Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews! You are all awesome! Here is chapter 2..... No spoilers in this one.
The trip to Cascade General seemed to take forever, although Blair knew it was only a short distance from the police station. John and Tim spent most of the trip busily checking the readings from the heart monitor and the automatic BP cuff.
"Have you ever ridden in an ambulance before, Mr. Sandburg?" John picked up Blair's wrist and checked his pulse once again, staring intently at his watch.
"No. Never."
"Kind of exciting, huh?" John put Blair's arm back down with a slight frown and turned his attention back to the blood pressure readout then looked back at the heart monitor.
"How does it look?" Blair's voice was still a bit shaky, but he decided that he was entitled to be a bit nervous, given the current circumstances.
"About the same." John looked across at his counterpart, who was still on Blair's right. "Let's check his BP manually, okay?"
Tim looked grim and nodded. Blair watched as Tim deftly maneuvered the blood pressure cuff around the IV and up the sick man's arm. He pulled out his stethoscope, and Blair felt the chill of metal against the inside of his arm. Tim inflated the cuff until Blair thought his arm would have to explode, then listened intently as he began to slowly release the pressure. He finally nodded and released the rest of the pressure with a whoosh of air.
"Why are you doing that? Is something wrong with the machine? Come on, man, what's going on?" Blair wasn't sure what was happening, but he had never heard of anyone having to have their blood pressure taken in both arms simultaneously.
"We just wanted to make sure the reading was correct on the machine...nothing to be alarmed about. Sometimes we get false readings, and we just wanted to be sure we were getting a true reading."
"We were." Tim looked up, draping the stethoscope around his neck. "I get the same thing."
"What is it?" Blair was starting to get nervous since both medics seemed to be very secretive about his condition. If it hadn't been for Jim telling him about his pulse, he wouldn't have had any idea what was wrong.
"It's nothing to worry about." Tim picked up the microphone on the radio built in behind the driver's seat.
Now I'll find out what's going on. They'll give the hospital my vital signs. Blair listened expectantly.
"Cascade General, this is Unit Five. Our ETA is approximately three minutes."
"We read, Unit Five. We're set up and waiting." The owner of the tinny voice issuing from the radio seemed to know what was going on, although this was the first time Blair was aware that the medics had contacted the hospital.
He rested back against the cushioned stretcher, giving up on prying any information out of the two reticent medics. As the ambulance made the turn to back up to the Emergency Room doors, the strobe of the flashing lights startled him. He hadn't heard any sirens, so he had assumed that there was no real urgency in getting him to the hospital.
As the vehicle came to a stop, John opened the rear door from the inside and climbed down. Grasping the foot of the stretcher, he began to extract Blair from the vehicle. Tim steadied the process and followed behind Blair's head, pushing the other end of the stretcher. Blair felt the sudden jolt as the wheels touched the ground, and the medics pulled the stretcher up to its tallest position.
"Okay, we're here. We'll be in a treatment room in just a minute." John squeezed Blair's shoulder. "They'll get you fixed right up in no time."
Blair studied his face for signs of deception, then looked around with interest as the stretcher passed through the glass doors into the Emergency Room. He was wheeled down a long hall past numerous medical personnel who all seemed to be watching. The hallway opened up into a large area consisting of a waiting room full of patients to the left of a circular nurses' station. Blair's moving bed turned to the right into a large room with glass walls directly across from the nurses' station.
"Hi John...Tim. Who've we got here?" A middle aged blonde nurse stepped up to the side of Blair's stretcher and smiled. "Hi, I'm Kathy." She had short blonde hair and glasses framing a pair of expressive green eyes. She looked to be in her middle fifties and was a bit on the stocky side.
"Hi, Kathy. This is Blair Sandburg. He's 26 years old and is experiencing symptoms of tachycardia and palpitations. He has a relatively normal temp...97.8, his pulse is 150....although it spiked up to 167 a few times, and his BP is 157 over 113. He's not in any respiratory distress, although the oxygen seems to be helping a little."
"Okay, Blair, do you think you can scoot over here onto this bed from the stretcher?" Kathy smiled again, and Blair was immediately reassured by the attitude she projected of cheer and calm.
He was momentarily confused by the presence of a bed in the Emergency Room. Didn't they usually have examining tables like a doctor's office? Shrugging off his confusion, he nodded and attempted to scramble from the stretcher to the bed, needing a little help from Kathy and the two medics.
A second nurse entered the room, and the four medical personnel surrounded Blair in a flurry of activity. When it was all said and done, he had been disconnected from all of the medics' equipment, undressed, redressed in a thin hospital gown and reattached to the hospital's monitoring equipment. The IV bag was hanging from a stand beside the bed, and a blood oxygen monitor was clamped to the end of his pointer finger.
