It was engulfing a woman so small and eaten up that it seemed barely possible she had the organs remaining to destroy or the breath to scream so loudly.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to violate the orders.” A young nurse in purple scrubs spoke with a voice on the edge of panic.
“You’re not violating anything, Megan,” Cheryl Beth said, getting the woman’s name off her name badge. Barely under her breath, she said, “I don’t know why people want to cover their ass when a patient is suffering. And does the damned anesthesiologist care?” Megan stared at the floor.
Tamping down her fury, Cheryl Beth did a quick workup. The paperwork was a mess, as usual. It appeared that she had been undermedicated by one of the surgical residents. She touched the old woman, her skin like that covering a chicken wing after a week in the refrigerator. “I’m going to help you.”
“I just want to die,” she wailed.
Cheryl Beth’s brain and hands were on automatic now, a coordination born from years of training and experience.
“What are you doing?” the young nurse asked.
“Rescue dose,” Cheryl Beth said. She injected morphine and Ativan through a cap in the IV line. They rushed into the vein that would bear them like a liquid savior. She stroked the woman’s hand and the screaming subsided. Her pager vibrated again, even as she wrote out extensive orders for the pain meds to follow. She looked at it and decided it could wait. Around her, the general surgery recovery room looked like much of Cincinnati Memorial, a surreal combination of modern medical technology haphazardly fitted into rooms that had been built during the Great Depression and left to slowly rot ever since. She noticed more than usual the attendant fleeting odors of disinfectant, feces, vomit, and various medicines. They seemed colored with a brooding, claustrophobic tint in the aftermath of Christine’s murder.
She felt herself silently mouthing the word: Murder. She stopped when she was aware that Megan was hovering nearby. Cheryl Beth instructed her on monitoring and administering the morphine and the Ativan, an antianxiety drug, and regulating the PCA pump that would prevent an overdose.
“Thank you so much.” She seemed so young. Was I ever that young? Cheryl Beth asked herself. She also knew how difficult it was to recruit nurses, especially at Memorial. She wrote out the new orders-she always covered her backside-and would get Dr. Ames to sign them.
