew the best chance for CPR to be successful was when it was a witnessed cardiac arrest, but it still wasn’t every day they went from performing CPR to having a conscious patient by the time they arrived at the hospital. That was an understatement. He could count on one hand how many times he’d seen it happen.
He was cleaning up the back of his truck while his partner was inside working on the chart when Michael stepped in. “So, I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow?”
He had been thinking about it before the patient coded on the way to the hospital and he was still hesitant to meet Mallory’s parents and to bring Lily to meet her parents. Even though he told her he wanted more, that felt like a huge step. But as cliché as it sounded, the patient made him realize life was short. If hedropped dead, he didn’t want his last moments to be spent being afraid of what could go wrong. As often as a patient didn’t make it, it took the one who did make it to wake him up.
“Yeah,” he answered. “We’ll be there.”