"Do you think you can breathe okay without the oxygen?" John stood quietly by while Tim began to load the equipment back on the stretcher.
"Yeah, I think so." Blair was pretty sure he had been breathing all right before they had hooked up the oxygen, but it had felt really good having that there once he had gotten used to it.
John carefully unhooked the nasal canula from beneath Blair's nose and picked up the oxygen canister. "Okay, well they're going to take really good care of you here. We're going to get going now. Good luck." He smiled at Blair and headed toward the door. "See you later, Kathy. Bye, Sarah."
Blair watched as the two medics gathered their equipment and left, pushing the stretcher
between them. He wondered idly what was going to happen now. Although he had never been in one before, he had heard that emergency rooms were famous for keeping patients waiting to be examined, especially with as many patients waiting as he had seen in the area across from the nurses' station. At least he had a halfway decent place to wait, even if it was a bit chilly. He smiled. The last time he had been in a hospital he had been impersonating a doctor.
"Hello, ladies." The husky feminine voice made Blair's head perk up. He looked up to see two new arrivals to his room, one of which was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.
"Hi, Doctor Morgan." Kathy smiled at the beautiful woman. "This is Blair Sandburg. Blair, this is Doctor Morgan. She's our resident on call."
Doctor Morgan smiled and extended a slender, graceful hand to her new patient. "Hi, Blair. So you're not feeling too well, right? Let's see if we can figure out why." Her turquoise eyes twinkled as she grasped his wrist in one slender hand and began to check his pulse.
My pulse is too high and they send Miss America to be my doctor? That so does not make sense! She's probably got my pulse up over 200 already! Blair studied the beautiful doctor and thought ruefully that they should probably have sent a male doctor...or at least one that wasn't so breathtaking.
Doctor Morgan smiled again. "This is Doctor Stevens. He's a student doctor who is going to help us out today." She indicated the young man standing beside her.
"Hey." Oh, great. A beautiful doctor and a student. This just gets better and better.
While they were talking, the two nurses, Kathy and Sarah, had been busy. They were carefully taking notes, monitoring the various pieces of equipment attached to him and filling out charts. Kathy handed everything to Doctor Morgan.
"Thanks, Kathy." The doctor looked down at the chart in her hand. "Well, let's see what we have here. Blair, from your chart it appears that this attack came on suddenly? Have you ever had anything like this ever happen to you before?"
"Yes, it was sudden. And no, it never happened like this before. I mean.....I've had my heart pound before, but it was always temporary. I've never had it last this long or get this bad. It's always gone away on its own."
"Okay." Doctor Morgan made a notation on the chart, then looked back at Blair, all business. "Have you eaten anything today?"
Blair flushed with embarrassment. "Well, I didn't eat lunch, but I did have an algae shake this morning before I went to Rainier."
"Mmmmm, that sounds delicious!" The doctor laughed, watching Blair's chagrin.
"Yeah, well it all depends on your taste. You wouldn't believe how good they are for your system!" He met the doctor's gaze with an impish grin. Then, remembering who he was talking to, he blushed again. "Or...uh....I guess maybe you would."
Doctor Morgan laughed again. "Yes, as a matter of fact I would." She looked back at the chart. "According to your chart, your blood pressure shot up when you got up. I want you to try sitting up, all right?"
"Sure!" Blair pushed himself to a sitting position. Wow, I sure felt better lying down....
"Okay, Blair. That's enough."
The doctor's voice was soothing but carried an urgency that Blair could not ignore. He immediately lowered himself back to the bed.
"What happened?" His heart seemed to be pounding faster, and he really felt worse.
"When you sat up, your blood pressure shot up again. I'm afraid that until we figure out what is causing this you will have to stay flat on your back." She made more notations on the chart. "I'm going to order some blood tests. That should give us some idea of how the chemicals in your system are doing... potassium, sodium, things like that. Also, are you on any medications? Anything at all?"
"No." Blair shook his head vehemently. "I don't believe in polluting my body with drugs. I use all herbal remedies. But I haven't taken anything today." He squirmed uncomfortably on the bed, then decided he would have to say something. "I can't stay flat. I have to... you know... go!"
The doctor smiled. "We can take care of that without you getting up. No, until we know for sure what the problem is, you are going to lie still. Kathy? Could you... ?"
Kathy nodded and drew a curtain closed around the bed. Walking across the room, she returned with an object in her hand. Blair's cheeks heated again. Although he was the last person in the world that could be called a prude, there was just something humiliating about having to urinate in a container while lying flat on his back. Especially with... one, two, three, four people in the room with him. He really had to go, though, so he decided he would deal with the embarrassment later. That IV must be running straight through him.
Once he was feeling more comfortable, he found it easier to concentrate on what the doctors were saying. He tried to understand the medical jargon they were throwing back and forth, but he finally gave up.
