The Sunflower: A Novel Read Free Page B

percent at the house, now it’s down to eighty-two.”
    Paul frowned. “What happened?”
    “Possible aspiration of an unknown object. The parents and the paramedics tried the Heimlich, but it didn’t help.”
    “Tell the paramedics to get an IV going but don’t delay transport.”
    “I’ll call.”
    Paul looked up at Lily. “I’ll have to leave when the child arrives. I don’t think I’m going to finish this in time. Will you be okay?”
    “Yeah.” She was quiet for a moment. “When I was a teenager, I was babysitting a neighbor kid when she choked on a cinnamon bear. She finally coughed it out, but it scared me to death.”
    Paul tied off another suture. “Choking always scares me.”
    Just then Ken entered the room. “Dr. Cook, we’ve got a cardiac arrest in transit.”
    Paul groaned. “When it rains, it pours. What’s the ETA?”
    “Five minutes.”
    “Status?”
    “Paramedics are performing CPR. A forty-two-year-old male who was out shoveling snow when he collapsed.”
    Kelly stepped in behind Ken. “Doctor, the ambulance with the child is here.”
    He set down the needle, lifted the scissors and snipped the tourniquet. He looked up at Lily. “I’ll be back.”
    “Good luck.”
    He said to Kelly, “Wrap her with some gauze, then come help me.” He walked out into the hall as the paramedics brought in the child. He was a small boy of three or four. His face was bluish and his eyes were open and wild and a large paramedic struggled to hold him as he flailed wildly, the end of the IV tube whipping with his motion.
    “What’s our oxygen saturation?” Paul asked.
    “Seventy-nine.”
    “Give him to me.” Paul put his arms around the boy and began the Heimlich. Nothing.
    “Get him on the table. Get him monitored.”
    Just then a woman burst through triage into the E.R. screaming “Where’s my boy?”
    The triage nurse had unsuccessfully tried to grab her arm as she passed and she was now following her. “Ma’am, we need you to stay out in the lobby.”
    “Where’s my boy? I’m not leaving my boy.”
    Kelly arrived. “Dr. Cook, the boy’s mother…”
    “Let her back.”
    Kelly shouted down the hall, “This way, ma’am.”
    The woman ran to where they had gathered around her son. She grew even more panicked at the sight of him. “Do something…please!”
    Paul asked, “Do you know what he swallowed?”
    “No. He was just playing under the tree.”
    “Were there small ornaments?”
    “I don’t know. Just take it out! Take it out! He can’t breathe!”
    Paul turned to Kelly. “We’ve got to sedate him. Give me one milligram of Versed.”
    She injected it into the IV but the boy continued to fight against the men holding him.
    “Saturation dropping,” Kelly said.
    “The Versed’s not enough. What’s his saturation?”
    “Seventy-five.”
    “Great,” he said caustically, “I’ve got to find out what he swallowed.” He turned to the mother. “How much does he weigh?”
    “Uh, uh, thirty pounds.”
    Paul did the math in his head. One milligram per kilogram. “Kelly, get me fifteen milligrams Succs.”
    Just then the sliding doors opened and a frigid gust of wind flooded the hall. Two paramedics in thick boots tramped inside pushing a stretcher with a man strapped to it. Marci walked up, her antlers gone. “Doctor, paramedics are here with the cardiac arrest.”
    “Where’s Garrity?”
    “Still on the floor.”
    “You’re going to have to help me, Marci. What room’s open?”
    “D. Delta.”
    “Take him there and keep the CPR going. What’s his rhythm?”
    “V-tach.”
    “Have the paramedics shocked him?”
    “Two hundred, three hundred and three hundred sixty joules.”
    “Give him a milligram of epinephrine, wait one minute and if he’s still in V-fib, shock again with three hundred and sixty joules. Kelly, where’s the Succs?”
    “It’s ready.”
    “Saturation’s fallen to seventy,” Ken said.
    “Get me the intubation kit.”
    “Right