Coma

...” Bellows held up his left hand and extended his middle and index fingers and pretended to palpate an artery in the air. “Once you have the artery between the fingers, you can feel the pulse. Then simply guide the needle in by feel. The best method is to let arterial pressure fill the syringe. In that way you can avoid air bubbles, which tend to distort the values.”

Bellows backed into the recovery room door, still gesturing the technique of the arterial stick. “Two important points: you have to use a heparinized syringe to keep the blood from clotting, and you have to keep pressure over the site for five minutes after the stick. The patient can get a frightful hematoma from an arterial stick if the pressure part is forgotten.”

To Susan the recovery room seemed superficially similar to the ICU

except that it was brighter, noisier, and more crowded. There were about fifteen to twenty spaces designated for beds. Each space had a complement of equipment built into the wall, including monitors, gas lines, and suction lines. Most of the spaces were occupied by high beds with the side rails pulled up. In each bed was a patient with fresh bandages over some part of his body. Bottles of intravenous fluid were clustered on the tops of poles, like some hideous fruit on leafless trees.

New patients were arriving, others leaving, causing mini-traffic jams of moving beds. Conversation flowed freely from those who worked there and felt at home in the environment. There was even some occasional laughter. But there were also some groans, and a baby was wailing an unheeded lament in a crib by the nurses’ station. Some of the beds had groups of doctors and nurses busily engaged in adjusting the hundreds of lines, valves, and tubes. Some of the doctors were dressed in wrinkled scrub suits, stained with all sorts of secretions, although blood was the most prevalent. Others wore long white coats starched painfully stiff. It was a busy place, a crossroad filled with patients, charts, motion, and talk.

Bellows was anxious to dispense with the task ahead and approached the main desk, which was strategically placed in the center of the large room. In response to his inquiry he was handed a tray with a heparinized syringe and directed to one of the recovery room beds to the left, opposite the door through which they had entered.

“Why don’t I go ahead and do this one, and you do the next one,” said Bellows. Susan nodded in agreement as they approached the bed. They could not see the patient because of the people standing in the way.

There were several nurses on the left, two doctors in scrub suits at the foot, and a tall black doctor in a long white coat on the right. As Bellows and Susan drew near, it was obvious that the latter individual had been talking although at that moment he was adjusting the pressure setting on the respirator. Susan sensed the emotional climate instantly. Both of the doctors in scrub suits were obviously intensely concerned. The smaller individual, Dr. Goodman, was visibly shaking. The other, Dr. Spallek, had his mouth angrily set with clenched teeth, audibly breathing through his nostrils as if he were about to attack the next person in his path.

“There’s got to be some sort of an explanation,” snarled the infuriated Spallek. He took hold of his face mask still tied around his neck and yanked it free, snapping the cord. He flung it to the floor. “That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” he hissed before abruptly turning away and leaving. He collided with Bellows, who miraculously managed to juggle the small tray he was carrying without dropping any of its contents. There were no words of apology from Dr. Spallek. He crossed the recovery room and blasted open the doors to the hall.

Bellows went directly to the left of the bed and put down the tray.

Susan advanced warily, watching the expressions of the remaining people.

The black doctor straightened up and his dark eyes followed the exit of the irate Dr. Spallek. Susan was immediately taken by the imposing image of the man. His tag gave his name: Dr. Robert Harris. He was tall, well over six feet, his dark hair textured into a restrained Afro. His blemishless tawny skin shone, and his face reflected a curious combination of culture and restrained violence. His movements were calm, almost to the point of deliberate slowness. As his eyes returned from watching Spallek’s exit they passed over Susan’s face before returning to the respirator at the side of the bed. If he had noticed Susan, he gave no hint whatsoever.

“What did you use for the pre-op, Norman?” asked Harris, pronouncing each word carefully. He had a cultured Texas accent—if that were possible.

“Innovar,” said Goodman. The pitch of his voice was abnormally high and cracking under the strain.