Chapter 3: Living on the Edge
July 10, 1997
When Claudia Zacchara Mancusi awoke the first thing she noticed was how much she hurt. She ached all over just like that final beating from her father that had resulted in her being shipped off to live with Uncle Rudy at the Montecito Casino in Las Vegas right before her tenth birthday. Her childhood hadn't been pretty by any stretch of the imagination.
The next thing she realized was how weak she felt. Her attempt at sitting up in bed proved futile and as she quickly found herself collapsing back drenched in sweat feeling like her heart was pounding out of her chest as some alarm started to blare.
That got the attention of some woman in a long blue gown, mask, and gloves who turned from the counter by the sink and reached up to silence the alarm apparently coming from a monitor over Claudia's head. She frowned at Claudia and then barked, "Please just lie still, Mrs. Mancusi, as Dr. Thornhart tried to explain earlier you really need to just rest at this point!"
Dr. Thornhart? Who the heck is Dr. Thornhart? Claudia could only wonder. She was about to ask that when everything seemed to go black again.
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Dr. Ian Thornhart had spent twenty eight of his thirty years in Chicago so he was well aware that being responsible for Salvatore Mancusi's daughter in law's death would be more likely to be life ending than career ending. Or at least theoretically; it was a bit hard to continue practicing medicine posthumously. Unfortunately, Claudia Mancusi was really no closer to stable than she had been when she had been admitted to his ICU two nights earlier.
It could be argued that he had tried valiantly to help her. He had. First, he had placed a central line and started Norepinephrine and then Vasopressin to support her blood pressure. Then he had recognized that her increasing oxygen requirements were an ominous sign. So, he placed an endotracheal tube and put her on mechanical ventilation. The problem was he was running out of interventions to try. As much as he knew it really wasn't about him, with each order he wrote, he worried he was truly penning his own death warrant.