Trauma, page 12
Carrie came back to the desk. With a smile, she extended her hand. “I’m Dr. Carrie Bryant. I work with Dr. Finley. I’m the new DBS surgeon.”
* * *
ABINGTON’S HOSPITAL room held little warmth. With a crush of high-tech gear and monitors, the place was intimidating at best, and not intended for long-term stays. The electric hum of equipment buzzed, and in the quiet of the floor every beep could be heard in perfect clarity.
Carrie paused at the door and eyed her attacker with compassion. She reminded herself that the man who hours ago had his hands wrapped around Carrie’s throat was not the same person who lay on this hospital bed. The image of Abington’s crazed-eye look flashed through her mind and sent a chill down her spine. She could recall every detail of the attack: the feeling of pressure on her throat, the coursing terror as her windpipe closed. The smell of his hot breath when he hovered over her, his eyes aglow. But—it wasn’t with hate, was it? It had been fear. Yes, Abington was terrified when he attacked. In a way, the assault was more like a drowning person flailing at a would-be rescuer.
She went to Abington’s bedside and pulled a penlight from her coat pocket.
“Good evening, Mr. Abington,” Carrie said. “I’d like to check your pupils. Would you kindly follow my light?”
Steve Abington opened his eyes ever so slowly and stared vacantly toward his doctor. If he remembered Carrie and what he’d done to her, it did not register on his face.
Carrie quickly checked his pupillary reactivity and then his eye movements. “Now please follow my light. Up … good. Left. Right … good.”
Abington’s shaved head was dressed in bandages, but the stereotactic frame had been removed and he looked handsome now that he was free of the elaborate computerized apparatus.
“Well, you’ve had quite a day. We haven’t had a proper introduction. Do you remember anything about meeting me?”
Abington, who appeared quite groggy still, didn’t respond. Carrie checked his reflexes, and made sure he was moving all fours pretty much equally.
“You were extremely upset when they brought you in,” Carrie said. “Do you remember? You were very confused, telling me you didn’t belong here.”
Abington mumbled something under his breath. He looked utterly lost and alone. Confusion smoldered in his darting eyes.
“Steve, can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
Like a veil had been lifted, Abington came alive and looked wildly about. His jaw set and a snarl overtook his face. He covered his ears with his hands and began to shake his head as if something was lodged inside his ears. Carrie worried he would rip the IVs out of his arm.
“Enough. Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Abington said. His speech came out thickly. His expression was that of a cornered animal.
“Steve, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
Abington continued to turn his head frantically from one side to the other, keeping his hands over his ears.
“Where are you? Stop it! Stop saying that! Follow my light, follow my light, follow my light! What light? What light? Stop it!”
“Steve, calm down. You’ve got to calm down. Everything is all right.”
Abington appeared to have heard Carrie, but his expression became even more agitated.
“Why do you keep saying it’s all right? Nothing is all right. Nothing is all right! Nothing is all right! Stop saying that!”
Abington flipped onto his stomach and buried his head under the pillow. But Carrie could hear him muttering the same words over and over.
“Follow my light … follow my light…”
Carrie bolted for the door. It would be easy to get Abington sedated. The question was, could she ever get him cured?
CHAPTER 20
The badge dangling from a red lanyard identified the nurse as Lee Taggart. He wore crisply pressed white scrubs and unblemished matching canvas sneakers that carried him down the long hallway at a brisk pace. He stopped in front of Marianne’s workstation and leaned forward, hoping to catch her eye.
“Reading anything good?”
Lee’s warm voice drew Marianne’s attention. When she looked up, he flashed her a brilliant smile. Marianne smiled back. Lee had an athletic body and smooth ebony skin, and was not unaccustomed to flattering looks. He had never met Marianne before, but that was not so unusual here. Staff seemed to change as often as shifts, and Marianne would need only to see the red lanyard and white uniform to believe he was a staff nurse.