Kathy stepped up to the bed. "Blair, would you like to see your partner? He's just outside."
"Sure." Not really, but I can't say that. I'm already humiliated enough without having to appear totally weak in front of Jim. Blair closed his eyes briefly, steeling himself for his confrontation with his partner.
"Hey, Chief, how ya doin'?"
A warm hand rested on his shoulder, and Blair knew he needed to open his eyes. "Hi, Jim. Not too good, Man. They won't let me sit up." He looked up at Jim morosely.
Jim immediately looked at the doctor in concern.
"His tachycardia and high blood pressure are at a minimum when he is flat on his back. We don't want to take any risks because of the high figures we got when he sat up." The doctor turned to Blair. "Blair, there are a few possibilities we need to rule out. There aren't very many things that can cause your body to be acting like this. One of them is dehydration. And I think we can safely rule that out with all of the fluids we have been pumping through you.
"The other is internal bleeding. We need to do a test to make sure that there isn't anything bleeding inside you."
"Okay," Blair nodded. "How do you do that?"
Jim grimaced. "Buddy, she needs to do a rectal exam. They need to see if there is any blood in your stool."
Blair cringed. Could this day possibly get any worse? Not only was he going to have an embarrassing test done, but Jim was standing right there. He thought about asking his partner to leave, but he didn't want to hurt Jim's feelings. Jim helped the nurses turn Blair to his side and left his hand on Blair's shoulder throughout the test. When it was over, he helped Blair to resituate himself in the bed.
"Well?" Blair's voice came out more hoarsely than he liked.
"It's not internal bleeding." Doctor Morgan patted him on the arm. "So now we know a few bad things that it's not. We just need to figure out what it is. We should have you out of here in no time."
But they didn't. Six hours later, Blair was still lying flat on his back. He had had to relieve himself twice more, finding the process even more humiliating with Jim there. But the big lug hadn't left Blair's side since he arrived.
Doctor Morgan had tried several things, none of which had panned out. She had run every test she could think of, and they were now working on the third liter bag of saline in his IV. No wonder he kept having to go.
"Okay, Blair, we're going to try getting you up now. I want to see how all that saline has affected your vitals. Can you sit up slowly? That's it. Now stay there for a minute and get used to that."
Blair clung to the rails of the bed. This was not the first time he had sat up in the past six hours. They had tried a test where they checked his vitals lying down, then sitting, then standing. The standing ones hadn't worked, though. They hadn't been able to keep him on his feet long enough to check his blood pressure. This time felt different, though.
Although his heart was still pounding loudly throughout his body, the dizziness seemed to have abated somewhat, and his head didn't hurt quite as much as it had all day. Doctor Morgan had explained that he hadn't realized his heart was racing because the pounding heart beats he felt, called palpitations, were only happening every second or third beat. So what he thought he was feeling as his pulse was actually only about one third as fast as his heart was actually beating.
"That's good, Blair. It's much better now. Okay, let's try standing." With the doctor on one side and Jim on the other, Blair shakily stood to his feet. "Very good! Your vitals did elevate, but nothing like before. I think that we can probably let you go home now."
"But what caused it?" Blair didn't like the feeling that at any time this could happen again.
"I don't know. I want you to go to your family physician as soon as possible. They will probably send you to a cardiologist, and hopefully they can figure out the problem. But in the meantime, I want you to go straight home and rest. You can take the next few days off from work. I don't want
you to exert yourself too soon."
"Okay, thanks, Doctor Morgan. I appreciate your help." Blair sat back down on the edge of the bed as the doctor began to disconnect all of the monitors that were attached to him. "Actually, I was really impressed with how helpful everyone was here. I always thought that when you went to the ER you had to wait around for hours and you got stuck on a cold table and waited around longer." He grinned to take the sting out of his words.
Doctor Morgan laughed. "That's normally about right, Blair. But you got the deluxe accommodations. You're in the cardiac care room. We take really good care of anyone in here. And the name is Teresa." She patted him on the shoulder. "Well, not to be rude, but I hope I don't see you again. You have a good night, Blair."
"Yeah, sure. You, too, Teresa. And thanks again."
Blair watched as the doctors and nurses trailed out of his room, then slowly began to dress himself. "Hey, Jim...."
"No way, Sandburg. I am not dressing you. You're on your own." Ellison glared at his partner for a few minutes. Then his face softened. "But you are going to stay at my loft for a few days until you're feeling better."
Blair automatically began to launch a protest, then swallowed his words when he noticed the look on Jim's face. The big guy was really worried. Blair couldn't give him grief when he was worried.
"Okay, Jim. If you say so...." He smiled wanly. "I'm like really wiped."
To be continued . . .
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