AN: I think I got some sort of sadistic thrill off your reactions to the last chapter, should I seek psychological help? lol. I originally had combined chapter 21 with the end of this one, and that was how the story ended, but I felt that I needed to give JD one last chance and I also realized that his heart stopping was just so much more dramatic from his side. Also I always wanted to explore ideas of what it would be like in a coma, it just sounded like fun.
Anyway, I digress. Here it is, folks, the final chapter of Our Crazy Ass Rollercoaster. Look for an epilogue coming sometime tomorrow, and thank you again to all of you for your support. The response I got to this story was truly awe-inspiring and I only hope my conclusion can begin to repay you for your commitment and encouragement. I really do love you all. So without further ado...
Chapter 23 – His Final Line
Everything comes to an end, and there isn't a whole lot more to it than that. You can get as cliché as you want, and say that 'the greatest things in life end eventually' or that 'every end is just another beginning' but honestly, who cares about all that bullshit? The God honest truth is simply that, be it a terrible television show, the greatest sex you've ever had, or even life itself, it all does end.
One of the most important skills a doctor needs to have is the ability to sleep. I'm not talking to just lay down and drift off, I mean to sleep anywhere and immediately jump up and be fully functional at a moment's notice even if you'd only gotten five minutes of rest. It's the hard truth that seems to pick off at least half of the interns who scrape through eight years of school only to realize that they can't deal with the hours. Doctors have to learn to be able to lay down and instantly fall asleep, whether on a bed in the on-call room with a couple getting cozy on the bed beneath you or in a chair in the lounge while idiot surgeons are wrestling for the remote. You gotta learn to tone out all of the noise and draw on every second of sleep that you can get so you don't kill anyone. And I'm proud to say that this is a skill I've mastered quite beautifully, to the point where I can even get in a few minutes of sleep leaning on the counter of the nurses' station while Jordan shouts in my ear about something I did or didn't do.
No matter how many things you learn to sleep through, there are just something's that wake doctors up faster than a bucket of cold water to the face. First is that innate trigger that goes off in the brain when you subconsciously realize that your shift ends in ten minutes. Second is that god-damned pager telling you that even if your shift is ending in four seconds you've still got to be doing your job. And a doctor's last natural alarm clock?
I jerked awake and had flown to my feet before the realization of what I was hearing had even gotten through my sleep fogged brain. My back was groaning in protest and I still hadn't shaken off the uneasy feeling that my dreams had left in me, but all of that seemed to wash to the back of my mind as the truth and the adrenaline set in. That single, monotonous note reverberated in the room as my eyes found that flat, green line.
Panic aiding my speed, I ran over and threw open the door. "Nurse!" I shouted into the hall and saw a pair of pink scrubs hurling itself around the counter and toward me. I tugged on a pair of gloves and raced back to the bedside. The flatline was still screaming in my ears as I began chest compressions, praying that they would restart his heart without breaking his ribs through again. A second later the nurse had arrived and I glanced back long enough to see that she was pushing a crash cart.
"No, his heart's too weak," I said, shouting without realizing I was doing it. "Get me an epi, now! That's our only shot." Thankfully she didn't fight with me, and instead she nodded and jogged out to grab the epinephrine. I turned my eyes back to the face that was half obscured behind the breathing tube. "C'mon Newbie, don't do this to me now."
The nurse had come back and she readied the syringe in the IV, looking up at me expectantly. I gave a curt nod and watched as she depressed the plunger. As much as I wanted to look up, glare at that stupid, screaming line until it started moving, I couldn't do it. At the same time, I couldn't keep staring at that face, so still and unexpressive that it surely had to be a different person. Feeling like a girl for doing it, I closed my eyes and was startled to feel that they were burning. I kept up the chest compressions as I stood and listened hopefully for the slightest change in sound coming from the heart monitor.
Three minutes. That was how much time a person had after their heart stopped before the lack of blood in the brain started to take effect. If the person was really lucky, they could last up until four minutes. After that, the decline in brain function was exponential, and by the time the next sixty seconds had passed there was no point in hell in restarting their heart because they'd have less potential for thought then a rock. Don't think like that. Still, I couldn't stop myself from glancing at my watch between compressions.
One minute, thirty-seven seconds.
It wasn't supposed to end like this. In my soaps, it always seemed like when the cold-hearted bastard finally came through and showed his true colors then the patient would get better. While I knew that life wasn't exactly like Days of Our Lives, I'd secretly been hoping that there would at least be some similarity. I mean, I'd just told Newbie practically everything he'd wanted to hear from me for the last seven years. Somehow after that I'd imagined that he'd wake up simply so he could hold it over my head for the rest of my natural born life. That was just something that he'd do. So why wasn't he coming back?
"C'mon Newbie!" Two minutes, four seconds.