Marianne glanced down at the cover of her book, which featured a bare-chested Adonis riding a stallion with a scantily clad buxom woman clutched in his massive arms. She laughed flirtatiously.
“Oh, just something to pass the time,” she said, embarrassed enough to cover the book jacket with a clipboard.
The look in Lee’s brown eyes turned conspiratorial. “Another slow night, eh?” he said.
He knew it had not been slow in the least. Everything that could have gone wrong with Abington had gone wrong.
“I prefer that to the alternative,” Marianne said as she glanced at one of the dark monitors and caught a glimpse of her reflection within. She noticed her hair was a bit tousled, which she promptly corrected, using her hand as a comb.
“Well, I got assigned to Dr. Goodwin’s staff tonight,” Lee said. “Just got to go in and check on the patient. He’s in four, right?”
“That’s right. He’s in four.”
* * *
Marianne was having a heck of a time keeping her eyes off this new nurse. She was also struggling with Tinder, and every other dating site where she’d posted a profile. The VA offered slim pickings when it came to the opposite sex, so she was enjoying this pleasant surprise to the fullest.
Before Lee headed off to room four, Marianne checked Abington’s vitals in the only active monitor. His heart and pulse were optimal, but the patient had been in a blissful haloperidol stupor for the past couple of hours, with not a peep since his earlier outburst. She had been told to be extra vigilant for any Q-T prolongation or incidence of arrhythmia, but so far he and the drug were working well together.
Dr. Bryant had ordered ten milligrams of diazepam IV after Abington went crazy, and Marianne had bolted from her chair and gotten the syringe promptly. Within a few minutes, the patient was relaxed again, and his eyes closed.
“Looks like he didn’t need too much on top of that residual anesthesia,” Dr. Bryant had said.
Having had enough excitement for one night, Marianne had been satisfied with that explanation, but Dr. Bryant still looked perplexed.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she had said. “It’s like he was hallucinating. Hearing voices, the same phrase over and over again. He repeated what I said, and then he answered my question multiple times. I only said it once, but somehow it never stopped for him.”
Marianne was not concerned. “They’re all agitated in some way,” she said, not sharing Carrie’s concern. “It’s not unusual for them to get extra sedation. The residents are used to it and they’re trained for it, so I can see why it was a shock to you.”
Marianne’s words did not seem to have much impact on the new DBS surgeon.
Dr. Bryant wrote a prn sedative order, administer as needed. She told Marianne to call if there was a problem, and to give the phone number to her relief at the eleven o’clock shift change. Sam Rockwell used to do the same. Marianne had looked in on Abington twice since then. He seemed a bit restless, his limbs moving involuntarily, shaking, but those were common side effects of the sedative.
“He’s been a handful, that’s for sure,” Marianne said to Nurse Taggart. “Very agitated. Not sure what’s going on with him.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here to check up on things.”
“If he starts to give you trouble, you just holler,” Marianne said.
“I sure will,” Lee replied, “but I’m pretty good at handling most any situation on my own.” With a wink, Lee headed to Abington’s room.
Marianne focused her gaze on his well-defined backside as he walked away.
I bet you are. She smiled and went back to her book.
* * *
Relentless heat bathed the back of Abington’s neck, and sandy grit somehow wormed underneath his eyelids to scratch at his corneas. Place? Time? Where was he? What had happened? Somewhere off in the distance, Abington heard the thunderous roll of artillery shells detonating as the ground beneath him rumbled and shook with each massive blast. He felt around for his weapon, but his arms responded spastically like they had a mind of their own.
One of Abington’s pawing hands felt something made of steel. He clutched his M16 and pulled the weapon close to him. He managed to get onto his hands and knees, but each breath came at a price. Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong with him.
The air parted as bullets whizzed overhead. Abington forced open his eyes and blinked in response to the oppressive sunlight. When his vision cleared, he saw he was still in Afghanistan. Again, he was back where it all began, inside the foxhole, and Roach was with him just as before. Only now the indestructible Roach had had his guts ripped open by a peppering of bullets and he was bleeding out.
