Vengeance of the Freeway Phantom

Chapter 14

It had been four days now since his surgery and entry into ICU. Ponch was finally starting to ever so slowly make progress through the horrendous fog that seemed to envelop him. As time went on, he gradually became aware of sounds around him, but they still seemed to be so distant--as though they were coming from a tunnel. He was still so weak that he didn't even have the energy to make the attempt to lift his eyelids. So he passed the morning drifting in and out of consciousness.

Then he spent the afternoon still battling that stubborn fog bank that just wouldn't fade away. The sounds around him did seem a tad bit closer now. However, his eyes remained just as heavy, he just didn't have the strength to open them so he found himself drifting off to sleep again.

That drifting in and out of sleep continued on through the rest of that day and into the evening. The patient managed to get even more badly needed rest, making it peacefully through the night--of course, with the additional help from the medical staff and pain medication. His caretakers were well aware that their patient was now semi-conscious--from all the signs he gave them.

At the ICU nurses' station, the conversation was centered on 'that 'handsome CHP officer' and how long it would take before he finally won the battle to open his eyes. With the severity of his injuries, it was a blessing for the young man to simply remain semi-conscious. It wouldn't be long though before he would be coming face-to-face with the reality of all the pain that he would suffer from his injuries.

Mid morning the following day, Ponch tried to force his eyes open. But before he could accomplish that task, reality definitely struck. The intubated patient became cognizant of the fact that something was rammed down his throat. It was the most uncomfortable feeling he had ever felt. That's when he panicked and began to struggle.

"Relax!" a woman's voice gently urged. "Okay, c'mon! Don't fight it. Its helping you breathe. Easy now, breathe nice and easy. That's it. That's better."

'Nice and easy? Better for who?' was Ponch's first foggy thought. He finally managed to ever so slowly open his eyes. It took a moment of blinking them to even attempt to get them to focus and then have the person's face that was looking down at him to even come close to becoming into focus.

"Mr. Poncherello, you're hooked up to a respirator to help you breathe," the nurse started to explain once again. "You had a collapsed lung, which has been surgically repaired. The machine is assisting you in breathing, so don't fight it, okay? You have to relax and let the machine do all the work." She smiled as she could tell the patient was trying to cooperate. Struggling would trigger his gag reflexes and also start the bells and whistles to go off. "You just rest and be assured that you're doing just fine." The nurse could see the pain in his dreamy, dark eyes. "I'll be right back. Remember, don't fight the machine okay?"she smiled, tapped him on the arm and then, once she was assured that he completely understood, she stepped away from his bedside.

The next thing Ponch wanted to know was, 'If I can't talk, how am I supposed to tell them when I'm hurting?' And oh how he was hurting. Ponch was now feeling the full effects of his injuries. Apparently, he didn't have anything to worry about because the nurse returned a few minutes later with a hypo. She'd left to prepare the medication and intended to put him out of his painful misery. Once the injection was taken care of, it wasn't long before he was pain free--and fast asleep once again.

Ponch's stay in ICU lasted over a week. During the times when he was conscious, the nurses would explain what he needed to do, again he needed to relax and not fight the machine was one of the usual reminders. For each time that he would kind of forget and fought it, the bells and whistles would sound and the nurses would come running. Actually, during his stay in ICU, because of the severity of his injuries, they'd kept him more asleep than awake. He just wasn't strong enough to deal with the pain totally on his own. It took some doing, but in time he finally managed to work with the respirator instead of against it. Also during those first few days, it was even questionable as to whether his body could handle all the trauma that had been inflicted on it. They not only had to watch for the onset of pneumonia, but they also had to watch for any infection that may start up. As it was, he had picked up a slight fever, but with additional antibiotics that were added to his IV, in time, they were able to battle that back down to normal.

Ponch was kept on the respirator until the day before he was transferred to a regular room. The doctors wanted to be sure that he was strong enough to breathe on his own first. There was no way though that he could convince his doctors to relieve him of the device any sooner. He had been too sick for his doctors to trust his healing lung with that responsibility. When the time finally came that Doctor Brackett thought the young man was capable of handling it, it was removed--much to his patient's relief.

Well, although Ponch was pleased with getting rid of the respirator, he really found it more difficult to breathe in and out without the machine's assistance, well, for the first few minutes. But after he got the hang of it and just relaxed, it got a little better. When he tried to speak though to answer questions as to how he was feeling though, his sore throat caused him to croak like a frog. With some sips of water to wet his throat before he spoke, then he'd just reply the best he could.

Ponch managed to sleep through most of that first respirator-free day. The nursing personnel noticed his vital signs were finally beginning to look a great deal better now that he was basically doing everything on his own. He could quite possibly move to a regular hospital room very soon then.