There was a basic theory in hospitals that sometimes the patient would hang on just long enough for everyone to say their goodbyes. I'd seen it time and time again. The patient would be hanging on by a thread until that last, reluctant family member overcame their denial and finally said their bit, and then within hours they would die.
Was that what was happening here? Gandhi, Carla, Barbie, Kim, even Bobbo had come and paid their respects in one form or another. Had Newbie just been waiting for me to man up and say my piece?
Two minutes, twenty-six seconds.
It couldn't actually be like this, could it? I mean, a Sacred Heart with Newbie as a patient was weird, but what would this place be like without any Newbie at all? It seemed so strange that he had become such a crucial part of my image of this place. I had gotten along just fine before him. Before he'd come here, there was no giant missing piece that he had magically filled on his arrival. Life had been fine before he'd gotten here, so why was it so hard to believe that life wouldn't be the same without him?
Two minutes, forty-two seconds.
Because it wouldn't be the same, and I knew that. He may not have been wanted, but he'd sure as hell butted his way into my life and made himself comfortable. Without consciously letting him in, Newbie had somehow managed to engrained himself into every aspect of my life, from the fact that he plagued my every second at work to the fact that he and my daughter shared initials. I couldn't escape him even if I wanted to. He was irrevocably a piece of the metaphorical jigsaw puzzle of my world.
Two minutes, fifty-three seconds.
So what, now he was just gonna check out? Go through the lengthy and arduous task of weaving himself into every single nook and cranny of my life and then leave? What made Newbie think that he could come in, flip my whole damn world upside down, and then just leg it out of here? No way was he going to get away with that.
Three minutes, five seconds.
"God damn it, JD!" The nurse flinched but I didn't care. The three minutes were up; if he didn't come back soon it was a lost cause. As if the kid's chances of surviving this weren't bad enough already, now there was the threat of brain damage that could make coming out of this more of a curse than a blessing.
My eyes flicked to the crash cart but I knew there was no chance of it. Not only was his heart too weak to take the strain of suddenly having electricity pumped into it, but we'd have to unhook his ventilator so we didn't electrocute him so by the time we got around to it, it would already be too late. Add to that the fact that the pressure would most likely break his ribs again and probably collapse another lung, using the defibrillators was practically signing his death certificate. Which it seemed like I was going to have to do anyway.
"Doctor!" I came back from my internal ranting to see that the nurse was pointing over my shoulder. A quick glance showed that the green line was moving in a steady, if slow, rate. I stepped back to see if his heart would keep it up without my help and was relieved to see that the pace stayed. Snapping off my gloves, I checked my watch.
Three minutes, thirty-one seconds.
"Thanks," I said with a stiff nod at the nurse and she took it wordlessly and scampered out of the room. As soon as she was gone, I turned around with a growl and shoved the crash cart against the wall. It tipped on its side, spilling supplies across the floor. My rage switched to the chairs and I upturned them both. "Damn it!" I slammed my fists against the wall, feeling the satisfactory sting through my wrists, and then threaded my hands through my hair.
I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to be able to do this. I'd hung around through all of this, but there was no way I was going to just sit around and wait for Newbie to crash again. How many more times would it be before we couldn't bring him back? How many more times would it be until I couldn't save him? Was it safer to just accept that he was gone and stop wasting hope?
"Christ, Newbie, you're going to be the death of me." Crossing the room, I righted a chair and sat down, propping my head in my hands. It was only three in the morning, meaning I'd hardly gotten two hours sleep, and I was even more exhausted as I felt the adrenaline dissipating. At this point, it wasn't too far of a stretch to believe that this really was going to kill me if we kept going like this. Even as I was just sitting there, I felt my eyes closing and the softness of sleep teasing at the edges of my mind.
There was a strange gasping noise coming from Newbie's bed, and as I looked up he had one hand extended toward the ceiling, fingers curved into claws. The moonlight streaming through the window was glowing off his opened eyes, and I could see that he was terrified. His hand was now reaching for me, his eyes pleading, and he was still making that choked noise around his breathing tube. I tried to get up to help him, but I exhaustion had made my body so heavy I couldn't move. There was a faint trace of blood rolling from his mouth, and he emitted the loudest choked gasp so far.
With a strangled noise of surprise, I woke up again and straightened up in my chair, blinking in the harsh florescent. I rubbed my hands against my face, trying to scrub away the disturbing image that my dream had left embedding in my head. Damn it all, like I wasn't sleep deprived enough already without having all these bizarre nightmares. That creepy, gasping noise was still echoing in my ears and sent chills up my spine. Even as the images slowly faded, that noise wouldn't go away.