In lumbering, agonizingly slow motion, Abington flipped onto his belly and crawled over to his wounded comrade. He could not understand why his movements were so labored, dreamlike. But this could not be a dream. It was all too real. He could feel the heat scorching his skin, and a stench of gunpowder mixed with blood was visceral and genuine.
Gasping, Abington made his way toward Roach, who groaned and clutched at his injured stomach. If Abington did not stop the bleeding soon, his friend would die. All over again.
From close by, Abington heard a spit of gunfire. In the same instant, sand and dirt sprayed his face. With a burst of surprising adrenaline, Abington brushed his face clean and lurched forward, landing almost on top of Roach. With nothing to stop the bleeding, Abington placed his hands over the pulsing wound. He cried out in horror as his fingers sank deep inside the bloody cavity. Muscles and tendons pulsed around Abington’s probing fingers, but the blood continued to ooze out. Roach moaned deliriously, fading in and out of consciousness.
Abington was about to scream for a medic when he noticed a shadow looming. He looked up just in time to see the figure of a man leap into the foxhole with them. Abington blinked to clear his vision. He had thought the dark-skinned man was wearing white hospital scrubs, but now there were no scrubs. The man was dressed in camouflage, with the combat medic’s Red Cross insignia sewn onto his sleeve.
“What’s happening here, Steve?” the man asked.
Abington had so much to say, but he could not utter a single word.
Instead, the medic’s voice tumbled about his head and Abington heard the words “what’s happening … what’s happening … what’s happening” like a scratched record.
Abington pulled his hands from the gruesome gut wound and covered his ears to try and block out the sound. His red-stained palms lathered his face with warm blood, but those words kept rolling about his head like an endless echo.
What’s happening … what’s happening … what’s happening …
“Steve, you’re going to feel a little funny in a moment.”
Steve you’re going to feel … Steve you’re going to feel … Steve you’re going to feel.
“Stop! Stop saying that! Just fix Roach!”
Now it was Abington’s voice providing the echo.
Fix Roach … fix Roach … fix Roach …
The medic moved inches from Abington’s face as he produced a syringe full of clear liquid from his pocket. At first the medic appeared to be injecting the syringe into thin air, but Abington’s vision altered and he saw the needle had penetrated the tubing of his own intravenous line. How did he get a line in his arm when it was Roach who had been shot?
“It’s called potassium chloride, and while it’s not fatal, you’re going to feel very uncomfortable,” the medic whispered benevolently. “I’ll see you in a minute, Steve.”
The medic climbed out of the foxhole and was gone—but not his voice, which remained and echoed mercilessly in his ears.
I’ll see you in a minute … see you in a minute … in a minute …
Seconds later, a new sensation came over Abington, something strange and unnerving. He inhaled sharply and fought against the tightness in his chest, curling into a fetal position and rhythmically rocking. He rubbed Roach’s blood all over his head, hair, and neck in an effort to stop the noise in his head. Nearby, Roach lay on his back, mouth open, with a dead-eyed gaze up to the heavens.
The tightness changed into something else. Abington’s heartbeat began to flutter, then it morphed into a pounding. Abington could feel the palpitations in his chest, throat, and neck. He turned his head and locked his gaze on his dead friend, certain he would soon be joining him.
* * *
Lee Taggart had made it to the elevator bank when Abington’s alarm went off. While he was not at all surprised, Lee still made a show of it, and raced back to Marianne, who had a look of panic on her face. Some of the nurses were stoics—they could handle any stressful situation thrown at them—while others were not at all adept at managing crises. They tended to relish the relative calm of the neuro recovery floor.
“Something is wrong,” she said. “His heartbeat just went crazy.”
“He’s on haloperidol, right?” Lee said. “Arrhythmia can be a side effect. I’m here, let me rush him down to the med ICU.”
