"Godzilla and The Smog Monster"
Chapter Twenty
The lift's doors finally slid open.
Craig's ears were instantly assaulted by the loud 'clanging' of alarms.
Brice exploded from the elevator and bolted down the corridor. 'Wonder what happened to them?' he thought, noting the motionless bodies on the floor of the Visitors' Lounge.
Speaking of what had happened to them…
The paramedic suddenly recalled what had happened to the last fireman who had entered a room unexpectedly—and immediately skidded to a stop. He turned around and went racing back over to the Nurses' Station.
Craig stepped behind the counter and entered Room 600-A.
The paramedic's probing fingers told him that the nurse slumped in front of the ICU's closed-circuit TV console had a strong and steady pulse. His focus shifted to the wall of lit screens.
601 showed a child, peacefully asleep.
603 depicted an elderly woman, also dozing.
604 showed…
"No!" the viewer exclaimed. "No-o!" He turned and ran from the room.
Craig went racing back down the corridor.
Unexpected, or not, he had to make an entrance right no-ow!
And what an entrance he made!
"Sto-op!" Brice begged as he burst through the door to ICU's Room 604 and tackled John's assailant from behind. The fireman's momentum, along with the Law of Gravity, pulled the guy in the blue coveralls off of Gage and sent them both sailing—headlong—into the wall.
Fortunately, the coverall-ed creep decided to flee instead of fight—or fire!
Craig exhaled a sigh of relief and quickly scrambled to his feet. He snatched the pillow from his new friend's face and whipped it clear across the room.
Gage's airway was gone. His chest was not moving, and he had a deathlike appearance.
Brice glanced up at the cardiac monitor and noted the flat green line.
No pulse…no respirations…deathlike appearance—John was dead!…Clinically speaking.
"No-o!" Craig exclaimed, for the third time in less than two minutes. 'Time! The difference between clinical and biological death is all just a matter of precious time!' the paramedic reminded himself and immediately went to work.
The first action he took was to press the red button on the wall above the hospital bed's headboard. He needed to start CPR. But, if Gage was hemorrhaging again, forced ventilations could cause him to aspirate all that blood that might be trickling down from his sinus passages and into the back of his throat.
He dashed over to one of the room's glass-doored cupboards. He found what he was looking for and returned to John's side.
'Time! Precious time!' the paramedic mentally repeated and expertly guided the airway into place. Then he placed his mouth over the end of it, pinched the patient's nostrils closed, and blew four quick, building breaths of air into his oxygen starved lungs.
Gage's chest rose.
Brice removed his mouth from the end of the tube.
John's chest fell.
Craig grabbed a metal tray from the medicine stand and flipped it upside-down. He whipped the bed sheets off and slid the tray under the patient's bare back. He needed a hard surface, if his chest compressions were to be effective. He stepped up onto the bed's side rail, to get the proper angle—and needed leverage. Next, he placed the palm of his right hand over the back of his left and locked his fingers together. Finally, he carefully positioned his joined hands over the patient's sternum. "One," press. "And," release. "Two," press. "And," release.
The paramedic performed five complete series of fifteen compressions to two ventilations, before the door to 604 finally flew open.
"What happened?" Doctor Tyler demanded, as he and two nurses from Emergency Receiving burst into the room, towing a crash cart.
"Someone just tried…to kill him," Brice answered, between breaths. "Again!"
"Has he been shot?"
Craig shook his head. "They tried…suffocation…this time!" he explained, between compressions.
"Tried?" Tyler stood there, watching the paramedic at work. Since CPR is only performed on clinically dead people, it appeared that 'they' did more than just 'try'—they'd succeeded! The physician put off the half-dozen other questions he'd like to have answered and turned to the two nurses. "All set?"
They nodded.
"Okay. Hold CPR," Tyler requested.
Brice did, and all open eyes in the room riveted upon the cardiac monitor.
"Still flatline!" the doctor determined.
One of the nurses had placed the form-fitting mask of an ambu-bag over the cyanotic fireman's face and attached a resuscitator. She began force-ventilating their still non-breathing patient with 100 percent oxygen.
