“Don’t you dare use this as an excuse to see him,” Kate whispered, and not for the first time.
They were all thinking it—this was her opportunity to reunite with the man she loved and missed. No, she couldn’t. She had to fight for her life, but she’d have towantto fight.
Kate looked up at the infinitesimal change in a beeping pattern, scanning the possible sources and landing on the cardiac monitor.
Wait. That had changed.
The electronic pulse that had been steady at seventy-four, the small tick-tick-tick that she’d memorized during the last shift, had slowed. Tick…tick…tick. The intervals lengthened long enough for Kate to lean back and stare at the monitor.
Heart rate: fifty-eight.
Then, in the time it took her to read the number: fifty-two.
Then forty-four.
She stood, sucking in a breath just as an alarm went off, a low but loud noise from the pulse-ox monitor.
Sat dropping. Ninety-two. Eighty-eight. The screen blinked red. The vent’s high-pressure alarm started shrieking and Kate looked down at the very moment her mother’s arms started doing a small, terrible jerking thing that she instinctively knew was not voluntary or the first signs of waking up.
“A seizure.” She breathed the words just as the door flew open.
Talia moved like a machine, with lightning speed and laser focus. A nurse Kate had not seen before rushed in, hitting the room at a full run as they called commands and questions to each other.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Kate felt herself melt into the corner, the farthest point away from the bed, riveted, terrified, paralyzed with fear. They worked like they had no idea she was there.
All the while, the numbers dropped.
With one hand on Jo Ellen, Talia lifted the comm device around her neck. “ICU four is bradycardic and desatting and seizing, carotid pulse present. Need rapid response. Code blue. Repeat, code blue.”
Code blue? The words didn’t process in Kate’s addled, blood-pounding brain. Not until she heard them repeated on an intercom.
Code team to ICU four, code team to ICU four.
Was that real? Was this a dream? What was happening?
“Lorazepam,” Talia called. “Two milligrams IV push!”
Moving to fulfill the order, the other nurse threw a quick look at Kate, who braced for the command to leave.
“Back against the wall, ma’am, stay there. Donotmove.”
Determined to obey, Kate pressed harder against the corner of the wall and a counter, watching her mother convulse and seize. Every monitor in the room screamed while a third person came in.
A tall Black man in scrubs, pushing a crash cart, the wheels loud on the floor.
“Heart rate thirty-four,” Talia called.
Thirty-four? Kate’s knees literally trembled.
The second nurse yelled more numbers in fast succession and told her microphone that respiratory therapy was here—that must be the new guy.
“Marcus, bag her, please,” Talia ordered.
Bag her? What did that mean?
Marcus disconnected the vent and attached a football-shaped bag to her breathing tube, squeezing it in steady pulses.Kate stared at his hand, watching long, strong, fingers work like he’d done this a million times.