Marianne looked relieved. She was definitely not the good-in-emergencies type.
CHAPTER 21
The house was quiet when Carrie got home. The front porch light was on; it was always on when Carrie stayed out after her parents had gone to sleep. Traffic on the Mass Pike had been mercifully light, but it was still almost midnight when Carrie pulled into her parents’ driveway.
She’d spent the drive running Abington’s surgical procedure through her mind. It had been an exhilarating, terrifying, and utterly strange first day on the job and she was glad to be home. Carrie had given some thought to moving out now that she had an income stream again, but opted against it. Until she had some permanence she was not going to make any big changes.
When Carrie walked into the kitchen, she was delighted to find a card waiting for her on the table, propped against a small vase of flowers—daisies mostly, her favorite. The handwritten note from her mom and dad congratulated her on what they assumed had been a successful first surgery. She had debated telling them about Abington, but worried they would worry.
Reading her parents’ note, Carrie became keenly aware of the soreness around her neck. It was tight, and every time she looked to the left, she felt a sharp, gripping pain that stretched across the back of her head. It was the pain of a muscle spasm, not a fracture. She also had additional pain along the outside of her right knee, but not with every step. In the morning she’d probably wake up with visible signs of the day’s violence. Those would need to be explained, or perhaps just covered up.
Carrie heard a floorboard creak behind her and turned to see Adam in the entrance to the kitchen. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweats. For a moment she saw him as her little brother again, but that vision was blown apart by his haunted, hooded eyes. Eyes that resembled Abington’s.
“Hey Carrie,” Adam said as he trudged over to the fridge. “How’d the first surgery go?”
“Pretty good,” Carrie said. “Nobody died.”
Adam returned a fractured smile. “Well, I’d call that a big success.” He chuckled. “Want some OJ?”
“Love some.”
Adam poured two glasses and joined Carrie at the kitchen table. Carrie moved the flowers and card to the side to make room, surreptitiously checking her arms to make sure there were no visible marks or scratches. If her parents found out, they’d certainly be concerned about safety, but Adam could go ballistic.
“Can I ask you something?”
Adam took a swig of OJ. “Anything.”
Carrie softened her voice. “What do you think would happen if you saw a virtual reality simulation of something that happened to you over in Afghanistan?”
“What do you mean by that? Like a computer simulation?”
“Along those lines,” Carrie said. “But hyper-realistic.”
Adam tossed his hands in the air. “I dunno.”
Carrie thought not only of Abington’s initial assault, but of his second outburst after the surgery, which required a haloperidol drip to calm him. Having experienced Adam’s explosive temper, it was not a stretch to envision her brother in Abington’s place.
“Could you maybe … become violent?” Carrie asked.
This was a sensitive subject for the family. Adam owned several guns, including a pistol and rifle, and threatened to move out before he’d give them up. He was a lawful and responsible gun owner, and nobody disagreed, but nobody wanted him to have those weapons either. The worry was for Adam’s safety, since PTSD and gun ownership were often a lethal mix. Adam returned an indifferent shrug.
“I hit a reporter for no real good reason. So I suppose anything is possible.”
Carrie laughed. “Did you call to apologize?”
“I did better than that,” Adam said. “I met the guy for coffee. Gave him everything he could possibly want to hear, and probably more than he expected.”
Carrie made a mental note to call David Hoffman; she’d agreed to a coffee date as well. Seeing sadness in her brother’s eyes, Carrie reached across the table and took hold of Adam’s hand. “Even I haven’t heard those stories.”
Adam squeezed her hand. “For a reason.”
“If you ever want to talk about it—”
“You’re here for me. I know that, Carrie. You’ve always had my back.” He raised his hands in a pantomime of a pneumatic drill. “Hey, what do you think of this work you’re doing? Should I have you drill into my head and stick me with wires?” Adam gave a cartoon evil scientist’s maniacal laugh.