"Four hundred watt seconds," the other nurse announced and attempted to pass a pair of lubricated defibrillator paddles to Tyler.
The doctor declined the offer and motioned for her to hand them over to Brice. "You've done just fine without me…" he explained, upon seeing the paramedic's puzzled expression.
'So far…' Craig took the tools and unhesitantly positioned the anterior paddle below John's right clavicle, lateral to the sternum, and the apex paddle lateral to his left nipple, with the paddle's center on the midaxillary line.
"Four!" one of the nurses announced.
"Clear!" Craig called out. Upon seeing that all personnel were clear of the patient, the bed and any equipment connected to the patient or bed, he simultaneously pressed and held the SHOCK buttons on the paddle grips, until the electrical discharge occurred.
John's lifeless body was jolted up off the bed.
Brice released the buttons and looked up at the cardiac monitor.
The flat green line remained, stretching from one side of the screen to the other—without any deviation whatsoever.
"Try your drugs and then zap him again," the doctor ordered, his voice remaining completely—and ridiculously—calm.
Brice exchanged the defibrillator paddles for an IC syringe.
One of the nurses swabbed an area of skin on the patient's bare chest.
Craig inserted the tip of the hypo's long needle and injected its contents directly into John's stalled heart, in an attempt to chemically jump-start it. Next, he administered a lidocaine bolus and two ampules of sodium bicarbonate into their patient's IV port.
The nurse passed the re-lubricated paddles back to the paramedic.
"Where you able to start CPR right away?" Tyler wondered, while they waited for the charge to build.
"I don't know. He could have been in full arrest for quite a while—before I got here. I was afraid he might aspirate, so I took the time to insert an airway…"
There was that precious time factor, again.
The physician noted that the paramedic had some self-doubts about delaying CPR. "You did the right thing!" he assured the unsure young man, without moving his gaze from the cardiac monitor. "That was quick thinking on your part!" he commended.
"Four!" the nurse announced.
"Clear!" Craig called out, feeling a bit more confident in himself and his abilities.
The little green line shot up to the top of—and clear off of—the monitor's screen. Then it abruptly settled back down to a very flat—unwavering—band of green light again.
"No conversion," the doctor determined, extreme disappointment evident in his still surprisingly steady voice.
The nurses resumed CPR.
'Time! Precious time!' Craig kept repeating, over and over to himself. He suddenly realized that, at some point, he had broken into a cold sweat. He turned to the doctor for some sound counsel. There was simply no time to waste on any wrong moves!
Tyler could see that the paramedic's self-doubts had returned—in full force. "What would you do if I wasn't here?" he calmly inquired.
"I'd pump some more adrenaline into him and then hit him again!" Brice came back, without a moment's hesitation.
"That is exactly what I would do if you weren't here!" the physician informed him.
Craig inserted an IC syringe again and injected John's still stalled heart with another powerful dose of adrenaline.
"I think that caught his attention," the doctor determined, as the straight green line began to oscillate a little. He personally set the charge and then passed the re-lubricated paddles to the paramedic. "Go on! Zap him again—before we lose it!"
Brice positioned the paddles.
"Four!" Tyler told him.
"Clear!"
The nurses stopped CPR and stepped back for a third time.
For a third time, John's motionless body was jolted up off the bed, from a strong electric shock.
And, for a third time, the little green band of light shot completely up off the cardiac monitor. But, this time—for the first time—when it returned to the center of the screen, it produced one…two…three feeble, somewhat erratic, jerks. The faint electrical activity could hardly be dubbed a heartbeat, however.
No one said a word.
A fourth…fifth…and then sixth jerk appeared in the line.
Still, no one spoke.
Then a seventh, stronger jerk suddenly caused the flat green band of light to dance up on the screen.
"There!" Tyler shouted, finally losing his cool. "That's it! That's the stuff heartbeats are made of! The adrenaline must've finally kicked in!" he determined, as the next dozen or so beats duplicated the dance of the seventh. "Well done, people!" the physician further exclaimed, giving the paramedic a congratulatory slap on the back, and the nurses an approving nod. "We've got sinus rhythm!"
TBC