Bolting upright, I looked over at the bed. Eyes were still lidded, no flailing arms, no blood dripping from the mouth. But that noise was still there, and now that I was more awake I could tell that it wasn't coming from inside my head. I rubbed sleep from my eyes to see better and saw a hand fisted around the bedsheet. And still, there was that gasping sound. Impossible…
"JD?" I asked, jumping out of the chair so quickly that I stumbled against the bed. Standing at the bedside, I could see that his other hand had drifted up to his neck and his fingers were scrabbling over it frantically as the gasping noises came faster. "JD?" His eyes didn't open and his hand moved towards his mouth. I quickly grabbed his wrist to keep him from hurting himself and I could hear the heart monitor picking up in rate as he fought my grip.
"JD, listen to me," I said, trying to get his attention. If I couldn't get him to focus so we could get that tube out of him, he was going to damage his throat. "Quit fighting me and pay attention." Still no change. "Damn it, Newbie!"
JD's eyes snapped open so quickly that I instinctively took a half-step back from the bed, and they were focused on me with the sort of intensity that people usually associated with my 'crazy eyes.' Shaking myself, I said, "Newbie, ya gotta stop fighting me and listen or you're going to hurt yourself. You've been intubated, you gotta stop breathing."
Newbie didn't respond, but the gasping noises had stopped so I assumed he was pay attention. I let go of his wrist and he carefully set his hand down at his side again, never taking his gaze off me. "Alright, you know how this works, kid," I said. "You cough, I pull. Ready?" There was the slightest nod but I'd already seen the answer in that freakishly focused stare. I nodded and the kid's eyes screwed up as he coughed and I slid the tube out.
Leaning over to turn off the ventilator, I heard Newbie take a deep, overcompensating breath. When I straightened up, he was staring at me again and massaging his throat with a hand.
"You alright there, Miranda?"
"Yeah," he said, grimacing and rubbing his throat again. "What – what happened?"
"Dumbass intern gave you a medication you're allergic to and you had a pretty rough anaphylactic reaction and went comatose," I explained quickly. Newbie nodded, as if he already knew this. "I just brought you out of cardiac arrest about – " I glanced at my watch and was startled by the time, " – thirty minutes ago."
At this, his hand moved down to touch his chest and there was an incredulous look on his face. "So my heart did stop," he murmured. Before I could answer, his eyes had flicked back up to me and he asked weakly, "How long was I gone?"
"This would have been day six," I answered. I surveyed his face and finally processed the reality that he was awake. "Welcome back, kid."
Newbie grinned. "Thanks." His expression was thoughtful and he looked around as if seeing everything for the first time. "Hey Dr. Cox?" I grunted for him to continue. "You remember way back my first year when you made fun of me for thinking coma patients could hear everything we said?" I grunted again. "Well I was sorta right," he answered proudly.
"Is that so?" I asked, feigning casualness when I was in fact thinking wildly. Did that mean Newbie had heard everything I had said to him tonight? I had meant for that, but I hadn't expected it to really work and now that it had I was a little panicked – no, not panicked, just a little… alarmed? In a manly way, of course.
"Well, sort of," Newbie confessed. "I could always tell when someone was talking to me, but I never really understood what they were saying beyond what their tone said." He paused and smiled. "I feel really bad about Tasty Coma Wife now," he added with a hesitant laugh.
I had just opened my mouth to laugh when something occurred to me. When I looked down at Newbie, he seemed to have realized the same thing I had. "Oh, yeah, I got my memory, by the way," he said hastily and grinned.
"You're pretty calm about it for someone who just spent the last month with amnesia, Charlene," I remarked, a little surprised by this. It wasn't normal for him to not freak out every time he had something that could be considered a victory.
Newbie seemed to sense what I was thinking because he laughed, although it brought on a bout of coughing that made his eyes water. "I had 'em back the whole time I was in the coma," he said once he'd fixed his breathing. He shifted on the mattress and then sat up, stretching with a frown.
"Well damn, it looks like I'm not getting rid of you then, am I?"
And there it was; the widest, most Newbie-ish grin I'd seen on his face since before the accident. "Sorry, Per, but I'm back for good."
"Call me Per again, Amanda, and you'll be back in a coma." Newbie just shrugged and kept on smiling. "Can't make things easy on us, can you? All it took to get you back was a potential medical malpractice suit, an emergency surgery, a coma, and your – what would this be, fourth? – bout of cardiac arrest. Drama queen much?" Apparently nothing was going to take that God damn grin off his face, but for once I didn't care. It meant he was back, and he was in the clear. This whole hellish nightmare was over.
"Oh, but Newbie," I added, my tone more serious so that he looked up at me with the slightest bit of trepidation, "you drive without a seatbelt again, I'm gonna have to go ahead and kill you myself."
And before I could stop myself, before that look of confusion could clear from his face, I swept down and pulled him into a quick, three-second hug.